HOLIDAY HEROES
For most, Dec. 25 is a day off. But for streetcar drivers, airport staff, security guards and others, the city stays open and the work goes on. Meet the selfless soldiers we couldn’t get through Christmas without.
Christmas Day begins quietly on Toronto’s 501streetcar.
Red-eye shifts are ending. Weary employees climb aboard to go home to their families. At the same time, holiday day shifts are about to begin — and those passengers peel themselves away from the merry festivities for work.
Other passengers float along without family to return to. Homeless Torontonians ebb and flow from the car, some headed to shelters or meals. And, for years, streetcar operator Curt Richards has seen them all.
“There’s kind of like a camaraderie, you know?” Richards tells the Star. “It’s usually people that are out there because they have to . . . So we usually talk about ‘Eh, somebody’s gotta do it!’ ”
But Richards — who speaks in a booming voice, wearing his shades indoors and making animated hand gestures — isn’t there because he has to be.
When he started working for the Toronto Transit Commission 15 years ago, he had to work holiday shifts because of seniority. But he now works on Christmas Day by choice. “My family just adjusted,” he reports cheerfully.
Richards has seven brothers and sisters, which he thinks is why his job is a good fit.
“I’ve seen it all!” he says. He’s a middle child, four of eight. “Doing this job, it’s kind of like a road trip, right? It’s like my family time, the way we used to spend our drives.”
He tries to put as much happiness into those drives as possible, which he says is contagious. In his early days, he gained notoriety for singing the stop names en route. “Baaaaathuuuuurst,” he croons, chuckling at the memory. The streetcar isn’t quite “Dad’s station wagon,” as he calls it. There’s something about streetcars that Richards just fell in love with. “It’s quirky,” he explains. Not only is it a rail vehicle in the middle of downtown traffic, but it uses sand for traction. “Special grade sand, from Midland, Ontario!”
He loves filling up the sand hopper, just two seats behind the driver. And he especially loves the conversations with passengers. Being a streetcar driver was kind of like being a bartender, he says — you’re their captive audience.
“It’s a lot of personal things, like family issues,” he says. “And even people that are homeless, especially at Christmastime, they’re always so happy to be going to the Good Shepherd (shelter) there on Queen, to have a family dinner.”
He recalls chatting about where in the city has good cranberries, or the best meal. “It’s a bit sad, but it’s the reality of people not having connection to family, where they’re looking forward to that meal and they talk about it.
“You just connect, because they’re human beings just like you are.”
His passengers have always been especially generous on Christmas Day, he adds. He’s been brought a slice of cake here, a coffee there. One man even left him with a gift. “They really appreciate you being out there, doing the job, getting them where they need to go,” Richards says.
“You get everything on Queen. The whole city, the good, the bad, the ugly.”