Colin Brown
AUDIO INTERVIEW
SUMMARY
October 16, 2014
00:35 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Time Span: Colin Brown, worked at St. Clair Division (THE BARNS) 1970-78. It was a sad event when it closed.
00:47 Divisional Clerk Job Description: Employees would come in and he would report whether they were on time or not. Streetcars went out in a certain sequence, so if a driver hadn’t arrived they would need to be replaced immediately.
01:12 Colin also sold tickets to the operator and did general office work. Main office at St. Clair was very busy. Davenport Barn (also referred to as Hillcrest) was buses, Wychwood Barns(St. Clair Division) was all streetcars.
01:50 Streetcar Routes: The Barns serviced 4 main routes: St. Clair, Rogers Rd., Bathurst, forgets the fourth. The Bathurst route ran south from Bloor and Bathurst; the route north of Bloor was buses.
02:24 STREETCARS: Unusual Events: Ontario Place Forum Opening: To cover opening, 25 extra cars were sent. Some kids were out of control and all the cars were damaged. Next event they put out no streetcars, and the parents were upset because the kids found no streetcars and had to walk to the subway.
03:28 Child driver: He was working when the men landed on the moon and when the Beatles came to town. College Subway Station can accommodate large groups. All sorts of higher up TTC officials were there watching the activity. There was a junior operator who thought it would be nice to take his grandson on the car so when the train was going through the College Station the operator had him on his lap. People thought it was a child driving, and there were repercussions for that.
05:25 Moon Landing: That Sunday was a difficult evening. TTC didn’t anticipate all the people using the subway to get to Nathan Phillips Square. At 7 pm they got hit with a huge crowd, but with Sunday service in place, there was a scramble to find all sorts of operators in a hurry. It was Colin’s job to find the extra operators.
06:45 Winter: The priority was service to the public, so if they didn’t anticipate a snow storm or other problems there’d be trouble. Had to keep everything moving. In those days it was a service; now they consider the costs and it’s a business.
07:55 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Teamwork: Many departments came together at the Barns. Divisional office would find the people to put out there; the equipment dept. would come out to find the equipment needed. There were also inspectors and supervisors. Two senior inspectors (Larry Hall and Jack Thugden) really knew transportation well - they knew how to deal with problems. It wasn’t all in the rule book: they were allowed to think through problems.
08:55 Tremendous cooperation with inspectors, supervisors and transit control. He viewed his job as part of the Union, representing the operators that were going out and dealing with management. Lots of fun, plus lots of stuff would get done. It was a place where new practices would be implemented to see if they worked or not.
09:40 Personally he’s very proud of what took place there. It was fun and very efficient.
09:50 Streetcar Maintenance: If anything needed fixing, they separated that vehicle so it could be taken care of. The rest of the vehicles just stayed there overnight, except the three that would run on through the night.
10:45 Streetcar Prep: The Barns would be filled at night. The cars were mostly stored inside and brought out at 4 am to get them ready. They would go out in a set sequence. Some streetcars would come out of the back of the Barns.
11:55 BARNS NEIGHBOURHOOD: There was a good relationship with neighbours. Streetcars must have disturbed them, but no complaints (unlike at Danforth Division, where he had also worked and they were on “tenuous grounds”).
12:20 The Wychwood Park Association held a meeting at the Barns. Barns staff provided the coffee and the space. It was important to retain a positive relationship with the community.
13:40 STREETCARS: Winter Snowstorm: One heavy snowfall they brought in prisoners with shovels to clear the tracks coming out of the Barns. “They were a grumpy lot”. He only remembers this happening once while he was there. Doesn’t know why they used them; it may have been an experiment.
14:40 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Safety: Mail Duty: Because they were so connected with Davenport division, the best way to get paperwork from St. Clair site to Davenport centre was to send someone on mail duty - paid at time and a half for the 20 minutes it took to go from Wychwood down through the Park. It happened 2 - 3 times a day. NO problems, NO robbery; there was “trust in the system” in those days.
15:38 Assault: Colin only remembers one assault, during his first years working at Eglinton, on one of the operators. He was a former Mountie. What didn’t get reported was the condition of the guy who tried to assault the operator: that guy went to hospital.
16:10 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Staffing: There were no women operators and no women clerks then, but had them in WWII. A bit like the dark ages in that way.
16:50 TTC BARNS: Facility: No air conditioning in buildings. There is a low roof where the Art Gallery is now. If it’s hot outside it’s hotter inside. The midnight shift was more comfortable. Colin worked all shifts.
17:30 Pits: Were in the Barns.
18:00 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Fares: Fareboxes: Where the Art Gallery is now, at its front door, you would come into an open room. This was where operators sat around tables and filled out their way-bills - how they kept track of time and how many people they carried and vehicle numbers. Then they would come up to the glass counter to get their farebox. They had to account for every farebox. There was lots of money going in, so they were heavy. Might do farebox account balances twice a day or more if necessary. The money would be picked up during the midnight shift. The farebox people would come in and empty boxes and sometimes leave ticket supply to be sold to operators.
19:40 Tickets: They would sell tickets to operators at Davenport between 4:30 and 7:30. Could sell $6000-9000 worth of tickets in that time frame.
20:10 Transfers: You needed to predict how many you would need for a route. There was a special spot on a transfer that you could tick off that would make it valid anywhere, so he would use that if someone came off to pick up a lost umbrella. Riders were supposed to pay a new fare, but he did not think they should be charged. He punched a hole with a sharp pencil point and signed it. This was “not quite kosher”.
21:30 TTC BARNS: Facility: The big room was where the operators sat. From there you could go into the divisional area where the clerks were working; you had to be buzzed in. The guy in the corner was the Slip Clerk who arranged for the work the next day; for example if anything extra was needed on any route, or if anyone was sick, the Slip Clerk would arrange it. He was the “kingpin” of the office. All extra work would be put on sheets and the operators would see this.
22:55 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: There was protocol around people who were late, but workers did lots of favours for each other.
24:20 SUBWAY: Unusual Events: 1995 Dupont Station crash: Colin was on duty the day of the accident at Dupont Station when one train went into another. He was working at Danforth. It stopped the system for about five days. He was never happy about the official finding. The driver was a brand new guy and most of them don’t break rules and regulations.
26:25 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Employment: Colin would be aware of who was driving what. He was always taking notes, which was a hard habit to break when he retired.
27:05 Changing requirements: There was honour to the system. Now they have upped the education needed because there is so much technical stuff. Before, they just had to open and close doors and call stops. Now you need a university degree.
27:50 Colin’s work experience: He doesn’t have a university degree, but he worked for four years at a trust company. He has touch typing skills and he was the only one in the office who did.
28:25 Move to the Barns: After working at Eglinton for five years, he bid to be moved to St. Clair Division. There he found an office with nice people, respectful people, people working together. He never had any problems with that staff. His happiest years at the TTC were working there.
29:40 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Innovations: Telephones with call display came in a year after he retired. They made a big difference. You could go through the work very quickly. You get a lot of phone calls; sometimes it just helps to know who is calling.
30:20 TTC BARNS: Facility: Layout: You had to be buzzed in to the office area by the Slip Clerk, and you needed a reason to be coming in. If you walked straight, you arrived at the Stationery Room. There would be boxes with transfers for the month, all their forms, huge pads - lots of stationery. If you turned right instead of going into the Stationery Room, you would be going toward the Divisional Office. The first office was of the Assistant Superintendent, Jack Ferris(sp?) - a magnificent person. The person in the corner office would be the superintendent Jim Mansbridge, who was followed by Bob Ferguson. In the main office, the Chief Office Supervisor kept things running and made sure clerks got paid. He wasn’t overworked, but made sure things went smoothly. All the fare boxes were there; they had to be counted twice a day.
32:25 TTC FAREBOX: One day an operator took one home in a snowstorm and security called on him at 4 am because you are not allowed to do this. There were people who put gum on a stick to pull out tickets and sell them. There weren’t many who would do this, but it was a fireable offence. Only 3 or 4 times he remembers this taking place.
33:20 TTC BARNS: Facility: Layout: At the back of the office you could look out the window and see where the streetcar tracks were. Beyond this L-shaped office was where the Midnight Supervisor or evening supervisor worked. All shifts had supervisors. They did away with this later, but it allowed clerks to be responsible. It was a good thing.
34:00 At the far end of that office, close to where the operators were sitting filling out waybills, there were two wickets that were screened in. This was where they sold tickets no matter what time it was. He would do a balance at 9 pm, but when the night buses came in it would change the count, so he would do it in pencil. TTC security could come in at any time and open the cash drawer and the money in there had to be recorded. The fares were sold to the operators.
35:00 TTC STRIKE 1973: Exact Fare: TTC went out on strike when Colin was at Wychwood. The main issue was wages, but one of the little things was the issue of the exact fare. The head of the union, RIck Monaghan, didn’t think they had a chance to get that through because of the bad relationship between management and the union. The judge who was arbitrating looked at what was unresolved, saw the exact fare issue and realised it was dangerous for the operators having to make change. Ignoring what management said, he granted it. “Almost to this day you can hear the cheers go up.” The operators had $100 to $150 in run money; it was sometimes used in the waiting room for a bit of gambling or taken home and used for an emergency, but neither was “kosher.” You were supposed to keep it only for TTC stuff, so when the judge looked at all the factors he decided exact fare was needed.
36:40 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Employment: Exact fare removed the major piece of his work. Colin could breathe a sigh of relief.
36:51 Office equipment: They had no photocopier at Wychwood, but Hillcrest had one that could be used.
37:10 They had no fax machine.
37:18 They had a portable radio. Its plastic casing was cracked. FM was still relatively new. One of the reasons he signed on for the 4 pm - midnight shift was that CJRT had a 3 hour jazz show at 10 pm, and if no one was coming in he could have that on. This was his first exposure to FM radio.
38:13 Typewriters were manual. 1984 was the first time he used an electric typewriter. He was a stubborn person and it took awhile, but eventually he preferred the electric to the manual. Colin still has his personal Underwood typewriter.
39:18 Employment: Clerks: Between taking care of the operators - answering their questions, selling them tickets - they recorded delays. Inspectors would go out to a delay in the system, and then public relations would get involved, finding out why the streetcars were running together or where the missing streetcar was. St. Clair division had 4-12 pages a day of delay sheets by inspectors - gaps between vehicles, etc. They included lots of superfluous information. We didn’t question that. They were either phoned in or written by hand. Clerks would then type them up.
41:20 STREETCARS: Historic Cars: The Peter Witt car out of St. Clair was used for special charters.
42:00 Somehow the Upper Canada Railway Society would find out when the charters were running, and they would follow the cars and wave things and make a fuss. Colin felt they were a nuisance. He thinks the TTC had four of these streetcars.
43:12 TTC BARNS: Facility: Pits for working on the cars were in every one of the barns. People worked underneath. You had to be very careful. They were probably about 8 feet deep.
43:56 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Shifts: 340 people would work different shifts. There were about 20 clerks. The daytime shift was the lowest paying. Evening and midnight shifts had 2 people on each one plus a supervisor, but sometimes there would be only 1 person on the midnight shift.
44:33 Clerks: For safety reasons, every vehicle had its mileage checked. This was done by the Equipment Department. Office Clerks monitored the records for any changes and also tracked change-off of operators, or anyone doing extra service. It was a question of accuracy and it was pretty good in those days.
45:40 Maintenance Crew: There would be a “good crowd” working overnight on the streetcars, but things would be very quiet between midnight and 4 am.
46:00 4:30 am was when streetcars rolled out. People in lovely houses next door would have heard the ding ding ding as they went by the office. Colin is not sure how the residents tolerated it. Operators had a sense of humour so it’s possible the pattern of dings were messages beyond ‘Car Departing’, though Colin is not sure how likely that was.
46:56 Daytime Schedule: AM rush hour started when the vehicles went out. 8:00 am - 4 pm was the day shift. At 9 am all the extra vehicles would be run back in and the Equipment Department prepared them for the afternoon shift. 2:00 - 2:30 pm was the start of the afternoon shift. The complement of vehicles, as required, were put out. We knew how many were needed.
48:35 Security: 2 - 4 am was when the people from head office would bring in the fares, the money, anything that was needed. Only one door had a lock on it. The money would just be put on the table. Security was careful - they didn’t allow anyone in there. In those days they didn’t think anyone knew that St. Clair Division existed since you had to drive back streets to find it. Security-wise, that had its advantages.
49:28 Vault: Right next to the table in the office was a vault. It was only open between 8 and 4 when everyone was around. Pencils and erasers kept there were a hot commodity. Description of how he bought tickets when he was a clerk - he would put in an order and then he would make a money drop. During the midnight shift head office staff collected the record bags, each tagged with Clerk’s name, and would take it away to check the balance. You had to be accurate to the penny. They were very accurate in their accounting.
51:05 Staffing: The main difference between St. Clair (streetcars) and Davenport (buses) was volume. Davenport had to cover more routes.
51:12 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Shifts During the midnight shift you had to break open the bundles of transfers and put them on each of the fareboxes; the operators would take the farebox and transfers and they would record what they needed.
51:32 COMPARING DAVENPORT BARNS / ST. CLAIR BARNS: Davenport buses had many routes. St. Clair Division routes: They were just dealing with St. Clair and Bathurst. There was a lot of activity on Bathurst, year round; it was always a busy route.
52:05 STREETCARS / BUSES: CNE Organization: Back in those days every major plaza had express buses, even from Yonge and Steeles right to the Ex. There was a whole area at the Ex for express buses. In exchange for all the extra work they did, TTC employees never had to pay admission to the Ex.
53:03 TTC operators and Ex management really worked closely. It was a golden opportunity to learn a lot about public relations.
53:17 STAFF / MANAGEMENT RELATIONS: Colin heard there was a lot of fence sitting when problems arose, but this was not his experience. He would take problems to the Union and warn them to have a talk with an individual before things got worse. This gave fellow union members the chance to correct the situation. If it wasn’t addressed in two weeks it could show up in an inspector’s report.
54:00 Behaviour: Everyone was very professional at St. Clair.
54:15 Rare exception: There was the rare “idiot”. One guy liked to speed. He was going south down Mt. Pleasant at Merton where the St. Clair tracks went up, over and down. He was speeding, with five people on the car at 5 pm on the first day of the CNE and it caused a huge problem. He never worked again. Colin does not have many memories of people like this.
55:22 Solving problems: Remembers a lady who worked out of the Davenport bus depot who had trouble handling the bus. She was always upset when she came in, so Colin would “sweet talk” her and ask her about what was going on. At the end she became good and it was worth the effort. It wasn’t his job but this is the public relations part. Later on he might need her in an emergency.
56:25 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Transit Control Staff: Colin knew them by their voices when they phoned. They were essential to operations, “the most magnificent piece of communication you could ever find”. They worked out of Hillcrest, which was the personnel office. If inspectors or operators were having problems they could call with special telephones and let the control know what was going on. They did really good work. He got to know them.
58:00 He was a General Divisional Clerk - his title - but it is hard to describe what he did.
58:20 Modernizing operations: Computers: Lost articles were entered on computers - the first use of computers in daily work (not his job).
58:38 The year he left the TTC (1996) there was very limited computer use. They were using DOS. He went for a day’s training at HiIlcrest where he “learned how to turn them on and off and they wouldn’t explode”. He lost his fear of computers and it led to other things.
59:10 BARNS NEIGHBOURHOOD: Gentrification: In those days the area was low to middle income, not like it is now. On Helena Ave. halfway along, one house on the north side was rebuilt. “They put time, energy and money in it. It stood out like a sore thumb. And I said to somebody at that time, this area has just changed”. When he returned a number of years later the whole street had changed.
1:00:15 CLOSING THE BARNS: When they closed the Barns they moved the operations to another streetcar division, probably Roncesvalles, a big streetcar division.
1:01:08 Reason it closed: It was never really explained why it was closed. Colin wonders if it was because of the changes in the area, or because it was a residential area. Right now there are no barns in residential areas. The St. Clair location was the first to go, maybe because it was an easy office in which to implement change.
1:01:53 TTC BARNS: Facility: Great memory: The day they put in AC.
1:02:16 There was an eating area at the back of the building. One big table was also good for sleeping on during the midnight shift when there was a break in work.
1:02:55 CLOSING THE BARNS: He was right there until it closed. The miracle now is the glorious Wychwood Barns on this site. He hopes they never lose this piece of history, as it was very special.
1:03:24 BARNS NEIGHBOURHOOD: Businesses: Wallace’s Drug store was at the corner of St. Clair and Wychwood.
1:03:45 Nearby Church: (probably St. Michael’s and all Angels) During the 1973 TTC Strike, the Union had to pay their members, so they used a recreation hall in the church to hand out their cheques.
1:04:34 Restaurant: The closest one to the Barns was a Chinese take-out. They usually ordered food from there. One night Colin took his 45 minute break there to watch television, and he saw the broadcast of Nixon’s resignation.
1:05:17 K&M Pizza: Family owned. It was a special treat and he’d go back there even when he didn’t work in the area. Growth of the area brought lots and lots of changes.
1:06:08 CLOSING THE BARNS: The Commission continued to use the Barns for storage after it closed in 1978.
1:06:26 The Barns got to look worse and worse. When in the area, he’d drive by to take a look.
1:06:46 WYCHWOOD PARK: Marshall McLuhan: Colin would see him out raking leaves in front of his house.
1:07:04 Shortcut: Sometimes if you were working late at night and the Clerk at General Division was having problems with balancing his books he would call on the clerk at St. Clair to provide another set of eyes. Colin would walk down there to help out.
1:07:38 Community: He would walk through the park often, even in the winter time. He would always talk to people he saw there regularly.
1:07:58 “I walked through the park the way I used to and it was a lovely evening and the leaves were falling, and even in the winter time that was very, very special. I wonder whether Wychwood Park inspired the whole community, that brought about the changes.”
1:08:25 BARNS NEIGHBOURHOOD: Relationship: “... the changes that Wychwood area responded to were quite unique. And you’ve always been unique. We weren’t separated from you, we were paying attention to you. But we were doing what we were supposed to be doing. And that’s operating a really good streetcar division out of there.”
1:09:14 OPERATION OF TTC BARNS: Losing Knowledge: They would talk to older guys who knew all the history, and they respected it. When 4 retired at the same time - 3 from the same office - there was a big party for them. When 4 or 5 superintendents retired in one week it was a huge loss.
1:09:58 MEMORABLE PEOPLE: Bill Appleby and street people: As the person in charge of the collectors, Bill knew all sorts of places in the system that the street people could get to, all sorts of nooks and crannies. Bill knew all of them. When he left, all that passion and information vanished with him. HIs replacement “didn’t care”, didn’t ask questions.
1:10:40 STREETCARS AND BUSES: Passion was part of the St. Clair and Davenport operation. Streetcars and buses worked together very efficiently, but there was always the discussion about which was better. If you wanted to move people, you put streetcars out there and they would move people fast.