Michelle Babiuk, intrepid interviewer, speaking to an attendee at I Love Transit Night.

OK — one more thing from I Love Transit Week!

During I Love Transit Night, I asked my colleague Michelle to roam around with a voice recorder and chat with people about transit for the blog. I narrowed the audio down to about 15 minutes of stories and perspectives, so press play on the player above and have a listen to some of the fine folks we met last Thursday! Thanks Michelle for doing an excellent job, and thanks to everyone interviewed for sharing your stories!

I’d also like to point out a couple of links to wrap up the I Love Transit Week coverage:

• Eric made a wrapup post for I Love Transit Week. Let’s take I Love Transit international!
• Did you know St. Albert, AB did I Love Transit Week in May 2010? It’s true!

If I haven’t said it already, I really want to send a sincere, heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated in I Love Transit Week — whether you submitted essays, came to the meetup, or simply read along and enjoyed the ride. This whole week was phenomenal thanks to you. Next year, we’ll make I Love Transit even better!

(By the way: there’ll be just one more post next week about I Love Transit, and then I’ll hold my peace until next year. More photos are arriving from our photographer next week!)

I’m pleased to present a song about transit by Rachel Albang! Here’s a bit more about the song and its lyrics, plus you can hear more of her music at her Myspace account.

To listen to the song press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here.

Rachel!

I was reading about your upcoming celebration and was inspired (while riding the bus!) to write you a little song. It’s kinda cheeky but the overall tone is to celebrate/appreciate the offerings of TransLink.

My transit use has really varied over the years – e.g. I’ve done my share of the three hour daily commute North Van to downtown, but currently I am working at home writing a book so my transit use is e.g. for shopping and research in Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, photo shoots in New West, visiting family in Delta, or friends in North Van. So I utilize the SeaBus, SkyTrain, buses and I love the new Canada line – so spacious and light! (My husband actually worked on the lighting for the Richmond portion of the new line!). My book (almost done!) is actually about stretching the dollar so I have a section where I recommend using transit even if just one day a week to cut costs of parking and to help the environment…

As a singer/songwriter I am recording a CD with more general music but I love writing little songs like the one for TransLink with a touch of cheeky humour and sentiment.

Thank you so much! And I really enjoy reading the Buzzer so keep up your good work!

Way to Go by Rachel Alexandra Albang

Way to go, way to go, way to go, way to go, way to go, way to go

Verse 1 and 2:
Don’t like waiting for a bus in the rain, don’t like sitting next to Joe insane
Can’t see through foggy window panes, but I’d be lost without my transit
Don’t like when folk step on my feet, or loudly talk beside my seat
Or sweaty guys who try to meet, but I’d be lost without my transit

Chorus:
I like it when the drivers smile and I sit back and relax for a while
I talk to people I don’t know, go anywhere I wanna go o o
Do you want to take a ride with me, east to west, mountains to sea
Downtown in minutes from New West, Translink is the best

Verse 3:
But I don’t like it when the fares go up, or when the skytrain gets all stuck
Spatial challenges sure can suck, but I’d be lost without my transit

Chorus:
I like it when the drivers smile and I sit back and relax for a while
I talk to people I don’t know, go anywhere I wanna go o o
Do you wanna take a ride with me, let’s try the 99B
Or to the airport in ten or less, Translink is the best…
Way to go, way to go, way to go
Way to go, way to go, way to go
Way to go, way to go, way to go
Best way to go, way to go, way to go

Thanks so much for the song, Rachel!

A group of 33 conductorettes posing in front of the 16th Avenue streetcar at Prior Street barns in 1944. They were at first issued skirts as part of their uniform, but this image shows the transition to pants. Skirts were difficult to manage when climbing the trolley to reset the poles! Photo courtesy of the Coast Mountain Bus Company Archives. Click for a larger version.

Today, I’m pleased to present the story of the conductorettes, a group of 180 women who were the only women operating transit vehicles between 1943 and 1975.

And I’m especially pleased to tell you that this article includes an audio podcast containing interview excerpts from three former conductorettes.

Again, Lisa Codd, the curator at the Burnaby Village Museum, helped me put this article together, based on the research of Lynda Maeve Orr, the Museum’s Assistant Programmer. It’s a continued collaboration to explore transit history and Burnaby’s archival holdings!

Podcast with three former conductorettes: Pearl Wattum, Vilma Westerholm, Edra McLeod

The article continues below, but here you can hear the podcast containing interview excerpts from three former conductorettes: Pearl Wattum, Vilma Westerholm, and Edra McLeod.

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here. You can also subscribe to our podcast via RSS.

The taped interviews with the conductorettes were conducted by the Vancouver Historical Society in 1981 as part of an oral history project, and can be found at the Special Collections at the University of British Columbia. The recordings are used with the kind permission of the Vancouver Historical Society.

The story of the conductorettes: the Second World War pulls women into transit work

An ad for the B.C. Electric Guide positions. Image courtesy of the B.C. Hydro Corporate Library. Click for a larger version.

In 1943, the B.C. Electric Railway hired women to work on transit, to help address the labour shortage during the Second World War.

Besides labour shortages, the B.C. Electric Railway was dealing with an increase in demand for its services. With gas rationing taking place during the war, public transportation was more popular than ever, and the company was pressed to stretch existing resources to the limit.

(For example, the B.C. Electric Employees Magazine reported that the average number of passengers per day increased from 150,000 in January 1938 to over 270,000 by March 1943!)

The women hired during this time were called “conductorettes.” They worked on the streetcars, and only on the Vancouver routes—you wouldn’t find them on the interurbans.

The company also hired women to work as “Electric Guides,” selling pre-sold tickets at busy streetcar stops in Vancouver.

As you may remember from social studies class, this was not a particularly unusual situation: women were hired into non-traditional work during the war years because of the labour shortage, which opened the door for women to work.

Other Canadian and American cities also hired women to work on their streetcar systems as conductors.

Who the company was looking for

The company’s Vancouver Sun advertisement in June 1944 called for the following:

Women aged 25 to 35 to work as streetcar “Conductorettes.” Applicants will be considered on the basis of good appearance and general intelligence.

The B.C. Electric Railway, however, preferred to hire married women between the ages of 25 and 35 – so said the company’s transportation manager, when interviewed by the Vancouver Daily Province in August 1943.

Furthermore, the BC Electric Employees Magazine emphasized that the women couldn’t be married to just anyone — it was preferable to hire wives of men who serving overseas.

The magazine stressed the women would be held to the same requirements as men: their health, vision, sight, and IQ must be up to standard.

Winnifred Trounce was one of these new conductorettes. Interviewed in the employee magazine in October 1943, she explained that her husband was serving overseas, and she was both selling tickets for the BCER and looking after her two young children.

She didn’t expect to be working for long, however. “It’s one thing to help fill the gaps when the men are fighting, but when they return my place will be home with my children,” she said.

However, the taped interviews done with three of the women themselves do paint a different picture from the one expected by the company.

Generally, they didn’t indicate that their motives were patriotism: they just jumped at the opportunity for a good paying job. The women had worked outside of the home before the war, often in jobs that offered little pay or security.

The conductorettes’ work

January 6, 1944 - An unidentified conductorette stands at the entrance to streetcar number 223, her money changer affixed to her belt. Photo courtesy of the Coast Mountain Bus Company archives. Click for a larger version.

The conductorettes did the same work as conductors: taking fares, collecting tickets, calling out stops, and working with the motorman who drove the streetcars.

One of the conductorette’s duties was also moving the trolley pole if required, which sometimes involved scrambling up the side of the trolley if something was out of sorts.

But as the conductorettes were first issued skirts in their uniforms, climbing the trolley could be a real challenge. Eventually, the conductorettes were issued pants as part of their uniform instead.

As conductorette Pearl Wattum explained, “It’s no goddamn place for a woman up the side of a trolley in a skirt.”

(Pearl is one of the women can be heard on tape at UBC Special Collections, and was described by another conductorette as having a “rough mouth and a warm heart.”)

Conductorettes also generally attended to the passengers, handling any issues that would arise on the streetcar.

From time to time there would be drunks on the car, and all the conductorettes interviewed talked about handling them.

Pearl recalled a drunk woman telling her she should be home with her children — she responded by saying, “Well, you’re no Valentine yourself.”

She also recalled a drunk boarding the streetcar and then giving her “all the four letter words in the deck.”

In response, Pearl wound up punching him in the face, knocking him clean out.

“You’da popped him too,” she said. “I’m a big girl, and I had muscles in those days. When he was popped, he was popped.”

Perceptions

A cartoon from Slack Brakes, an unofficial humour book drawn and distributed among transit staff. The book was donated to the Museum by a retired worker named Frank Meal. Click for a larger version.

In their interviews, the women report that people enjoyed them being there. During the war effort, people were accustomed to seeing women in unorthodox fields, due to the shortage of men.

“All the girl drivers they were really super girl drivers, they really were,” said Vilma Westerholm, another of the former conductorettes interviewed in 1981. “And the general public liked them very much.”

But while the women reported few problems working with the men at B.C. Electric, other artifacts from the time indicate that wasn’t always the case.

This comic is just one mild example showing how the men made fun of the conductorettes. It was part of a joke booklet called Slack Brakes, drawn and distributed among the workers (and definitely not an official company publication).

Far more explicit cartoons were in the book too, making lewd reference to their sexuality.

As Lisa Codd, the curator at the Museum, describes:

“The cartoons clearly show a prejudice that women (especially attractive women!) are disruptive in the workplace. While we can see the cartoons as “all in good fun” they do clearly illustrate that the women were viewed differently than men who performed the work. The women interviewed don’t report much problem with sexism among passengers or workers, but the cartoons suggest they still weren’t viewed as just ‘one of the guys.’”

What happened after the war?

Unusually, the conductorettes were not let go after the Second World War came to an end. And they actually kept their jobs because they had full membership in the union.

“They thought they would try and get us off after the war,” said Vilma Westerholm in her interview. “But the union said ‘No, they stuck when you needed them, so why shouldn’t they keep their jobs? The general public likes them.’ So we stayed.”

From the start, the union had insisted on the women having full membership from the start, with the same rights, responsibilities, and pay as men.

Making them full union members was intended to keep wages high and preserve men’s jobs after the war.

When women first began working on the streetcars, the union was concerned this would bring their wages down—which typically happened when women entered male fields.

They also worried that the presence of lower-paid women would threaten the jobs of men returning from overseas. The company would just hire more women at lower cost after the war.

And when the war came to an end, as Vilma says, the union supported the women conductors when they fought to have their seniority recognized by the company.

With a shortage of men after the war, B.C. Electric kept the women on, though many did choose to leave when their husbands returned.

The women, however, were grandfathered into the organization—no new women would be hired, but the women already employed could continue.

Vilma was one of the women who stayed on, and here’s what she said about that.

“There were a lot of girls on during the war, but when their husbands came back a lot of them stopped. They didn’t want to go on the buses. Well, some of them, I don’t know, they didn’t seem to care about driving buses. Being by themselves.

But I was waiting for that, because I loved driving. I thought gee that’s just great. Because you’re more controlled, you have control of it, you don’t have to worry about what the motorman’s going to say. You’re on your own and as long as you did your work, no one bothered you.”

Rails to rubber

The next challenge came when the company went to one-man streetcar operation – with a motorman who did the job of both the conductors and the motormen – driving the car and collecting the fares.

In the 1950s, the company combined the seniority lists, allowing conductors to become motormen and be called out on shifts according to seniority. Women were given the option of learning to drive or being let go.

Edra McLeod, one of the women interviewed about her work as a conductorette in 1981, describes that Pearl Wattum, their shop steward, told them all to get out there and drive.

Thirty women did learn to drive the streetcars, but the women had to prove themselves again when the streetcars were phased out and replaced with buses. Licensing was provided in Victoria, and Victoria had to give special approval to allow women to drive buses.

By the 1970s, there were only two women left driving buses in Vancouver: Edra McLeod and Vilma Westerholm.

Then in 1975, the company, now part of B.C. Hydro, finally began hiring women. The former conductorettes were even used as an example of women who worked.

Vilma remembered it well. “During the last year I was there, or the year before last, the new girl came on, and she trained with me, and she was the first one of the new bunch,” she said.

Vilma spent 32 years and 3 months working for transit before she retired in 1976. Edra retired the next year, after 31 years and 9 months on the job.

Reflections

Looking back, it’s easy to see that the conductorettes’ work blazed a trail for women working after them. By capably taking on this work, the women proved they could do just as much as men.

Yet the conductorettes didn’t necessarily feel they were trailblazers. The three interviewed said they took the jobs for the pay—none had thought directly about the later implications of their work for women at large.

For example, when asked why she stayed on for 28 years, Pearl Wattum replied that, “I liked it. And the money was good. I had to pay the rent. As I say I wasn’t married in those days, and it was an income.”

Just Edra McLeod seemed to recognize, with some hesitation, that her work had made a difference to people.

“[My granddaughter]came out the last day for a ride in the summer,” Edra said in her interview. “And she said that her grandmother is a living legend, someone told her this.” She then let out a laugh.

Where are they now?

The list of conductorette names from their 1959 reunion. Photo courtesy of the Burnaby Village Museum. Click for a larger version.

The cover of the 1959 reunion program. Courtesy of the Burnaby Village Museum. Click for a larger version.

To be quite honest, we don’t know where a lot of the conductorettes ended up.

Lisa has provided the program from their 1959 reunion, which features a list of all of their names – please do have a look and let us know if you know any of them.

Lisa has showcased the conductorettes’ story in exhibits before, and would love to get in touch! She can be contacted at lisa.codd@burnaby.ca

Want more history?

Thank you again to curator Lisa Codd for all her help with this article! Check out our earlier collaborations, exploring the history of the interurbans, in the Transit History category.

Many thanks to the B.C. Hydro Corporate Library for letting us share their image on the blog.

As well, the audio excerpts are provided thanks to the great kindness of the Vancouver Historical Society, and the research help of UBC Libraries’ Rare Books and Special Collections branch. If you’d like to look up the interviews yourself, please do search the UBC library records for the terms “Pearl Berrington,” “Edra McLeod” and “Vilma Westerholm”.

The restored interurban tram at the Burnaby Village Museum!

And of course, visit the Burnaby Village Museum for more history treats! Again, it’s is an open-air museum that recreates life in 1920s Burnaby. It’s open during the summer, and presents a Haunted Village from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. during October 28 to 30 for Halloween. (Check the museum’s website for admission costs and more!)

For more on local transit history, take a look at the books of Henry Ewert – he’s a local historian who has written books such as The Story of the B.C. Electric Railway, Vancouver’s Glory Years: Public Transit, 1890-1915, Victoria’s Streetcar Era, and The Perfect Little Street Car System: From Ferry to Mountain in North Vancouver, 1906-1947.

You can also try TRAMS, the Transit Museum Society, who run a real-life restored streetcar on the Downtown Historic Railway. And B.C. Hydro’s Power Pioneers association runs a great history website that includes info on streetcars.

And you can’t beat Chuck Davis for more regional history – check out his website, and his terrific series in Regarding Place magazine called A Year in Five Minutes, which showcases stories from each year in Lower Mainland history.

Hope you enjoyed this look back at transit history!

Angus McIntyre celebrated 40 years as a bus driver on Tuesday, August 25, 2009.

Transit operator Angus McIntyre celebrated 40 years of driving Vancouver buses on Tuesday, August 25!

Keith Daubenspeck (Seattle Transit driver), Angus McIntyre and Brian Kelly about to head out for a fan trip with Brill trolleybus 2031 at Oakridge Transit Centre. (Photo by Wally Young circa 1970.)

On that very day, Angus started with B.C. Hydro in 1969. To mark the occasion, he pulled out his 1969 B.C. Hydro driver’s uniform (it still fits!) and the classic coin changer that all drivers used back then.

Several media outlets came out to capture Angus’s moment (here’s a story from the Province), and a few friends and longtime riders also came out to cheer Angus on. He’s a great guy and a longtime member of the Transit Museum Society (TRAMS) so lots of people were happy to see him reach this milestone!

I did a short podcast with Angus to talk about his 40th anniversary as a driver.

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here. You can also subscribe to our podcast via RSS, so this and all future podcasts will download straight into iTunes or your RSS reader.

Angus also sent along an article he wrote for the CAW local 111 newsletter Frontline, which I’ve reprinted with his permission below. It talks about his experience as an operator in 1969, and how coin changers worked!

Three Lots of Tokens Please

Recollections of Angus McIntyre -  #7302

I decided to write this piece when I realised that there is but a handful of drivers still driving who actually handled money and tokens on our buses.

In July of 1969 I applied to be a bus driver with B.C. Hydro, just after the first man walked on the Moon. The interviews followed quickly, and after the trainability and medical I was accepted. My final interviewer told me he was pleased with everything, except that he felt I was shy by nature and might have trouble throwing drunks off the bus! Radios were over 20 years in the future, and it was often hard to find a working pay phone. Not only were we expected to maintain order, but each trainee had to climb up the folding steps onto the roof of a Brill trolley, and walk down a pole that was straight up in the air and hook it under the pole hooks. We were also told to take hold of the trolley pole and contact the trolley wire with it to show the pole was insulated! Using caution, we were expected to keep trolley service running. Training was four weeks, with no air brake course. Instead we had a Chauffeur’s “A” licence, with a new badge issued each year. This badge had to be visible to the passengers.

At that time Hydro hired one in ten applicants, a ratio that still holds today. Standards were not as stringent, and one man in my class of six confided to me later that he had not finished elementary school, and was functionally illiterate. I was the youngest at 21, and he was the oldest in his early forties. We were paired for training. He had operated streetcars, trolley buses and subways in Toronto for 12 years, and knew more about the job than any of us. He said he did not answer a single question on the IQ test, but did well on the trainability test.

A screenshot from a 1965 CBC documentary on a day in the life of a bus driver. See the full video at the CAW 111 website.

Oakridge Transit Centre was virtually unaltered from when built in 1948. Smoking was permitted everywhere, and a large exhaust fan in the bullpen attempted to clear the air. The scenes in “A Day in the Life of a Bus Driver” showed it all. The north wall had movable boards with all the running times posted on blueprints – we had to copy down our own running times from these. All 6 trainees were taken in on old Brill diesel bus down to the booking office at the Police Station where we were fingerprinted by a burly police constable. We were bonded to carry from $120 to $150 of the Company’s money to sell tokens and make change. At OTC we did paperwork, and then went to the bullpen where five cashiers’ wickets lined the south wall. These were open 23 1/2 hours every day. We could cash our paycheque with a cashier, and on payday the Street Railwaymen’s Credit Union (STRY) had an office open in the basement of OTC. We were each issued $120 in rolls of tokens and coins in a cloth banker’s bag. Keep in mind that this would be close to $1,200 today. We also had to be sure to have a book of “Refund Slips” with us.  We could also cash in with the cashiers at the downtown bus depot on Dunsmuir Street.  Once out of training we earned $3.40 an hour.

We were advised that a metal tackle box from Army and Navy would be suitable. These had tilt-up trays for tokens and coins, and a space at the bottom for the changer, maps, etc. Some drivers had homemade boxes, ammunition cans or even briefcases. We were provided with stick-on Hydro symbols, and numbers to accessorise our boxes. My first seniority number was 3281. A few senior operators wore their changers on their belts, and I remember Marie, a streetcar conductorette from World War II who drove the STANLEY PARK – POWELL – NANAIMO evenings. She wore her changer on her belt and you could hear her coming before you saw her.

Homework involved using a saucer as a change dish and having someone ask you for change or tokens so you could get used to using a changer and doing mental calculations. It was necessary to learn how to load the changer as you drove the bus. This was accomplished by steering the bus with your left hand, and while watching traffic you took a handful of tokens or coins and carefully let them slide into the top of the barrel. The Granville Street Bridge, a red light or a train at a railway crossing was another opportunity to do this.. Once out with line instructors, if you could not refill the changer fast enough, they would help out. If you ran out of a certain coin or token, you would stop another bus and buy what you needed from that operator. It took some skill to decide what you needed for a certain run. Monday mornings were challenging because people would buy a week’s supply or more of tokens. In two stops both “B” token barrels could be drained, and as you drove to the next stop you reloaded. Some people bought a full roll for $9.00. Monthly passes did not exist.  Many people bought tokens since you saved a nickel on 4 fares, half the price of a coffee!

Angus being photographed by The Province. He's holding the brown metal tackle box he used in the 1970s, and the coin changer sits in front of the box.

We were all issued a punch with a unique punch mark that allowed you to be traced if there was a transfer dispute. If you picked up on the road, some drivers would leave you only 3 of “their” punched transfers. You also had to memorise the codes for punching transfers: D for MAIN-ROBSON, X for STANLEY PARK – POWELL, etc

Fares:
Student “A” tokens – 10 for $1.00
Adult “B” tokens – 4 for 75 cents
Child “C” tokens – 4 for 30 cents
Cash fare – adult – 20 cents
Cash fare – students – 15 cents
Cash fare – children – 10 cents

Grant Money Meter fare boxes annunciated the coins and tokens thusly:
1 cent – BUZZ
5 cents – BONG
10 cents – BONG-BONG
25 cents – BING-BING
“A” token – BING
“B” token – BRRRINGGGG
“C” token – no sound. These were of blue plastic the size of poker chips and had to be emptied manually.

You could ask a cashier for “three bags of chips” to get “C” tokens. When cashing in you had to be sure that all the bills faced the same way. On a busy run you could start with 4 quarters, and count out 250 by the end of the shift. If you did a midrun on a #9, you were paid travel time from OTC to Broadway and Oak, and back to OTC to cash in.

One sound you did not want to hear was a triple BING-BING. This meant that someone had put three quarters for 4 tokens into the fare box instead of in the change dish. We would issue 4 tokens, get a refund slip, punch out the appropriate amount, and then the passenger would put his name and address on it. When you cashed in you handed the slip to a cashier who gave you back the 75 cents. We were encouraged to have all transactions conducted through the change dish. It was felt there was less chance of dropping coins that way.

Needless to say, with handling all this money, Hydro had a group of “Company Representatives” to oversee our duties with their money (we called them Spotters). From anywhere in the bus a spotter could determine how much money was deposited by the BINGS and BONGS. I was written up for letting someone on for 15 cents who the spotter felt should have paid an adult fare.

Hydro had the right to check your change fund at any time to be sure the full amount was there. This might be done on the day before payday, and whatever the driver was short had to be deducted from future paycheques.  I was once checked by the “Popsicle Stick” supervisor at Broadway and Granville. He had a set of Popsicle sticks with marks on them to show how much was in each barrel of the changer he dipped. He would quickly see how much you had in your changer, count up rolls of tokens and coins, view wads of one and two dollar bills, and say, “That’s fine. Go ahead.” You could even use your own money if necessary as long as it came to $120.

Interjection: Comments from Brian Kelly, another longtime bus driver

Anyway, a few other comments on changers. Kids just for fun, on school trippers, or those who wanted to cheat dropped in handfuls of pennies and the old Grant farebox would buzz forever. You would always have an issue with someone who put in 18 pennies for a 20 cent fare. Do you demand the other 2 cents, put them off, or….?

Sometimes the damn thing would jam up, then you had to reach down and push the button to clear it, or open the escape flap at the top. When you cleared it the wheel would spin round and round with a ‘ching..ching..ching..ching’ sound. Or, you’d give it a thump or a kick to get it going.

There were times when supervisors would walk into the bullpen and randomly select a number of drivers. “You, you, and you.. changer count, come with us” and they’d take you into the operations office and count it all out. One trick was to say to them “ I’ll be there right away, just have to hit the can first” then you’d run into the washroom and say to another driver “Quick, give me a roll of tokens..”  I remember doing that one time, and the supervisor, old Eric Longhurst, said to me as he was counting “this is an interesting roll of tokens you have here, I put this little pen mark on it about three operators back….”

Perhaps the biggest curse was spending out of it. You’d pull up in front of a coffee shop with only seconds to spare, and instead of fishing for your wallet you’d pop a few coins out of the changer and buy your coffee. Do this too often and next thing you know your changer is way down. You didn’t want to be on a Broadway, GV, DK, or MR if your changer was too short as you were constantly buying change off other buses. Worst off all you’d go home on payday with your $175 pay cheque and have to tell your spouse you owed $50 of it to the changer……. It wasn’t only the supervisors on your case then…..

I recall signing one sheet on a Broadway on a Saturday day shift [must have been high at the time] as a break from my SPN owls. I had to go into the office and request an additional $50 float as the $120 wouldn’t do it for you. You were allowed to do this on major routes, but you had to sign for it and reconcile at each signup.

I had the blue tackle box, still have it in fact, with a Hydro sticker and my number on it. I used to keep a lock through the hasp. I recall one horrible day I was taking a trolley out on a tripper, went and got the coach set up, then realized to my horror I’d left the key at home! I had to move the coach ahead and pull the poles so others behind me could get out, then run like Hell to the garage where I got a mechanic to cut the lock off. He put it on his bench and cut it off, I yelled thanks and grabbed it by the handle on the lid to run back to my coach. The box flew open, and I had coins, rolls of coins, etc. rolling all over the garage floor, under buses, into the pits, etc.  What a catastrophe. The mechanics helped me pick up what they could but I lost quite a bit too, I didn’t have time to go into pits or crawl under buses, I was already late out.

What memories, eh? Big Lou bending seats back so he’d fit….old Bill White with a snootful playing his trumpet in the bullpen at night…Murray Lamont grabbing your hat and running away….Pat Begley teasing the girls in the downstairs cafeteria….and remember that downstairs cafeteria? Open all hours, you’d go in after an owl for a quick coffee, say 2AM or so,  and the place was full of police, firemen, garbage truck drivers, cabbies, all the night workers from all over the city, it was one of the only places to go. You’d chat with one of the very senior drivers who always worked the two service buses, sometimes I’d even take one home.

[End Brian Kelly's comments.]

Continuing on with Angus’s recollections….

While most passengers were reasonable, of course there were a few who were not. I recall pulling into the E/B Hastings and Abbott stop at Woodward’s that was always very busy. The first man through the door asked for change for a $5.00 bill. I said, “Do you have anything smaller?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. From all the dimes and nickels he could have used to pay the fare he plucked out a quarter and dropped it into the dish for change. We bit our tongues at moments like that. A special treat lay in store for some people who would get on and slap the quarter in the change dish and growl “Change” or say nothing. We would give them two dimes for the fare, and then dribble five pennies in the change dish. Sometimes this had unexpected results – a passenger who refused to accept it would just leave it for you. (Hope there is no “spotter” on here!)

A malfunctioning changer was serious – it either short-changed the driver or the passenger. I quickly discovered my Johnson changer was giving 6 “A” tokens at a time instead of 5, so I took it into the operations office on the main floor at OTC. At this time there were 2 operations supervisors, Lloyd Easler with A-K, and Eric Longhurst had L-Z, a secretary for each and a general office secretary. This small space was virtually unaltered from 1948, with the clatter of manual typewriters, carbon paper copies, file cabinets, etc. Everyone brought their changer in to Eva, a secretary who was also the changer technician. I recall Eva as a very friendly lady who had been with the company many years – she’d seen it all.

A few words about the problem, and she would open her desk drawer and pull out an array of tools: needle nose pliers, screwdrivers, rubber mallet, and line them up on her desk. She then tested the changer and, and attempted to solve the problem by re-arranging the interchangeable spacers at the bottom of the “A” barrel. After no success at this, she said, “I’ll put on a new barrel.” She pried a lock pin over, stood up and proceeded to hammer the offending barrel on the edge of her desk to force it to slide off the changer assembly. The desktop bore evidence of many previous operations like this. Once removed, a new barrel was hammered into place, tested and passed. The changer never malfunctioned again.

Towards the end of changers some internal thefts took place. A female operator lost 5 rolls of dimes at a cashier’s window when she was distracted for a moment. Another driver left his cash box unattended at one end of the bullpen to go and get a route number for the rear  window, and when he came back it was gone. A dewirement could be a problem – if you did not take your cash box with you could be the victim of a “grab and run” theft. In all these cases you had to make up the loss yourself. If a robbery took place in front of witnesses, you were compensated by the Company. In one case a driver’s friend pulled off a planned robbery with witnesses, but the driver was found out and he no longer had a job. One night the run in front of me was robbed at Stanley Park Loop, and on the next trip the run behind was robbed. As the frequency of such events increased, it was inevitable that Exact Fare was soon to arrive.

Most trolley routes had a 2 minute headway at 5:00 pm. The rush hour was shorter but more intense then. Imagine an eight hour shift on a BROADWAY or  GRANVILLE/VICTORIA (GV), up to 1,000 passengers, manual steering with heavy pedals, bench seat, no right hand mirror, fare box tinkling madly away, and add to this a non-stop demand for tokens, change and Information. At age 22 I remember staggering off the bus at the end of a shift some days in a state of mild shock. If your thumb or arm was starting to go numb, you were told, “You’ll get used to it!” Carpel Tunnel Syndrome had yet to appear in the dictionary.

By early 1970 many American cities had already converted their transit systems to “Exact Fare”. Thefts and other issues led B.C. Hydro to announce it would be Canada’s first Exact Fare city, to start 1 April, 1970. Hydro started a major media campaign, and at the end of March I sold my last tokens at Cordova and Carrall, and changed my last quarter at Nanaimo and Charles and returned to the garage. At OTC there was a celebratory mood among the drivers that our job was about to improve greatly. One driver became so emotional that he emptied his cash box, placed it in front of the rear duals of an old Brill trolley, drove over it and pinned the flattened remains over the cashiers wickets in the bull pen with a prominent sign that read:  SO LONG F****** CHANGERS!

With the arrival of Exact Fare the adult fare increased to 25 cents, with no tokens available. It would be some years before monthly passes appeared. The cashiers’ wickets remained open for a time after 1 April because of course we all had to return the change fund to the company, for which we received a hand–written receipt. I still have mine. Hydro also had to decide what to do with 1,200 changers they owned, and offered to sell them back to the drivers at $5.00 or $2.00, depending on age.  A surprising number of us who cursed and swore at the things actually bought them back.

Running times remained unchanged for at least one sheet, but it soon became apparent that we would no longer have 14 minutes from Cambie and 41st to Broadway. Travel time to and from OTC for road reliefs at the same location soon disappeared. Change dishes were removed over the next few weeks, though occasionally a passenger would come up the steps with a dollar bill and my hand would lift up in an automatic reflex to the changer that was no longer there! It was really an ingrained part of the job.

On rare, and I do mean rare occasions a passenger, often young, would board without any money. This was a genuine situation, and we accommodated them with a transfer. An adult who boarded with no fare or explanation was considered a serious problem, so much so that poles were pulled, service stopped, supervisors and even police attended to deal with the matter. It was not in peoples’ mindset then that they could ever board a bus and not pay. Don’t ask me to comment on where we are today!

Even though I only handled money for 7 months, it was an experience I’ll never forget. I felt fortunate to be part of the end of an era in Vancouver transit history.

A footnote on uniforms:

Angus in full uniform with the 7 Nanaimo Station trolley.

Our uniforms were all made to measure. The jackets were navy blue military-style Eisenhauer “Ike” in navy blue. We wore pale blue shirts that were 100% cotton and had to be ironed. We had heavy dark grey wool/mix slacks that were warm in winter and Hell in summer (No shorts until 1991?) Black or brown shoes only, no flashy socks. Tie compulsory until Daylight Savings Time, and could be removed only with a short sleeved shirt, no jacket. Put on the jacket, put on the tie. You could wear a long sleeved shirt in the summer, but the tie was compulsory. You were allowed to undo the top button, loosen the tie and roll up the sleeves, but not above the elbow. No sweaters except for sleeveless. One winter day I arrived at Broadway and Alma on a #9, and was met by a supervisor. My clip-on tie had fallen off somewhere and was missing. He said, “If you can’t get a tie we’ll have to take you off the road!” He then asked where I lived, and I told him at 10th and Spruce. As this was right on the line, he said leave 5 minutes early and go home and get a tie. I did just that, and he waved to me at Cambie St. when he saw I was now “properly dressed”. Needless to say there were no variances to be had when it came to uniforms.

As mentioned yesterday, the first of the 48 new SkyTrain cars started running on the system this morning, and I got to jump on for its first trip!

Above is a video of the two-car train #306 arriving at Edmonds Station — its first stop ever on the system. (You can see the cameramen from CTV and Global there, so you might certainly see more footage on TV tonight.)

The train will definitely be in service for the next week or so, and remember, you’re all welcome on board! It’s currently in an “endurance running” phase, which means it must complete 2000 kilometres of regular service while meeting certain criteria (that’s the equivalent of about one week of service). A critical part of this phase involves passengers boarding and disembarking the trains, so go ahead and get on it!

Okay, now above you’ll find a short podcast with some rider reactions to the new car. Just thought I’d capture a few first day thoughts!

And after the jump, there’s some more photos and video. I’ll keep it short, since I’m sure you guys will come up with way more great shots and video too — and please do send them my way!

The first junior SkyTrain pilots aboard train #306! In the early part of the ride, the train had more SkyTrain and TransLink people onboard than actual passengers -- the kids above were a few of the lucky riders!

These seats on the train fold up to allow room for wheelchairs and strollers.

A few SkyTrain attendants took a moment to examine the new maps.

A cyclist brought his bike on board! The new configuration allows much more room for bikes.

Very important: the new SkyTrain has Buzzer boxes :D

Now here’s a video of the light-up map flashing for the Metrotown stop.

Here’s the door lights in operation. Flashing when the doors close!

Since a lot of us were TransLink/SkyTrain/media staff, we were allowed to stay on the SkyTrain as it changed direction at Waterfront Station. Here’s the view coming in from the train yard, approaching the eastbound platform. Look at all the people taking pictures!

I had to hop off the train at Metrotown and go back to work, but that gave me one last opportunity to capture the new train leaving the station. There’s the LED display on the front, saying King George!

If you haven’t seen them already, here are the past Buzzer blog posts on the new trains:

• Improved interiors for the new SkyTrain cars
• The first of the new SkyTrain cars has arrived!

As you may have heard in the podcast, I also ran into Bryan from The Transit Site on the train, so watch his site for more photos & video too.

And if you catch a ride on the new cars, please feel free to share your experience in the comments! Again, your photos and videos of the new car are more than welcome too :)

For I Love Transit Week, I’m happy to share a contribution from Dave Olson, who is a prolific and talented local writer, podcaster, poet, Canucks superfan, and much more. You can find all of his work at uncleweed.net — and here’s some direct links to his blog, notebook, Twitter, and three podcasts: Postcard from Gravelly Beach, Choogle On, and Canucks Outsider.

So without further ado, here is “Rolling to the End of the Line,” an essay about transit by Dave Thorvald Olson.

P.S. Dave has also put together a related podcast here, tracking his transit trip from North Vancouver to Kitsilano (it’s not the same text as this essay, btw):

Escape

Dave

Brother Bob and I would mimic the airhorns on the way to elementary school – same as we’d do for truckers and fire trucks, pulling the string down, hoping the bus driver would notice and honk. Seemed like a blast to me, tooling along in those big buses, filled with interesting people coming and going. I’d trace routes around Vancouver maps, then memorized provinces, states and countries – imagining myself at the wheel of some kind of bus. My 4th grade science fair exhibit extolled the wonders of Trolley Transit, complete with the proposed ALRT route traced off in felt pen on a GVRD map plus a stack of Buzzers to give away.

Later, transit became my escape. In the early 80s Vancouver was growing up – so much newness everywhere it seemed, except in my neighbourhood. So buddy Brad and I would skip out errr … wait until after … school and hop the 312 or 316. We’d roll down Kingsway, over an hour all told, to tromp down Granville to Odyssey Imports for records or Black Market for t-shirts. Then maybe skateboard over to that crazy new domed stadium place and hang out on the steps, trying to imagine would Vancouver would look like in 20 years. Then warm up in the law courts or the Vancouver Art Gallery before hopping a bus back home to the ‘burbs.

Exploration

My forays stretched later into night and ventured further afield – wherever there was an all-ages punk show or a sweet girl with busy parents, I’d find a bus route – navigating to shows at the York Theater on Commercial Drive or tracking down some old church or community hall on some route I’d never heard of charted out in a battered paper schedule. I remember missing the last bus to Surrey from downtown and hoofing all the way down Hastings to the PNE to catch another – a long walk in the cold Chuck Taylors before ending up at Whalley Exchange in the wee hours.

Dave

In 1986, Vancouver changed. A lot. The SkyTrain (or Airbus as I preferred) was running for a few years to New West. We’d hop a #319 and whisk downtown on the ALRT in 22 scant minutes for the barrage of international events in shiny teal buildings. Suddenly Vancouver was modern and everyone came to watch. I’d seen most all of Vancouver from Ambleside to Crescent Beach by then, so I got my own bus – a VW camper bus – and set off travelling.

Creation

Twenty-two countries later and countless bus, trains, trolley and trams rides later, I returned and moved high up Lynn Valley – “Just ride the 210 ‘til the driver turns off the engine,” are the instructions to visiting friends. Living on the Baden-Powell trail also means I ride transit – a lot. Currently to Kitsilano – that’s two bridges of patience. But now, I am more prepared – I strap on oversized headphones, grab iPhone for live Twitter updates, snacks in pocket, and travel mug with tasty bevvie. Importantly, a Moleskine notebook, inky pens and an audio recorder in my lunch sack allow me use transit as a creative space.

The Crazy Canucks podcast crew, on the back of a bus! (Dave

Creation works best aboard the Seabus – the views stunning, you always get a seat, and if you are waiting, its your fault as the Seabus boasts punctuality the Germans would envy – indeed, “Otto and the Beav” rarely stumble whither windstorms or traffic jams (digression: i was hoping for “Sockeye” rather than “Breeze” for the third vessel’s name).

On my commute and weekend excursions, I mix up the routes for exploration and documenting the curious. I look to old-timers who rode routes toting heavy film cameras just to document the ordinary goings-on on 1930s Vancouver for inspiration. What I see goes into notebooks, snapshots, video clips and audio podcasts – sometime in the back seat recording a Canucks Outsider podcast, riding the SkyTrain end to end for a Choogle on podcast or documenting the SeaBus on Car-free day. Maybe writing freeverse and Twitter updates describing the scenes of life from the transit journey then co-mingling the spectacular and mundane of metropolitan Vangroovy into literary dim sum.

I love you, you’re perfect, now change

Aboard these cooperative transport pods are keys to a civil society – you mingle with strangers, you guess their stories, you accidentally eavesdrop on conversations, or hope for the character who amuses you to come on board. Tolerance and translucency abound onboard. For me, I roll with a load of billeted foreign exchange student chattering away in Portuguese, Japanese or practicing English. You begin to notice the same people and sometimes recognize your bus buddies at a store or a bar as “ahhh it’s that guy from the 228″. At least I do.

I tell myself I am helping reduce greenhouse gases and getting one more car of the road, but it ain’t always easy keeping it that way. Like any relationship, me and transit have rifts and differences – ask me about my issues another time. Despite my policy conundrums, I ride because efficient transportation is key to a pleasing living experience for more of us. So the escape, exploration, creative space, collective experience and chance encounters still get me running down the block – with a warm beverage, giant headphones and notebook – to hop aboard, flash my two-zone pass, and say “hello” to the driver while heading for the good seat in the back.

The Buzzer blog podcast is back!

This time, I’ve got the story behind the SkyTrain chime for you to hear. Ian Graham, operations planner for SkyTrain, talks all about how the chime was recorded, why we ended up with that particular sound, and who in the world actually played the chime.

Ian Graham, operations planner for SkyTrain

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here. You can also subscribe to our podcast via RSS, so this audio file will download straight into iTunes or your RSS reader, and you’ll get all the future Buzzer podcasts by refreshing your subscription.

(And seriously, would you have guessed the SkyTrain chime was recorded at the same studio where Bryan Adams and AC/DC laid down albums?)

You can also listen to our previous podcasts:

• Podcast 3: An interview with John Abou-Samra, the bus driver with a trivia contest
• Podcast 2: An interview with the voice of the SkyTrain
• Podcast 1: An interview with the voice of the SeaBus

Keep watching the blog for more podcasts! And if you have suggestions for something you’d like to hear, please feel free to let me know!

Listen to the trivia contest that John Abou-Samra runs on his trolley bus, plus an interview with John, all in the third podcast from the Buzzer blog!

Who is John Abou-Samra? John is a trolley bus driver who holds a trivia contest on his bus during the morning and afternoon rush hours. He gives away chocolate bars to the lucky winners who correctly answer his challenging trivia questions, and for many riders, his contest has become a wonderful part of their daily routines.

He’s been featured in articles in the Province and the Sun, and CTV News did a story on him this past summer. In this podcast, you’ll hear John’s trivia contest, plus an interview about how he came to do the contest and more. (You can also check out the article on John in the Oct. 10 Buzzer for more!)

John Abou-Samra

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here. You can also subscribe to our podcast via RSS, so this audio file will download straight into iTunes or your RSS reader, and you’ll get all the future Buzzer podcasts by refreshing your subscription.

You can also listen to our previous podcasts:

• Podcast 2: An interview with the voice of the SkyTrain
• Podcast 1: An interview with the voice of the SeaBus

Keep watching the blog for more podcasts! And if you have suggestions for a podcast you’d like to hear, please feel free to let me know!

Hear the voice of the SkyTrain in our second Buzzer blog podcast!

So if you didn’t know, the voice announcing the stations on our SkyTrain comes from an actual person. That person is Laureen Regan, president of Regan Productions in Calgary, who recorded the announcements for the launch of the Millennium Line. In this interview, I ask Laureen to do a few of the station announcements, how she got into the job, and whether she’s the voice of any other train systems. (You can also check out the article on Laureen in the Oct. 10 Buzzer for more!)

Laureen Regan

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here. You can also subscribe to our podcast via RSS, so this audio file will download straight into iTunes or your RSS reader, and you’ll get all the future Buzzer podcasts by refreshing your subscription.

You can also listen to our first podcast, an interview with the voice of the SeaBus, Rik Kiviaho.

Keep watching the blog too – the remaining podcast on John Abou-Samra will be posted in the coming week!

(Some of you might be asking “What’s a podcast?” Well, a podcast is a lot like radio-on-demand. Podcasting Alley has a good definition of podcasting, and Wikipedia has info too. But for our purposes, it means the Buzzer can bring you radio-quality sound stories in files you can download — and this, believe it or not, is a really exciting thing.)

Rik Kiviaho, the voice behind the SeaBus safety announcement

Anyway, our very first podcast is devoted to the voice behind the SeaBus. You know the voice: it’s the one that gives the SeaBus safety announcement at every sailing. I talk to Rik Kiviaho, the mystery man behind the announcement, about how he got roped into the job, and much more. (You can also check out the article on Rik in the Oct. 10 Buzzer for more!)

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above, or download the mp3 here. You can also subscribe to our podcast via RSS, so this audio file will download straight into iTunes or your RSS reader, and you’ll get all the future Buzzer podcasts by refreshing your subscription.

And keep watching the blog – the remaining podcasts on the voice of the SkyTrain and on John Abou-Samra will be posted in the coming weeks.