Timothy Findley's novel describes the life and death of Robert Ross, a young officer in the Canadian army of World War I. Ross dies from wounds suffered in a fire; he was trying to rescue horses, disobeying orders to save them. Before shipping overseas to France, he trained out West. This scene occurs as Ross rides the troop train through his hometown, heading for the war.
Then he could smell the city of his birth--even though it lay about him in the dark--and he stood and he stared as he passed the fires of his father's factories, every furnace blasting red in the night. What had become of all the spires and the formal, comforting shapes of commerce he remembered--banks and shops and business palaces with flags? Where were the streets with houses ranged behind their lawns under the gentle awnings of the elms? What had happened here in so short a time that he could not recall his absence? What were all these fires--and where did his father and mother sleep beneath the pall of smoke reflecting orange and red and yellow flames? Where, in this dark, was the world he'd known and where was he being taken to so fast there wasn't even time to stop?
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