JANUARY 2016 BCBusiness 57
Just as the joys of Christmas are best seen
through the eyes of a child, the charms
of your province are most evident from
a tourist's perspective. Private rail
company Rocky Mountaineer—one of the
hidden gems of B.C. tourism—has been
operating a series of routes through the
Canadian Rockies for over a quarter-
century and is regularly voted one of the
"world's leading travel experiences by
train" by the World Travel Awards. Ask
British Columbians about the company,
however, and many will draw a blank.
Part of that has to do with physical
visibility. The Rocky Mountaineer
Station is hidden in a warren of roads
off Terminal Avenue in East Vancouver—
away from the city's main rail link,
Pacific Central Station, and tucked
between a Chevy dealership and a
Home Depot. Yes, there's a bagpiper to
send off the departing guests, but other-
wise the departure from Vancouver is
unheralded—and unnoticed as the train
snakes through the Lower Mainland's
patchwork industrial lands, then disap-
pears up into the Fraser Canyon.
But mostly the lack of brand aware-
ness is intentional: Rocky Mountaineer,
founded in 1990 by Vancouver
Rocky
Mountain
High
W
coURtesY of RockY MoUNtAiNeeR
T r a v e l
The second-largest private
passenger rail company in
the world remains largely
unknown at home
by Matt O'Grady
INSIDE
Luminaries at Night of a Thousand Stars ... Lunch with UBC prof and Offsetters CEO James Tansey
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 6
O
OU T Of OffiCE
"I just kept pinching myself
that Woody Harrelson's on my
roof doing Bill Murray imper-
sonations–it was really weird"
–p.62
Rail pass
The Rocky Mountaineer
crosses a bridge near
Hells Gate
