TMS member Angus McIntyre retired from Coast Mountain Bus Co. in 2010. His career as a bus driver spanned forty-one years. During that time he witnessed many changes in Metro Vancouver’s transit, its organization, its equipment. Not to mention the myriad people he helped live their lives, some through notable and memorable episodes.
Now, Angus recounts his experiences in a new documentary film by Hossein Fani & Milos Jakovic. The premiere takes place on October 11th at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre Auditorium. Admission is free, but you must reserve your seat!
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.
This past weekend, we received a collection of transit artefacts. After a family member passed, relatives cleared out a storage locker. We are still cataloguing the items, but there were some 35mm slides. I have digitized them and I am posting some here. The views I have chosen are of Larwill Park Bus Terminal which was at the intersection of Dunsmuir and Cambie Sts, across from the rear of the Queen Elizabeth theatre.
“The Larwill Park bus terminal in Vancouver was opened in 1947. It was constructed by Charles Bentall of the Dominion Construction Company and was considered the most modern bus depot in Canada at the time. The terminal served Pacific Stage Lines, Greyhound, Squamish Coach Lines, and others until it was closed in 1993, when operations moved to Pacific Central Station.” (They Paved Paradise and put up a Parking Lot: Larwill Park | Eve Lazarus)
Unfortunately, the transparencies are in very sad shape — the colours are faded, perhaps the result of the poor storage conditions. Why post them? Because they show the terminal in its final years. And I believe this is the first time I have seen the beautiful flooring which includes the Pacific Stage Lines logo, Pegagsus, the flying horse. I guess that is one vestige of Pacific Stage Lines it wasn’t possible to remove!
The day was quite the success, with consistent foot traffic throughout the day, quite a few fellow transit enthusiasts swinged by the bus enjoying the event as well. Sales were hot also with all the Orion heritage tour hats being sold off. As day turned to night. It only got busier. With the echoes of tunes from the stage down the block. Good people, good conversation, good times.
(Ewan Streit, who also provided photos of our mobile museum, GM #730)
Lawrence Walker reports that 1975 people visited 730 during the event on September 20th 2025. Special thanks, as always(!) to our volunteers: Anthony Sherst (Driver), Milan Streit , Matthew Walker, Michael Penco, Teddy Sun, Rian Fatemi, Steve Goodman, Anthony August, Ewan Streit, Aden Wong and Martin Wu.
A special visitor was Anita Zaenker. She dropped off a donation. She says: “I won it in a silent auction a few years ago but no longer wish to keep it. ” Thank you, Anita! For now, it’ll hang on the TMS office wall.
And in closing, we would like to pass on this item from Milan Streit:
As part of on-going research with the transmission of our 1964 GM TDH4519, we replaced the transmission oil pan gasket and cleaned the check valve in early March. Unfortunately, the cork from the gasket is starting to distinregrate, allowing some automatic transmission fluid (ATF) to seep through. When the bus returned from the Fraser fan-trip, Jason noticed Rainbow puddles and we immediately checked the dip-stick which showed “low”. Myself, Jason and our maintenance advisor added around three liters as a temporary measure. The leak only seems to intensify when the bus is in motion.
On Sunday, September 21st, we drained the ATF, cleaned the pan and replaced the gasket on the transmission oil pan.
You can see the oil pan under the transmission on 4612, looking from beneath, in the lefthand photo. Looking from the top, the oil pan would be near the red filter. (Milan Streit)
For bus aficionados, it was a fantastic weekend: on Sunday September 14th saw TMS’s museum coach 730 attend “Car Free Day” on Main Street. The Canadian Transit Heritage Foundation had organized a fan trip aboard two CMBC Orion Vs the day previous, and also on Sunday TMS operated a fan-trip aboard 1964 GM ‘Fishbowl’ 4612.
The Canadian Transit Heritage Foundation (CTHF) and the Transit Museum Society (TMS) were planning a heritage tour utilizing an Orion V suburban bus from Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC). The Orion V buses, built in 2008, are the last high floor buses in Canada operating for a public transit system. In the event, the tour was so popular that two Orions were chartered. The six-hour heritage tour covered some of the suburban routes (White Rock, Tsawwassen, etc.) where the buses were normally used. (CTHF).
The were many out-of-town guests for the Orion tour. So TMS operated a fan-trip aboard 4612 the following day. The trip covered some scenic spots along the Fraser River, including Westerham Island. It was organized by Milan Streit and Angus McIntyre (who also drove). Milan reports:
Happy to report all smooth sailing on our “Fishbowl along the Fraser” Excursion. All our stops were a great success, and we kept fantastic timing the entire time. We had 29 guests aboard. Some of the reviews coming back to me are fantastic, the out-of-towners were beyond excited for the opportunity and commented on the great look and restoration of the bus.
Over 4600 visitors climbed aboard our Musuem Bus, #730 at the Main Street Car Free Day. Our attendance was organized by Lawrence Walker (with help, no doubt from Sue!) It was a wet day, but that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm to visit the coach. Thanks to driver Evan Russell, and hosts Matthew Walker, Sue Walker, Oscar Kapsa, Hubert Leong, Teddy Sun, Michael Penco, Aden Wong, Martin Wu and Maxwell Chang.
Thanks also to our photographers, Rob Chew, Aden Wong, and Lawrence Walker.
That’s a wrap for another year. We had 29,401 guests visit our museum bus, 730. (This was slightly down from last year’s 33,813. It is inline with the drop in PNE attendance.) The average visitor count per day was 1960.
One more stat is impressive. Total volunteer hours for the PNE: 492. We would like to thank our incredible volunteers: Aden Wong, Aedan Smyth, Angus McIntyre, Anthony Sherst, Aurora Powell, Bryan Larrabee, Rhonda Larrabee, Conan Burr, Evan Russell, Ewan Streit, Fred Bradley, Hubert Leong, Jacquie Sherst, Jason Blonde, Jason Sharpe, Jeff Veniot, Lawrence Walker, Matthew Walker, Maxwell Chang, Michael Taylor-Noonan, Milan Streit, Patrick Damian, Rian Fatemi, Rob Chew, Ron Hoskyn, Steve Goodman, Sue Walker, Taiki Yu and Wally Lee. My apologies if I have missed anyone. A special shoutout to Milan and Lawrence who organized the volunteer shifts, and to Bryan & Evan who drove 730.
The TMS volunteers were joined by Kevin Quinn and family (next to Lawrence with his hand up) on the last day of the PNE.
Bryan Larrabee greets the first visitors of the day on Wednesday, 20th August.
Once again we and our mobile museum visit the Pacific National Exhibition. We are at the same spot in between the Coliseum, Rollerland and Agrodome. Why not stop by and visit with our volunteers? The PNE is open everyday till and including Monday 1st September from 11am.
This year, pick up your “Next Stop” Summer” TransLink passport. With three stamps (all of which you can get by visiting us and the TransLink displays) you can get a free hat and some candy, as well as a chance to win some Compass passes!
TMS President initiates discussion at our 2025 Strategic Planning meeting
In September of 2022 our former warehouse agreement had expired and the landlord wanted to demolish the building, so we had to move. TransLink signed a lease agreement on a warehouse in Langley that they have kindly allowed us to use for storing and maintaining our vintage fleet as well as our artefact collection, library and bus parts.
We moved into a warehouse 4,000 sq/ft smaller than our former Burnaby location because leases had almost doubled. We had to figure out how to adapt to a reduced home base. We have spent all our time trying to fit into our warehouse and to organize, set priorities and deal with inventory. To be honest, we were just reacting to the problems and issues as they arose. We needed a formal Strategic Plan to lead us into the future.
In May of 2024 we conducted our first strategic planning meeting with our 8 directors and some key TMS members. Topics chosen were:
Volunteer Management
Transit Museum “brand”
Relationship with TransLink
Future of the vintage fleet
We quickly discovered that the limitations we face greatly impact on our ability to plan for the future. Our location is a longer commute for volunteers and the smaller space limits our ability to do much in the way of restoring or repairing and maintenance of buses. As an example, there is only enough room for 8 of our 16 vintage buses. We simply can’t do many things that we would like to do. We needed to do a follow-up Strategic Planning Workshop, so we did that in July 2025.
The first workshop raised a lot of questions and produced some goals and objectives that we wanted to tackle, but we still had to decide if those goals were achievable considering the limitations that we identified. Our topics were not far from the issues that we tried to address in 2024:
Volunteer Management
Fundraising
Vintage Fleet
We talked about engaging our volunteers more and conducting a membership drive as well as a new process for welcoming new volunteers.
Do you have a particular bus in our vintage fleet that you would like to support? It might be in the form of starting a fundraiser or merely donating funds that we can allocate to that bus.
Many good ideas for raising funds came up including the need to reach beyond our bus fan community to raise more money on our bus excursions. We need fresh ideas and are open to suggestions.
We came up with some tasks regarding better preservation of our vintage fleet. A discussion about the 90th birthday of the 1937 Hayes Teardrop has started. We are looking for someone who would be willing to volunteer to be a “project manager” for this.
We want to bring a bus out of storage in the Fraser Valley so that we can supplement our charters and excursions. We have nowhere to safely park it. We are willing to pay. Does anyone want to research this?
There are still pending tasks that were identified in all areas at the workshop, and our Board of Directors has already started on the new Plan. Many of our initiatives will be written up as future blogs this year, especially with respect to preserving our vintage fleet. We may be looking beyond our eight Directors for help to move us forward. So, stay tuned. There might be a role for you in our future!
The group split into two to discuss ideas. From Top, left to right, we see Jason Sharpe (Director), Austin O’Keefe (IT/Webmaster), Ewan Streit and Angus McIntyre (Director) presenting results of the discussions. In addition, Lawrence Walker, Rob Chew (Director), Aden Wong, Evan Russell (Director), Michael Taylor-Noonan (Director), Milan Streit (Director) and Sue Walker also attended. Rhonda Larrabee took the photos and helped organize the meeting.
On August 3, 2025, Vancouver hosted the 47th annual Pride Parade, drawing over 100,000 participants and spectators to the downtown core. This year’s event featured a new shortened and reversed route, beginning at Concord Pacific Place and proceeding along Pacific Boulevard, ending in the historic Davie Village. The parade was led by Host Nations and included a diverse array of floats, community organizations, and advocacy groups, all united in support of 2SLGBTQIA+ rights and visibility.
TMS again appeared as part of the TransLInk contingent, with our 1964 GM ‘New Look’ travelling the route (as #1 Beach.) Here are some photographs courtesy of Steve Goodman, showing parade ‘walkers’ Austin O’Keefe, Ewan Streit, Rian Fatemi, Matthew Walker and Angus McIntyre. Appropriately, Dave and Jacquelyn, who are featured in numerous BC Hydro commercials, visited 4612!
The full crew from TMS comprised: Anthony Sherst (driver), Aurora Rose, Martin Wu, Francis He, Stephen Goodman, Bailey Whalen, Rian Fatemi, Ewan Streit, Angus McIntyre, Milan Streit, Matthew Walker, Sue Walker, and Lawrence Walker. Our thanks to all for so proudly representing Transit Museum Society! (Photos: Lawrence Walker/Matthew Walker)
In this week’s post we have some interesting photos:
In this photo taken by Aden Wong, we see #5509 being prepared for its journey out to our storage in the Fraser Valley.
While over in bay #1, Jason Sharpe is working on 4107.
Sean Keating instructs him on replacing the weatherstripping around the windows. Then, it is time to turn the coach around. 4107 is moved out to the parking lot, but without seats or passengers, it’s possible to mount only the inner rear wheels!
