A Snowbound Christmas with Angels We Didn’t Know

Part II — A Dining Car Christmas

Hours passed. The storm deepened; still no cell service, no movement, no certainty.

The dining car came alive anyway.

Fairy lights were strung along the luggage rack. Someone put on faint holiday music. Hot chocolate reappeared. The passengers—strangers all—slowly began crafting a pop-up Christmas gathering in the early dark of a northern Ontario snowstorm.

Margaret, Evan, Kira, and Noah gravitated back to one another’s company.

“So,” Evan asked Kira, “you’re a skater, eh?”

They laughed, shared stories, and unburdened themselves in the glow of a makeshift community. Fears and grief came out with surprising ease, as though the storm outside had made everything else feel smaller, more survivable.

At one point, when Mara fussed, the elderly couple across the aisle offered a knitted toque from their luggage “in case she gets chilly.” A university student built a tiny cradle from folded jackets. Someone else handed Noah a spare bottle of water, insisting he take it.

Every act felt like a small echo of Margaret’s earlier Scripture, each kindness reinforcing the sense that maybe—just maybe—there was something sacred in this strange moment.

Evan summed it up quietly as he watched his table companions laughing over a lopsided paper snowflake someone had made: “You know… I think your mum was right, Margaret. There’s something about being stuck out here that makes folks remember what they’re supposed to be.”

Margaret didn’t say she agreed. She simply smiled.