The couch is in one piece, loaded onto the train, destination: Churchill. Estimated travel time: 36 hours with a 5 hour stop in Thomspon. Despite a developing snowstorm that’s beginning to hammer most of the province of Manitoba, the train departs. Onboard, the team finds their sleeping cabins, not recommended for any clostorphobes. The room can also be a bathroom, with a convertible toilet seat and a foldable sink (which we thought was a little strange). The train is something out of the 50’s or 60’s, with a faded green colour scheme, and different pieces of art found throughout the walls of the train. A mix of local northern Manitobans as well as a few tourists from the US and England aiming to witness the magic of aurora borealis. The crew is incredibly friendly, just like every Manitoban that we’ve had the pleasure to encounter so far. Truly, they are people that will always give you a helping hand whenever in need. Just as we were getting comfortable in our snug little cabins, one of the crew members annouced that the train will not be going up north, because the company that owns the railway shut it down due to the severity of the storm. A local man from Churchill named Dixon, showed us some photos of buildings and friends' homes burried in snow over 10 feet high. A record 100cm of snow with winds over 110 km/h was coming down upon the community. One of the conductors mentioned that in his 43 years of service, he had never witnessed a storm this extreme. Dixon joked around that there hadn’t been a storm like this in 150 years. The Red Couch team gets together for a meeting since our expedition to Churchill has been thrwated and sadly ruled out. Back at Union Station in Winnipeg, we have to dissassemble the couch back into pieces, since we’ve decided to fly directly to Yellowknife via Edmonton the following morning. One more night in Winnipeg then off to the Northwest Territories!
