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All Praise Canada – Or The Canadian Pacific Railroad

This is a fabulous idea.

The Canadian Pacific Holiday Train.

So, take one large Canadian train. Deck it with neon boughs of holly and the rest. Drive it across the entirety of Canada, coast to coast. And when it stops at a station, the box car side drops down and out springs the band to play Run Rudolph Run or some such.

Great photos here and some drone footage

Apparently they run two, one across the US, one across Canada each year.

OK, so it’s about awareness of food banks and such like. But I would love to have been in that planning meeting two decades back.

“Boss, we’re going to run a train festooned with neon across the country”

“Whut?”

“Yeah, and when it stops at a station then the band leaps out to play.”

“Whut? You been at the liquer chocolates already?”

“No boss, it’ll be great, great big Christmas train right across the prairies.”

“Well, it’ll have to be for charidee…”

“Food banks, whatever, big train, neon, Christmas!”

“And holidays, not Christmas”

“Whatever, but big train! Woo Hoo!”

“Yep, go get them other box of them chocolates too.”

Trivial when there’s so much suffering in the world? Sure. Those diesels pollute the planet too.

And what a frabjous day it is when I find out that someone actually does this. A large, official, organisation, goes out of its way to do this.

Yep, I think we’ll keep this species.

17 thoughts on “All Praise Canada – Or The Canadian Pacific Railroad”

  1. From the FAQ:

    > How do I ride the train?

    Rides are not open to the public. The people riding the train from stop to stop are our employees, their families and some invited guests, who work closely with our railway.

    Nice way to reward your favourite customers.

    > What’s the impact been?

    Since 1999, the Holiday Train has raised more than CAD $12 million and 3.9 million lbs of food for North American food banks. Anything raised in a community stays in that community. In addition, CP makes donations at each stop.

    C$1m per year doesn’t sound all that impressive. But hey, it’s fun.

  2. Cute randomness like this brought to you courtesy of free market capitalism and individual property rights.

    Incidentally that photo of Trump and Nige, I wish someone did it as a card, I’d buy a gross to send to everyone I knew!

  3. Someone ought to do a round-the-world Christmas flight that extends Christmas Day beyond 24 hours. Then we could send our enemies on it.

  4. OK, so it’s about awareness of food banks and such like.

    Clever. Defuses the loonies who might otherwise attack it for the blatant fascism of decorating it with a Christmas theme.

  5. Philip Scott Thomas

    Damn. That is just genius. It’s the world’s biggest Crimbo train set, only instead of just chugging around the Christmas tree it’s got the entire freaking Canadian prairie. Brilliant!

  6. I cannot help but think of the train scene in Trading Places, whenever ‘USA’ and ‘Xmas’ gets mentioned in the same paragraph.

    Jamie Lee in the short shorts and pigtails, and Dan Ackroyd in blackface playing a Jamaican. Cinema peaked in 1983.

  7. bollocks, should have said ‘USA’, ‘Xmas’ and ‘Trains’.

    Fun fact of the day – film makers wanted G, Gordon Liddy – of Watergate fame – to play the shady fixer who ends up getting buggered by a gorilla.

  8. So they’re wasting some combination of shareholders’ and taxpayers’ money on jollies for the trolley dollys?

    And you think that’s a good idea?

  9. @dearieme,

    There are several options on that every year. You can easily have a 30-hour new year round-the-world party on a private jet, if you have a modest six-figure sum to blow on the experience, and don’t mind spending most of that time in the air, to say you made new-year parties in six hot cities (or their airport lounges at least).

    If not, the Waily Fail will bring you an article on the rich kids of Instagram the next day.

  10. BiG,
    They get lots of free positive publicity from it; they fulfill their Corporate Social Responsibility requirements; and they get to treat preferred clients & target-beating salesmen to money-can’t-buy experiences. A win-win situation all round.

  11. So Much For Subtlety

    It is a private company so how they spend their money is their business. But I can’t help but wonder if the free publicity is worth it or this is just another example of management thinking money is wasted on shareholders.

    dearieme – “Someone ought to do a round-the-world Christmas flight that extends Christmas Day beyond 24 hours. Then we could send our enemies on it.”

    Larry Niven was a little ahead of you in that in one of his Ringworld books, Louis Wu decides 24 hours is not enough to celebrate his birthday and so travels around the world to extend the party. Only Niven got it wrong and in rare first editions, Wu travels in the wrong direction.

  12. CP have been marketing geniuses for a hundred years. I still have on my bucket list Chateau Lake Louise, Chateau Whistler and Banff Springs Hotel.

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