Most of Winnipeg is asleep when Ron Eunson’s first alarm goes off at quarter to three in the morning.
It’s the first of six. Four are set on his phone, one on a Google Home in the bedroom and one on an actual alarm clock. His wife hates that last one, Eunson said, because “that’s the get-out-of-bed one.”
It’s the routine of a man who marked 31 years behind the wheel for Winnipeg Transit earlier this month. Eunson is the second longest-serving of the roughly 1,100 bus operators on the job, according to Winnipeg Transit spokesperson Brandon Logan.
Eunson, 60, said he started training with Winnipeg Transit on Oct. 2, 1995. He doesn’t remember his first run with passengers, but one day from his training stands out, when he was on the 55 St. Anne’s route.
“One of my mom’s best friends got on the bus and we started chatting and chatting because she liked to chat and I liked to chat,” Eunson said. His instructor told him to do “a little less chatting.”
“It hasn’t stuck,” Eunson said during an interview Wednesday afternoon at Winnipeg Transit’s Fort Rouge garage after his shift.
Minutes earlier, Eunson said transit management was waiting for him at Fort Rouge Station, there to name him operator of the year. The accolade comes with two plaques, one to hang in the operators’ cafeteria and the other to take home.
Asked whether he ever envisioned a career this long with Winnipeg Transit, he was quick to respond. “Absolutely not.”
“My plan was I was going to work for 25 years,” Eunson said. “I was looking for a good career… something that would pay decently well and have benefits to raise my family.”
Decades-old GMCs to low-floor buses
With those years has come a lot of change.
When Eunson started, he said only three buses in the city’s fleet were accessible and typically only one was in service at a time because of engine problems. He said the standard was high-floor buses with steps at the front and back doors.
“Some of them were pretty old. We had GMCs that were 35 years old on the road, and they were great buses to drive,” he said.
Today, all of Winnipeg Transit’s 600-plus fleet of buses are low-floor access buses, without steps.
Another change Eunson recalled is the end of punching transfers by hand.
At the start of each shift, he said operators once prepared their own transfers, a task known as “punching transfers.” Every driver was issued a hole punch with a unique pattern, which they used to mark the route and date on each slip. If a rider ran into a problem, the pattern meant the transfer could be traced back to the driver who handed it out.
“And some operators would do some fancy folds to make them easier to hand out,” Eunson said. “It was pretty easy, but you could tell if a transfer was expired.”
Despite over three decades of driving bus routes in the city, Eunson said the longest stint he’s had on the same route was approximately three months. He said he has been driving the 557 route since September, noting drivers pick their work in order of seniority.
“Now everything changes from change to change, but things didn’t change as much back then,” Eunson said.
“You used to have operators that would do the same piece of work for 10 years… Christmas time was extra special because (riders) would have things for the bus operator. But that kind of went away when they started changing things all the time.”
Memories made on the job
Other moments from those three decades that stand out have little to do with change.
In April 2011, Eunson said he was driving the 79 Charleswood route, having just left the loop at Polo Park with only a few passengers on board. As he crossed St. James Street, someone called out for help.
“There’s a baby that’s not breathing back here and turning blue,” Eunson recalled.
He said he pulled the bus over on the Portage Avenue overpass above Route 90 and hit the 911 button to alert the control centre. Once he knew paramedics were on the way, he got out of his seat and turned to the infant.
“This was a two-week-old baby and had stopped breathing; was turning blue. I did some CPR, some rescue breaths, and got the baby breathing again,” Eunson said.
Another moment he recalled came in early April 1997, when he found himself driving a bus through a historic blizzard.
Around 11 p.m. on a Saturday, he said he got stuck in the snow at Roseberry Street and St. Matthews Avenue while driving the 14 Ellice route.
The three-day blizzard dumped nearly 50 centimetres of snow across the Red River Valley, burying vehicles and setting the stage for the Flood of the Century.
“I stayed on the bus overnight,” Eunson said, waiting out the storm until 9 a.m. the next morning. “I was awake.”
“I thought about walking down the road to Salisbury House to use the bathroom and grab something to eat or drink, and I thought, ‘Do I want to go into that north wind? Nope.’”
In the morning, he said a City of Winnipeg front-end loader arrived and cleared a path along St. Matthews Avenue, and the bus was pulled out of the snowdrift.
Then there’s the lost-and-found. Among the wallets and other items left behind over the years, Eunson recalled one set of dentures that has stood out.
Eunson said the most challenging aspect of the work isn’t the driving.
“The hardest part of the job is really dealing with passengers,” he said. “The bus itself, easy.”
His approach to tense moments is to keep his cool. Drivers have a radio system and backup in place, he said, though he acknowledged it’s “not always adequate.”
“Don’t do anything to make them more irate,” Eunson said. “It’s different for different people.”
Eunson also sits on the city’s Transit Advisory Committee, which reviews practices and recommends strategies to improve safety on the transit system.
No plans to park the bus yet
The only operator with more seniority has been behind the wheel for 46 years, Eunson said, 15 more than he has. That driver was unavailable for an interview.
Eunson called the 46-year operator a friend and said he has an idea of when that driver might retire but declined to say. According to Winnipeg Transit spokesperson Brandon Logan, that driver would surpass the longest-serving bus operator on record for the city in January 2027.
As for his own retirement, Eunson said he doesn’t have a firm date in mind, but expects to be on the job for no less than another two and a half years.
When he does retire, he’ll miss the people he works with most, he said. What he won’t miss is getting up in the early hours.
Still, the best part of the job he said can be interacting with people and being able to help them.
“It’s especially nice when they’re responsive… Everybody gets a good morning from me. Once noon time comes around, it’s a hi or hello or sometimes a good afternoon.”
His advice to riders is to take a moment and listen.
“A lot of us have something to say to you,” he said. “If the bus driver says good morning or hi, a reply back is nice.”
