Our compartment was full –it shouldn't have been since we had two of the seats. But two kids were sleeping on four of the eight seats. The family shuffled around to make some space for us. After putting our luggage away and playing musical chairs with other people in the compartment, one of the ladies said, “It’s hard travelling with kids.” “Harder for us than for them” I said, remembering when I rode the train as a kid it was always a bit of an adventure. Then the guy, who I assumed was the dad, said to the still sleeping boy, “It’s only going to get harder from here, sonny, only going to get harder” I doubt that the kid heard, or registered it, he was still sleeping. But it got me thinking. This is a far cry from the way people talk to kids in Canada. Where, ‘everything is going to be okay’ all the time. This is a harsh place to grow up; you’re not one of the lucky few to be born into a relatively well-to-do family, it is always going to get harder. Nobody here has...