OC Transpo lost and found brims with human kindness
Cellphones, ball caps, wellthumbed paperbacks, sunglasses, umbrellas. So, so many umbrellas.
But also oddities, including halfa-dozen jumbo cans of sardines and a 2003 graduation cap.
If you’ve always suspected there’s a parallel dimension, where everything you’ve ever lost is hiding, there is.
“It’s here,” joked volunteer Suzanne Picard, one of dozens who helped out Saturday at charity Heartwood House’s twice-annual sale of items that riders have inadvertently left behind on OC Transpo buses.
Picard works at one of Heartwood’s member charities, a laundry co-op that allows 2,000 lowincome people to do their wash for just $2 a load, and says the event shows a simple truism about humanity.
“We’re forgetful,” she said. And, apparently, we like bargains.
Well before Saturday’s sale began at the McArthur Avenue agency, a line of people snaked down the block and doubled back onto itself.
“I lost a dolly once,” Paul Wieler recalled as he waited, leaning on his cane. Wieler met the same bus as it returned on the route, but the cart, which he’d tucked into the inside wheel well to help a friend move, never turned up.
In the crush of humanity Saturday, with people surging forward along hallways lined with shoes into rooms dedicated to hats, mitts and scarves, water bottles and backpacks or nothing but umbrellas, Wieler didn’t find his missing dolly. But he quickly found a prize: a Montreal Canadiens jersey.
He’s a fan, he explained, before launching into a stream of Leafs jokes.
A petite elderly lady left with an armload of umbrellas, explaining, “I always lose them on the bus.”
Heartwood House, a charity that houses 20 small non-profits, also runs the OC Transpo Lost and Found and has hosted the sale of unclaimed items twice a year since 2002.
Running the lost and found, which gets more than 30,000 items a year, helps some Heartwood folks with employment skills. A third of the items are claimed, with the rest sold at events such as Saturday’s, which was expected to raise about $4,500, executive director Moe Moloughney said.
The gregarious Moloughney — who greeted every single person upon arrival and almost instantly knew their names if she didn’t know them before — sees the sale as showing the kindness of strangers.
To her, it shows that “30,000 people took a moment to think of someone else, to make sure it goes to the lost and found. So often, people don’t think anyone will do a kindness. It happens every day.”
Edward Kwan left smiling at what he netted. An oversized fishing net someone had left on a bus will come in handy at the cottage and he caught some other goodies, too: a sparkly silver purse will be used by his alter ego, China Doll, the locally famous host of karaoke at his family’s Shanghai Restaurant. And the aforementioned cans of sardines are headed to the hungry.
His grand total was $7, but his catch seemed priceless.
“It’s the thrill of the chase,” Kwan said. “The energy, the community.
“This keeps us all united,” he added, when sometimes it felt like, “We live in harsh and mean times.”
Jeff Dubois, meanwhile, joked he’d found something intangible as he left Heartwood House to jump on an OC Transpo bus for the ride home.
“I discovered irony today,” he said. “Irony is when you come to the lost and found sale, it’s very busy, you buy three umbrellas for $2 each, then you lose one before you’ve even left. That’s irony.” He had two left. “I’m going to lose them on the bus now.”