John Day writes about the BC Transit Society which was a predecessor of our Transit Museum Society.
Before the Transit Museum Society, there was the “BC Transit Society”. We even attempted to incorporate it but the name was not allowed as you cannot use “BC” in a name if it might be confused for a government entity. This was long before BC Transit came into being.
The club was quite active though with very few members as it was not really a “thing” to be a bus fan in the 60’s. We did put out a fairly decent monthly magazine “Canadian Coach”, which morphed into Transit Canada when it was discovered that there was another “Canadian Coach” magazine dedicated to athletic coaches. Publication of that magazine moved to Toronto after no-one in Vancouver was willing to take it on; some of the players from that day are still active in the CTHF.
And we did fantrips. One of the simpler events was a visit paid to the 39th & Cartier firehall one day to have the Hayes rolled out for us. Yes, THE Hayes in her old incarnation. Had it not been sold to the fire department there is no doubt it wouldn’t have survived.
The club also attempted to save a vehicle or two, without success I’m afraid. We did acquire M.89 (aka 3189), the very first of the post-war Twin Coaches delivered to BCER and the very first bus to wear the all-over cream livery (predating even the trolley coach No. 2001). Storage was an issue, we moved from gas station to gas station and struggled to find the $25/month rent. Eventually it was moved to a farm on Sea Island but the locals found it and thoroughly trashed the bus, which was sold for scrap.
Our members included Brian Kelly, Peter Cox, Wally Young, Ian Graham, Angus, myself. Peter was the master photographer in the group and he taught the rest of us quite a bit.