I always feel a bit like I crash through things, flailing wildly, always tripping or dropping or bumping. I’m never sure where my body is in relation to yours. A bus is, in short, a nightmare for someone like me: people, seats, all close together, and the driver taking off from the curb before I’ve collapsed into the seat. You would think I’d be better at this by now. My mother doesn’t drive and we even went without a car for some years in my childhood. I’ve been riding public transit since birth, hopping on and off buses, guided by my mother’s hand and her instructions. I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-five. I used transit every day in grad school, and up until seven years ago, when I bought my car.
And here I am, sinking into a seat on the bus; once again apologizing to someone for bumping them. For stumbling and crashing. For having terrible balance and cursing when I whacked a limb.
I parked my car in its new parking spot on January 1, 2024, and welcomed it to its new life. No longer would I be a car commuter. My car would be relegated to running errands and the occasional time I needed it through the week. Sometimes my partner would take it to work, when mine was in the front of our tandem spot in the parking garage. But abruptly, without consulting it, I stopped using it for its main purpose when I bought it: getting me to and from work.
I had proven my point when I went to go buy my car. You could live in Miramichi and rely on the tiny bus system, as long as you planned well. I had, because I had to. But in purchasing my car, I was admitting there was an easier way and I had finally walked over that threshold. Instead of trotting to the bus stop every morning, I unlocked my car, sat in the driver’s seat, took a deep breath, and turned the key in the ignition.
It was almost exactly 7km from my door to the staff parking lot at the hospital. I could do that drive in my sleep now - some mornings I was closer to sleep than I’d like. The route, simple as it is, is burned into my brain. A few weeks ago, we went to Miramichi, and while I was cruising down Water Street in my same car, my hand went up to flick the blinker to indicate I wanted to turn left into the service entrance at the hospital. I stopped myself. But it’s still in my bones.
I am learning to adjust to a schedule that’s not entirely my own. I leave my apartment every morning, walk down to cross Gottingen and cut through a park, ending at a bus stop on Barrington, where the 10 will be by every eight minutes during the hectic weekday mornings. The 10 carries me from this stop to one across the street from campus. At the end of the day, the 10 will carry me from a stop outside the library to a stop across the street from my apartment. I will do it again tomorrow.
On my very first day in this job, I decided to drive - just in case. I had boxes of office things that would be moving into my new office, anyway. I’d moved them into my car three weeks before, when I left the hospital for the last time. But by the time I pulled into the parking lot and paid for my day permit, after having battled morning traffic across the Halifax peninsula, I was done. No more, I vowed. The bus was going to be just as easy, time-wise.
I have the benefit of having no set work hours, and have deliberately blocked my work calendar from having early morning meetings. I know how I work, and I’m not an early bird. Now, I have a job that officially allows me to move my working hours to ones that suit me best. I don’t need to be here at a specific time, or even pretend that I do, so the bus works beautifully for that. This is privilege, and I’m grateful for it.
Even as I stumble into a seat on the bus, and try to avoid jostling my seatmate, even as I fumble with my phone and the bus pass app, it’s working.
Riding the bus to work every day is turning out to be a good way to relearn at least a small piece of the city I used to belong to.
So much has changed in eight years, even though I’ve been here most months since then. The 10 glides along Barrington. The stop after mine in the morning is Barrington After Nora Bernard. There are three changes here: the bus now has a system that announces the next stop and puts it on a lighted sign. The street was renamed Nora Bernard in October 2023.
Then we go through what used to be the Cogswell Interchange, a set of ramps and overpasses once built for a highway that never materialized. It divided the city neatly, and now - it’s coming down. Parts of the ramps have been demolished, and there are “Road Closed” signs everywhere. This afternoon, I will have to take a looping detour on the 10, in order to get from Barrington to Gottingen. The traffic actually flows better without the interchange.
Scotia Square Terminal, Barrington to Spring Garden. This is the heart of downtown. I used to work in Duke Tower, one summer. Grand Parade is fenced off still, from the winter encampment. The Freak Lunchbox, the first true candy store I ever went to, back in 2005. We came for Thanksgiving one year, my parents deciding to have a little jaunt to Halifax. I remember eating pizza on a ripped-apart pizza box in the hotel room. I had to sleep in a cot, but at least I wasn’t sharing a bed. We also toured the university where I work now, and last week, when a friend showed me the tunnels that connect all of the buildings together, my teenage memory comes back. My parents bought us shirts from the university on that trip. I should probably get a new one.
Sometimes, I make plans in my head for my trip home. Get off here on Barrington, and duck into that place, and then grab whichever bus comes first to drop me at home. There are far more options to get home from this area. Sometimes it’s Spring Garden. Duck into the bookstore, run over to the fancy grocery store. That Shoppers used to be 24 hours. None of them are now, in these post-pandemic times. The Sobeys on Windsor isn’t 24 hours anymore, and while I have no need to shop at 3AM, I miss the strange sleepy carelessness of those trips.
I notice that where the 24-hour Pizza Delight used to be, there’s a new bar and grill. Halifax is home to endless restaurants and bars. There are always new ones, and so many. I have a list of places I’d like to try on Spring Garden, just from these daily journeys.
The 10 turns left onto South Park here. Now we head deep into the South End, and it gets more residential as we get closer to the university. We pass the Victoria General site of the hospital; this is where I am a permanent patient at the Eye Care Centre. Seeing it every day has started to take some of the old resentment and anxiety away.
South Park Before Inglis has been closed for a few weeks and this is in part what stops me from getting off early and darting into the café. I want to! But a longer, more convoluted trip from an earlier stop keeps me from pulling the stop request cord, because I am not a morning person and this is asking too much of me, I fear. Perhaps I’ll walk up later in the day.
We turn onto Inglis and there’s just one stop before we get to mine. I never get off alone, though the crowd is sparser during intersession. I will jump out and turn sharply, ready to cross the street and onto campus.
A few weeks ago, on a packed bus, a woman got on with a therapy cat in a stroller. I was immediately riveted. How does a cat become a therapy cat? Why the stroller? Idly, I wondered these things but never reached for my phone to search. I’m not at work, I can just think and not act on these moments of potential for information seeking. I feel sometimes like I’m in some kind of rehab for how much I searched as a hospital librarian. Learning to change up my pace and frequency. Other times, I worry my skills are getting rusty. (They are not.)
There are some people I see routinely on the bus - a father and his children, going to the elementary school across from campus. Students who live in the north end. A person in a suit, briefcase in hand. I too am the background of their morning travels, a woman carrying a backpack and a tote bag, always wearing red lipstick. The bus home tends to be different - I’m less consistent about when I grab my evening bus, and that’s when things start to go a little awry with travel on the peninsula.
I took my car to work this morning. I do, one or two times a month, even now. Today it was because they’re cleaning the floor of the parking garage in my building, and I needed to be out of there by 8:30 and not back in until 5. It was strange to pull into a parking lot again, and scoop my bags out of my car the way I did everyday up until a handful of months ago. It is stranger still to come out of the library, walk toward the parking lot and pause, looking around. I no longer recognize my car with its new Nova Scotia plates. My muscle memory is getting fainter.
Having a good transport system is crucial. We onlybuse our car for big shopping trips. Otherwise it's bus (great for thinking), train (great for reading) and walking or cycling. Sometimes, cycling is no slower than driving. One of the things that puts us off moving to the countryside is that you absolutely must have a car.
I love this for you. I know it’s like a quarter of the size, but if SJ ever got a real boy transit system…we’re looking at places in town, and trying to find ones in any decent proximity to a stop is next level.