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Podcast: Angus McIntyre celebrates 40 years as a driver
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.
http://buzzer.translink.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/angus-mcintyre.mp3
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 [...]
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By TransLinkAngus 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.
http://buzzer.translink.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/angus-mcintyre.mp3
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 [...]