End of the road for Greyhound in Western Canada
Company cites ridership decline in decision to cancel bus routes
Rob Csernyik took the Greyhound from Toronto to Calgary for $167 in 2015.
He recalled the multi-day journey as lengthy, scenic and peppered with stops along the way.
“Going through northern Ontario for me was surprisingly scenic and beautiful,” Csernyik said. “I remember that just the expanse of the country was really surprising to me.”
In a matter of months, the route Csernyik travelled will no longer exist. Greyhound Canada, for decades a critical link connecting the country’s small towns and isolated communities with larger urban centres, is pulling out of the Prairies, British Columbia and northern Ontario, leaving activists and Indigenous leaders fearing for the health and welfare of those who live in remote locales.
Effective Oct. 31, Ontario and Quebec will be the only regions where Greyhound’s familiar galloping-dog logo continues to ply Canadian highways, save for a lone route in B.C. between Vancouver and Seattle to be operated by the company’s much healthier American cousin, the company said Monday.
“Despite best efforts over several years, ridership has dropped nearly 41 per cent across the country since 2010 within a changing and increasingly challenging transportation environment,” Stuart Kendrick, senior vice-president of Greyhound Canada, said in the statement. “Simply put, we can no longer operate unsustainable routes.”
Kendrick said 415 people will be out of work as a result of the decision, which he estimates will impact roughly 2 million people.
In Ontario, travel west of Sudbury on the Trans-Canada Highway will end. Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie are among the 56 stops that will lose service.
Csernyik’s 2015 trip from Toronto to Calgary took almost 54 hours. He left Ontario on March10 at 1a.m. and arrived in Alberta on March 12 around 7:30 a.m.
“I know, having taken it, that I had to use it for a reason, and there were other people who had to use it for a reason,” said Csernyik, a freelance journalist who now lives in Montreal. “And I think it’s really disappointing that a lot of those people are going to be missing a really great option for them to travel.”
Doug Jones, mayor of Oyen, a town of roughly 1,000 people near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, heard about the Greyhound route cancellations on the radio Monday. He said the decision will be hard on seniors, who might prefer taking the bus over driving.
“For some people, it’s going to be devastating,” Jones said.
Oyen is served by a bus company under contract from Greyhound, he added. The changes won’t take effect until October, but Jones isn’t clear on what may replace it.
“Hopefully, someone will carry on afterwards,” he said.
Kendrick said the decision will leave most of the affected communities with no other transportation options.
“This decision is regretful and we sympathize with the fact that many small towns are going to lose service,” Kendrick told The Canadian Press. “But simply put, the issue that we have seen is the routes in rural parts of Canada — specifically Western Canada — are just not sustainable anymore.”
The company is blaming a 41per-cent decline in ridership since 2010, persistent competition from subsidized national and inter-regional passenger transportation services, the growth of new low-cost airlines, regulatory constraints and the continued growth of car ownership.
“I’m a little bit shocked actually,” said Alberta’s Minister of Transportation Brian Mason. “We didn’t get any more than a couple of hours warning.”
While Mason recognized that the company has cancelled some routes in the past and has struggled in recent years, he said cutting both cargo and passenger service across western Canada is a “regrettable decision.”
“Obviously transportation needs exist in rural communities as well as in big cities. And in some cases, there’s not an alternative,” Mason said. “There are only a small number of communities that have no intercity bus service as a result of this decision and we’re certainly looking at whether or not there’s something we can do to help there.”
Northern Canada is sure to be where the impact is felt most deeply, said Sheila North, grand chief of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak and candidate for chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
“I think this is abandoning the North,” she said, citing a high demand in the region for transportation services — “especially for those that live in poverty, but also who have medical needs that need to get down to the south for resources that are not accessible in the North.”
Darlene Okemaysim-Sicotte, co-chair of Saskatchewanbased Women Walking Together, described Greyhound’s decision as triggering a “northern crisis.”
“It’s going to affect a lot of people (who will be) very, very isolated, especially the vulnerable people who have to deal with poverty and mental health and physical health issues that need treatment,” Okemaysim-Sicotte said.
She cited testimony already given at the ongoing national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, where witnesses have talked at length about a chronic lack of transportation in more remote regions of the country. Without Greyhound, fleeing domestic violence will be all but impossible for a lot of women, she warned.
“With the news today of Greyhound’s downsizing, the Ministry of Transportation will work with northern communities and other carriers to ensure Northern Ontario has the transportation they need and deserve,” Ontario’s Minister of Transportation John Yakabuski said in a statement. David McKay took a Greyhound from Ottawa to Vancouver in 1987.
“I was on my way to Australia,” McKay said.
“It was a way to save a bit of money, by taking the bus to Vancouver. I had time, not a lot of money.” McKay, who now works in communications for the Royal Ontario Museum, recalled travelling through communities and towns he would never have seen if he flew straight to Vancouver.
“Canada’s a big place,” McKay said. “It’s really good to get out and see as much of it as possible.”