From the cathedral the cortege moved to Ottawa railway station where there was more band music and another nineteen-gun salute as the special train (three engines, the funeral car draped inside in black, five passenger cars, a lounge car, and a diner) pulled away to the west....Ceremonial stops to view the closed coffin had been planned for Sudbury, Winnipeg, and Prince Albert; but as the train moved west it was greeted everywhere by crowds along the tracks, and additional stops were added on the way, at Kenora, Melville, and Watrous. In Prince Albert, as the train pulled in on Tuesday afternoon, the overpass bridge was crowded and several thousand citizens filled the station square behind a guard of honour of the North Saskatchewan Regiment.
"Two nights and two days across three provinces," wrote Joan Hollobon of the Globe and Mail, "in a train that became an isolated world of memory and compressed emotion, have produced a new portrait of John Diefenbaker. He is still a man of many contradictions, but it is a kinder, gentler, even nobler portrait than that of the jowl-shaking thunderer of political vituperation." It was a portrait painted by Canadians along the journey's path. "Workmen holding hard hats in their hands as the train went by. Old men standing at attention. Women waving. Young people. They all saw John Diefenbaker as a fighter for the underdog, an honest man sincere in his convictions and in his vision of Canada."
Denis Smith, Rogue Tory The Life and Legend of John G. Diefenbaker (Macfarlane Walter & Ross: 1995), p. 576.
