Randy Scott and Kent MacFarland, retired city bus drivers, took a trip down memory lane at an Edmonton Transit Service garage open house on Saturday. This time, the trip included power steering. “When we started, there was no power steering. It was all manual … Sometimes, if you had a full load and had to make a corner, it was quite hard,” MacFarland recalled. The two were lifelong ETS employees who saw early iterations of city buses. So early, in fact, that MacFarland trained Kathy Andrews, the woman who paved the way for drivers of her gender in 1975 and for whom a Fort Road garage was named for. Saturday’s open house at Ferrier, the city’s current oldest operational garage – which opened as Andrews came onto the scene – was a homecoming of sorts for the two men, who were delighted to see children running around, honking horns and learning about what makes the city go round. “There’s a lot of smiles right now, especially when we open up the compartment, let them sit in the operator’s compartment, and it’s a great photo opportunity,” bus operations manager Walter Cadieux told CTV News Edmonton. In the Ferrier facility alone, more than 550 employees work behind the scenes in operations, fleet maintenance and light-duty mechanical work. The garage services some 230 buses, Cadieux said. Buses on display included those used for art, Indigenous showcases, Pride and other historic but retired equipment. “It gives them the opportunity to see all types of different equipment … We’re taking people through our wash rack system and our fuel base system, and we have a training instructor that’s there,” Cadieux said. Every operator starting their career with ETS starts at the Ferrier garage. Cadieux estimates that number to be in the thousands. “I think everybody just sees a bus on the road. They don’t know what it takes to keep that bus on the road. There’s so much more that goes behind it,” he said. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Brandon Lynch
