Tom Murphy is a high-profile television journalist whose career suddenly fumbles when a film documentary he does on the question of failure leads to the suicide of an old friend. After an imposed vacation, he's sent on a more innocuous mission, interviewing the "average" Canadian at train stops across the country. But as the trip progresses from west to east across the Canadian countryside, Tom's past and future flash before him. By the time he reaches Newfoundland, he has reached the end of an epoch in his life, and the beginning of a new one.