RIDING DOWN
Barb Pacholik provides a retrospective on the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, from its creation in 1946 to its glory days and its pending demise.
As 1946 dawned, Tommy Douglas and his CCF government rolled into their second year in power in Saskatchewan, moving through its to-do list of promises as Canada’s first socialist government.
A few months earlier, it had begun offering a commuter service between Regina and Regina Beach for the returning Second World War veterans, living in winterized cottages when they couldn’t find city lodging.
A 24-pound bag of flour sold for 85 cents, a tin of Campbell Soup 13 cents, and ads touted the modern IBM “electromatic” typewriter. Shirley Temple’s new movie Kiss and Tell had just opened at Regina’s Rex theatre and Roy Rogers’ Don’t Fence Me In was at the Broadway.
The Leader-Post’s front page carried bold predictions that passenger rocket ships would be able to whiz to the moon within 50 years, and floating refuelling stations would permit sightseers to Mars.
Well, not quite. But the CCF was about to unveil the latest star of its Crown corporations.
In early December 1945, Public Works Minister John Taylor Douglas officially announced a government-owned bus line. Thirty “modern-type buses” were on order.
“The project will be a sociallyowned enterprise … It will provide employment for Saskatchewan citizens and give the province an efficient bus system operated not for financial profit, but for the good of the whole people,” he said.
Not everyone warmly embraced this brave new future. Opponents were suspicious the government would shut out Greyhound, which provided interprovincial transit, and take over small carriers without compensation. A newspaper editorial slammed the enterprise as a “precarious business” and a public monopoly that should arouse serious misgivings.
“Once competition is stifled, people become the victims of whatever agency holds the whip in hand and the sting of the lash may be felt in the form of poor services as well as increased cost to the customer,” it concluded.
The government motored ahead. On Jan. 29, 1946, order-incouncil No. 168/46 gave birth to the Saskatchewan Transportation Company. “It is deemed advisable for the public good,” it read in part.
The first buses hit the road on April Fool’s Day 1946 — a prophetically inaugural, bumpy ride. The new buses were delayed at the factory because of striking suppliers, so the first fleet consisted of seven, second-hand buses and only four routes. A harsh winter made many routes impassable.
The StarPhoenix reported dozens of passengers in Saskatoon were left stranded that first day, and hundreds of readers in Prince Albert and points north didn’t get their newspapers on time when a route formerly run by Greyhound was abandoned, and STC hadn’t yet put a bus on the line.
A month passed before the first bus in the brand new fleet rolled into Regina. The 41-passenger Brill carried Regina dignitaries for its debut trip, a Sunday drive down the Trans-Canada Highway to the Pense intersection, a halfhour away.
The bright red and cream bus with the province’s crest on each side was the latest in contemporary motorcoaches. It had a 214-horsepower motor mounted forward of the rear axle for quiet running, air conditioning, and hot water heating for cold weather.
From its shaky start, the government bus company quickly gained momentum. By the end of 1946, STC had 36 buses, 33 routes, and a unionized staff of 145 workers. A head office and bus depot opened in downtown Regina in a renovated school, a new depot was built in Saskatoon, and STC bought the Greyhound terminal in Prince Albert. STC was moving passengers, as well as packages, mail and newspapers.
But it still fell short of expectations. According to its first annual report, STC was 440,417 miles shy
STC is operated primarily to furnish reasonably adequate transportation coverage throughout the settled areas of the province, rather than to earn a profit from the operation.
of its scheduled runs between April 1, 1946 and March 31, 1947, operating through one of the most brutal winters on record. That February, STC ran 13 coaches in Regina after heavy snow shut down local transit.
The winter sent net profits into a skid, dropping from $92,838 in the first six months to $36,182 by the fiscal year end. The annual report was unapologetic: “Following the principle of providing service wherever possible, and despite conditions which might deter organizations whose sole motive is the earning of profits, the Saskatchewan Transportation Company is very proud of its record during the severe winter of 1946-47 when buses were kept running at a considerable loss until weather conditions made further operation impossible.”
In successive years, the number of buses, routes and profits grew. A bus schedule from 1951, its cover declaring “owned and operated by the people of Saskatchewan,” lists service to 446 stations — from Aberdeen to Zealandia, with stops in such remote locales as Badger Bluff, Dickey’s Service Station, Rabbit Creek Bridge, Romance Junction, Skunk Creek, and Swatz’s Farm. U.S. routes carried passengers to Bismarck, Chicago, Detroit, Fargo, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Idaho Falls, Butte, Salt Lake and Minneapolis.
Closer to home, STC offered Twilight routes, carrying commuting politicians, businessmen, and university professors between the province’s two largest cities for the workday. Twilight services expanded to include Regina to Yorkton, and Saskatoon to Prince Albert.
The government was proud of its creation. Its collection of photos include those showing hundreds of civil servants boarding chartered STC buses at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building, the rollout of the latest editions to the fleet, and even one of fledging, 21-year-old Canadian actress Shirley Douglas — daughter of Premier Tommy Douglas and future mother of Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland — boarding an STC bus in 1955.
STC continued to put on miles and pass milestones, many of which were highlighted in a trade magazine article on its 40th anniversary. STC opened a northern route to transport fishing and trapping supplies via truck, tractor and sleigh in 1948; bought its first diesel buses with restrooms, radios and a public address system in 1953; carried its 10 millionth passenger a decade later; expanded parcel service and charters, including those to Roughriders games from around the province; and opened new depots, the last as recently as 2008 for the new Regina headquarters. (Of course, no history is complete without the “STC scandal” of the early ’90s when its vice-president was sent to jail in a kickback scheme with an American bus manufacturer.)
The decades flew by like the landscape seen through those bus windows. STC proved to have a staying power that outlasted those 1940s film stars, the movie theatres, low food prices, the CCF, and the electric typewriter.
It became as interwoven in the fabric of Saskatchewan as public telephone service, electricity and heat. But unlike those other public services, STC was often justifying its existence.
“(STC) is operated primarily to furnish reasonably adequate transportation coverage throughout the settled areas of the province, rather than to earn a profit from the operation,” reads an old pamphlet quoting a San Francisco transit consultant who reviewed the company in its early years.
“Private operation cannot be expected to be of much help in the development of so thinly settled an area as Saskatchewan,” he said, adding he’d never encountered a transit system covering such an area “so adequately and so efficiently.”