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Friday fun post: favourite Canada Line station?

Friday fun post: favourite Canada Line station?

If you like, skip to the end of this post to take the Canada Line station poll!

Answer to last week’s post: what those SeaBus tokens are

Back side of the SeaBus token
Back side of the SeaBus token

Two weeks ago I asked you what these 1979 gold SeaBus tokens were.

A big thanks to Derek Cheung, Rob Chew,, John Wollenzin, and the folks at SeaBus again for providing us with the answer!

These tokens were used in the original SeaBus ticket machines, launched in 1977 at the start of service and kept around until SkyTrain launched in late 1985. Here’s how John described it:

The tickets were very low tech indeed. Essentially, you fed the machine coins and it made an impression of the coin on the ticket itself. The tokens allowed you to pay your fare quickly with a single coin and end up with a nice small ticket with a single coin imprint. As you can imagine, if you put a lot of coins into the machine, you could get a long ticket! That paper used was a primitive type of thermal paper that did not stand up well to time. Anybody who has an original ticket in their collection would have had to take careful steps to preserve it all these years.

The original SeaBus ticket machine.
The original SeaBus ticket machine.

The very kind Rob Chew sent in a picture of the machine, scanned from page 129 of Transit in British Columbia: The First Hundred Years by Brian Kelly.

However, you could use coins in the machines, and longtime SeaBus staff could only vaguely remember why we had these tokens in particular.

I vaguely remember there was talk that passengers could buy them from retailers and use them in the old Video-Mat ticket machines we had. The hope was that they’d catch on and there would then be less wear and tear on the machines. Needless to say, they never caught on! All the employees were given a “Commemorative Set.”

This week: what’s your favourite Canada Line station?

Back to polls for the first week of Canada Line operation!

This seemed appropriate since we just launched the Canada Line. Feel free to explain why you like a particular station in the comments!

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