To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a slight amendment is in order.

The document in Pierre Trudeau’s Constitution Act of 1982 that guarantees certain democratic, legal, mobility and equality rights should be modified to include the right to travel across this country’s pure, spectacular breadth by train.

At government expense, of course.

Every Canadian should have the opportunity to ride The Canadian, Via Rail’s Toronto-Vancouver route through the forests of Northern Ontario, the serenity of the Prairies, the majesty of the mountains and out to the sea.

It is an eye-opening, awe-inspiring journey that illustrates, as nothing else possibly can, the magnitude and magnificence of a land so often taken for granted, even disparaged, by its own people.

As for new Canadians, forget about making them swear allegiance to the Queen. Put them on the train instead. Guaranteed, the trip will inspire more devotion and patriotism to their adopted homeland than pledging undying fealty to a foreign monarch.

Although Via’s network extends from coast to coast, each route offering its own unique beauty, The Canadian is Train No. 1. It says so right there on the ticket - Via 001 - just to the left of the part that shows an arrival date three full days after departure. And that’s from Toronto, not Atlantic to Pacific. It takes nearly 30 hours just to get out of Ontario.

“Take lots of books,” warn the well-intentioned. “Northern Ontario is nothing but trees. And the prairies, well, it’s a long way to the mountains.”

That’s how the uninitiated think, says Catherine Kaloutsky, the railway’s senior public affairs officer. When her own husband, Dan, was preparing for his first trip on The Canadian from Winnipeg to Toronto, he got busy packing up his bookbag. He’d be on the train for two days, he reasoned, and wanted something to stave off the inevitable boredom.

“You’re not going to need them,” Kaloutsky told him. If it is unwise to argue with a woman, it is doubly so when that woman has made the trip more times than she can count in 30 years with Via. He did not open the books.

“The allure of being on the train and the frame of mind it puts you in, when you’re away from all distractions and the only thing to see is what’s outside the window … people discount the power of that,” she explains. “It’s like a drug. It hypnotizes you.”

The tranquilizing effect begins almost as soon as the train pulls out of Union Station. There is no fanfare as it lurches slightly and, almost imperceptibly, starts to move, but the excitement is tangible. Whether in a Comfort class seat or the luxurious Silver & Blue class, passengers share a sense of adventure, of setting out to explore the wild frontiers as Simon Fraser and David Thompson did, after whom two of the West’s great rivers are named. This is not so much transportation to a destination as the destination itself.

Passengers squeeze past each other in the narrow passageways to check out the dining car, activity car, the bar, the dome cars, the shower rooms, the Park car, the compartments with the wee sinks and the Pullman beds, made up invitingly with squishy pillows and fluffy duvets.

This train is 636 metres long with three engines and 30 cars, most of which are stainless steel, stock built in the 1950s and restored to their original elegance. The distinctively shaped “bullet lounge” is in the Park car, at the very end of the train, where newspapers, fresh fruit, snacks and beverages are available 24 hours a day.