2018 On the Road Again #12

Lord but that ground just outside of Morse was hard! But it didn't rain, it got just cool enough that the bugs went away and the wind finally died down almost completely. With the exception of the freight trains that passed a few hundred meters away from me and the quiet hum of trucks making their way across the prairies, it was a quiet night. I woke up just as the sun started to show light in the east. I lay there, trying to find a soft spot of dirt to rest my hips when I thought I heard the first drops of rain. I did not want to pack up in a downpour so I quickly got up, got dressed and start to roll up my sleeping bag and bivy sack. Only then did I realize that it was not rain that I heard but the gentle flapping of the nylon flags above me. The wind was coming back.

It was still only barely morning when I sat down, all packed and ready to go but it was still too dark to stand on the road. I felt a lot more relaxed than I had the day before as I had called a friend and got her to cancel my appearance at the farmer's market for the Saturday. I was pretty sure that I could be back in time but the sense that I might not was always in the back of my mind. Hitchhiking is not fun if one is in a rush.

There was not a lot of traffic on the road at 6:00 in the morning but I had nothing else to do so I went down to the highway. There were a few trucks parked behind the gas station and I was mildly optimistic that one of those trucks would give me a ride to somewhere. And one did. It was a grain truck and he was just going to Swift Current but at least it would be near a major population centre. My driver said that he would let me off at a truck stop. Perfect! A bathroom and perhaps some breakfast. - things were looking up.

It is only about 60 kilometres from Morse to Swift Current and so we did not have a lot of time to talk. My driver was from the old school of driving where he took a six week course ( three weeks in class and three weeks driving practice) before he got his license and then on his first job was paired with a more experience driver for two weeks before he was let out on his own. My driver talked about the truck driver in the Humboldt bus accident and the fact that he was an immigrant from Pakistan (he used cruder words than that to describe him). He was sure that he had had, at best, only a few days training, that he had been allowed to cheat on his written test and that a more experienced driver had not been paired with him once he got his license. He was reasonably sure that the driver, because of his poor English skills was not paying attention to the road as he tried to determine what both his maps and the road signs said.

As I have a number of times before, I had a discussion about immigrant drivers. While I agreed that the newer drivers are poorly trained and may lack of the necessary skills and training to be the best drivers, I argued that the fault does not lie with them as much as it does with the owners of the companies. Those companies who hire drivers who they know have received inadequate training, employers who do nothing to ensure that those drivers get the needed training, and those employers who pay poorly and in fact prey upon the immigrants. My driver did not disagree with me but yet still resented the immigrant drivers who were taking lower wages (and therefore lowering the rates for all drivers) and I suspect resented those new drivers for lowering the public's general impression of all truck drivers.

It is a debate that I will never win. The truck drivers who pick me up are good people. Men who work hard doing a job that they think is important. They are frustrated with the lack of regulations at to training or support for new truckers. They see themselves as being under-valued members of their community who are underpaid. They, like any other profession, get angry when they see their position being diminished. They get angry at the people they can see, not the owners hiding in the corporate offices.

Interestingly - as my driver was complaining about people not following the rules, he told me that his truck was significantly over-weight and that if he got caught he would be fined thousands of dollars. He was not worried as he knew how to get around the scales. A friend of mine later told me that these big trucks are causing a lot of damage on the secondary roads of the province as they are hauling far heavier loads than the roads were designed for.

MY driver let me out on the west end of Swift Current. It was a small truck stop with not a lot of traffic. The wind was back in full force.

No More Greyhound Buses

Greyhound Canada have just announced that as October of this year, all of their Western routes will be terminated. There will be no Greyhound buses running in the four western provinces. It is hard to blame a corporation for cancelling a product line when it is no longer profitable, but the consequences of Greyhound's decision is far reaching and, it could be argued, affect the well being of Canadians. While I generally dislike the government bailing out for-profit corporations, I think an argument could be made that someone needs to do something.

I am not a fan of Greyhound buses. It is true that on a couple of occasions finding a seat (at least twice in the middle of night) on the Greyhound has, if not actually saved my life, made it substantially easier. But the buses are cramped, sometimes dirty, frequently smelly and no one I know has ever said they were fun. Going across Canada on a Greyhound bus may be the worst possible way to travel. But they are cheaper than any other form of travel and go through towns that larger systems (e.g. Via rail or airplanes do not). For a number of Canadians it is the only way that they can afford to travel and to get to where they need to be.

Take for example a gentleman I met in Golden at the Husky restaurant late one evening in June. He lived in Cranbrook - (the southern end of BC) and needed to get to Salmon Arms (about 500 km away) for his father's funeral. He had no car. Greyhound was the only way for him to get there. Not the best way or the cheapest way - the only way. This time next year, that man would not be able to go home for his father's funeral. Young people travelling out west to pick cherries or to do tree planting, young moms going from one city to another to visit family or people travelling to find a better job will no longer be able to do so. Yes there are airplanes or trains and if one books months in advance they are fairly economical - but for many people, booking four months in advance is not an option. And even if booking ahead was possible - Greyhound is still cheaper.

I am not sure how people will travel from Calgary to Edmonton, or Revelstoke to Calgary or Portage to Brandon if they don't have a car. There are thousands of Canadians who at least on occasion need to use an intercity buses to get to where they are going. Ideally smaller bus lines will fill the vacuum for the shorter routes but on the trans-country or near trans-country routes I am not sure if anyone will.

While I am sure it is not intentional, Greyhound's decision affects only poor people, people who cannot afford a car, people who if there was any choice would not ride the bus. People with access to money drive or fly or if they have lots of time, take the train. By limiting access to jobs, visiting family or any of the other reasons why people travel on buses, we are ensuring that our society remains divided between those who have and those who do not.

The Canadian government has ignored the steadily worsening state of our Canadian passenger train system and now they will (and perhaps can) do nothing to help maintain a bus system. But the cynic in me wonders if someone wants the poor folks to not communicate/socialize with others like themselves. It is so much easier to both divide and conquer and ignore those folks when they can't share their stories.