The Drunk Busdriver

Years ago, I was taking the 10 Wolseley downtown to my friend's house who lived on Kennedy near York. Everyone else got off the bus at Osborne, so it was just me and the busdriver. For those who have caught the 10 downtown, you will know that the bus will sometimes sit at the stop by the Legislature for a few minutes to catch up to the schedule or take a break. So there I am, sitting alone on the bus...

20 minutes go by and the whole time I'm thinking, "Geez, I should have just walked! It's only two stops away", but then I'd think that any second now he's going to pull away so I might as well stay on the bus. But then another 10 minutes went by, I had it and got off.

I walked along the bus route to my friend's place and sure enough, I'm not a block away and the bus passes me! But what makes this story interesting is when I turned the corner on to York I was shocked to see that the bus had missed the turn onto Vaughn and crashed into an office building! I ran to see if the bus driver was ok and when I got to the window, he was in a daze. He then grabbed a big bottle of whiskey, whipped his head back and started chugging the whole bottle of booze!

This was before I had a cellphone, so I didn't call it in but I figured this busdriver would be in enough shit already when they find him drunk behind the wheel, crashed into a building.

And for the record, this guy was not fired - I saw him a month later driving the 10 and the same thing happened that he was just sitting at a stop and not moving. This time he stunk like rotten fish. When I got off the bus after I had enough of waiting for him to move, I walked to the front to see what he was doing and he was taping pictures of random people and kids to the window beside him.

The Polite Public Pooper

Here is a disgusting story from Randy... I think the transit is slowly becoming the answer to the lack of public toilets.

I was heading back downtown from Kildonan Place on a 47, doing some reading, listening to some music, and paying not much attention to anyone else. Before we even got to Stapon, I smelled a stench so foul as to make it impossible to concentrate on my book.

I started looking around and there was a very dirty man wearing a two ripped coats and a few pairs of ripped pants. I had some serious doubts that he could be throwing off such a smell as to make my eyes water on the other end of the bus, so I did my best to ignore the smell.

A few stops later, the suspect rang the bell and got off of the bus, carrying a plastic bag full of his own shit. He had managed, while sitting almost directly next to the driver, to pull his pants down, shit in a plastic bag, pull his pants back up, and neatly tie the handles together.

When I got off of the bus, there was no evidence of any spillage. Clearly, this man has had significant practice at shitting in plastic bags on moving vehicles.

Row, row, row the Bus?!

Here's a weird story from Garnog:

This incident happened back in the 20th Century, late 1990's. I was on my way to work on the Portage bus during morning rush hour. The driver was acting a bit strange, but suddenly he took both his hands off the steering wheel and(this is unbelievable)began to pretend as if he was ROWING A BOAT, while passing other traffic for at least two blocks. I don't know how we survived, but when I called in to report this the person taking the call did not seem in the least bit concerned! I dearly wish I'd had a cell phone in those days...

Not in Service? Screw that!

Here's another story from Barry about a transit passenger uprising over a bus that was Not in Service. Really, it is quite annoying that if you stay out later than 1am you end up stranded downtown:

Here is story happened last year at end of Canada Day at Forks where many of were waiting for the bus to get home. I got to stop around 11:30 or so and curiously asked how long residents had been waiting, and one said about 30-45 min. I thought on Main Street by Train Station seemed like long time. The guy I knew, said many went the opposite way going south, but the 19 Notre Dame had not shown up. But we checked the stop times and said it should be coming soon.

When the 19 finally showed up and we were about to enter when the bus driver informed he was going out of service. The same guy mentioned that he had children needing to get home and the bus could not be out of service yet, as we all had waited long time. He got angry when driver said he was told to be out of service and head back to garage. The guy did not seem to like that response and he insisted in an aggressive manner to put it back in service, as we needed all to get home. The guy became our spokesperson, on behalf of about 10-15 of us, to get driver to go back in service. When the driver contacted the supervisor, he received new instructions to put the bus back in service to get those home, that lived far down Logan and Notre Dame.

I thought what he did was proper especially with infants and young children, you should not let them be stranded at night.

In the end we got on the bus and headed to our homes and hope all got home safe and sound!

The Worried Uncle calls 911

Here is a strange story from Barry, about his overprotective uncle. Maybe the lessons should be just don't use your cellphone on the bus?

Quite a few years ago as I always do I was talking with my uncle while on the bus and as I usually do talk on the cell while getting onto the bus. But it so happened on this occasion when I did I lost connection to him when the phone died. I never thought anything of it as he knew I was on cell-battery could have went dead or I was out of range of cell towers.

Later when I got back home, my neighbors stated the police had been looking for me and I thought that was odd, but then I recalled when I was talking with my uncle he might have figured I got mugged or some harm came to me. He called the police when he couldn't reach me again and when I did not call him back. I did call him later and he did confirm police had been called to look for me when we got cutoff on the call when i was on the bus. It was nice he cared for me so much to followup on the call I made to him.

All was ok after that and he said always call back if you get cutoff on a conversation on the phone. Lesson learned.