The Canmar Pride is 244 metres long, 32.2 metres wide, weighs 39 thousand tons, and travels at around 21 knots. It is part of CP Ships' fleet, the "first and finest to Europe," a poster in the lounge proclaims. It is carrying some 2,000 crates, a crew of about 20 people, and only two other passengers besides ourselves: Tom and Karl.
I eventually ascertain that Karl is German, although when I ask, he simply shrugs and says, "It's complicated." He's in his fifties, with a tanned face and temperament that Thom summed up perfectly with the word 'jolly'. When he smiles, he reveals slightly crooked teeth. One in particular, in the front row, protrudes noticeably beyond the others and gives him this brilliant childish grin. It fits perfectly with the way in which he talks to us, constantly whispering things in a devilish way, glancing slyly to one side, then erupting in laughter.
Tom is an easy image to conjure because he is Jack Nicholson's brother. Or, at least, I think he is. You see, he is the spitting image of what Jack Nicholson's brother looks like (well, how I picture he would look like). He is clearly not Jack Nicholson, but he bears an absolutely uncanny resemblance to him, so you can just think of him as that.
Tom is on his way to meet his brother in the south of France. I don't know where Jack resides these days, but I can think of less likely places than southern France. He is from just outside Berkeley in California and decided that a boat across the Atlantic would be a good way to travel.
It's harder to get a straight answer from Karl. He's also going down to the lower regions of France, but when I ask him if he lives there, he glances over his shoulder, leans in conspiratorially, and whispers, "It's complicated." We're seated in the Officer's Mess Room, aka the dining room, being served dinner. Karl once again gives a shifty look to one side, in the direction of the crew members who are coming in and out of the room, and says, "I vill tell you about it after ve get to through customs." Thom and I share a look of bewilderment—do we have another smuggler in our midst?
Outside the dining room window, as there are outside most windows on this ship, are stacks of boxes. Only these boxes are different. They have air-conditioning units on the side and digital read-outs displaying the inside air temperature. They read "-18C". "What do you think's in them?" I ask Thom, but the obvious answer dawns on me at the same time it does on him. Bodies.
We were only made aware of this boat's existence some two weeks earlier in Beijing and thus didn't have the first idea of what to expect. Now that I'm onboard, I still don't have answers to half my questions. I know that it is a huge freighter travelling from Montreal to Hamburg that takes only four passengers for a fee of some $1,500. I know that Thom and I occupy the only passenger double room on the boat and that it is a very comfortable arrangement, not at all cramped, with room for two large beds, cupboards, and a sofa. I also know that there is a lounge room with a stereo, TV, and books that has half a dozen couches in it. And now I know that we have meals at 7am, 12pm, and 6pm in the Officer's Mess Room, that they are typically of Indian origin (since the crew is largely from there), and that those meals are notably better than the roadside food that kept us sustained for the duration of our stay in North America. Beyond that are many unanswered questions.
Something else I have come to find out is that the life onboard this boat is good. You have seen the sum of my duties for the day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and the rest of the roster is divided evenly among reading, sleeping, and idle banter. After the prolonged on-the-move mentality of our trip, the luxury of this laid-back lifestyle could not have been better timed. Even the Trans-Siberian was hard work compared to this. There we didn't have food provided, we had to share a tiny cabin with two other people, and there wasn't anywhere to go. Here we have both freedom and privacy, space and shelter.
Our exhaustion is self-evident. When I sleep, I like my room to be cold. Our cabin is hot and humid, but before I have time to worry about the temperature, I’m out cold. I was awoken one day after 11 hours of sleep by a breakfast call, after which I had a two-hour nap. The next night, I slept another 11 hours and split the day between sleeping and trying to stay awake. I was concerned that all the daytime dozing would impede my ability to sleep at night, but I have had no such trouble. Yes, the Canmar Pride is just what the doctor ordered.