Streetcar Desire | Gordon Oleschuk is the last of Edmonton's oldtime drivers
ETS Centennial
Winston Churchill Square. Sept. 12-20
When bullets shattered the calm of a routine streetcar trip over the High Level Bridge, the first thing on driver Gordon Oleschuk’s mind was the safety of his two passengers.
But by the time he could look over his shoulder to see windows crashing inward, the two women were already scrambling to get on the floor and out of the line of the hidden sniper’s fire.
“Somebody shot at us with a .22 [caliber rifle] from down below,” the 81-year-old says. “I’ll tell you I didn’t waste any time getting off that bridge. That was the only scary experience I really had.”
Oleschuk doesn’t remember the year of the incident, but it was likely in the late 1940s, not long after he started his 35-year career with the Edmonton Transit System.
“We looked and we never found anybody,” he says. “We don’t know if it was some kid or what.”
Today, nearly a quarter-century after retiring from a public transportation career that started with streetcars and trolleys and ended with the LRT, Oleschuk is again making the trip across the High Level. Nowadays, however, he is a volunteer driver with the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, which will play a big role next week as ETS celebrates its first century of service with concerts, trolley rides, streetcar tours, and other events.
Oleschuk started his career in 1948 just three years before the old electric streetcar system, which ran over steel rails throughout Edmonton before they gave way to the more modern world of buses. At the time, the city’s fleet of streetcars had gone through years of heavy service and neglect because of the Second World War and the Depression. Though other drivers are still living, he is the last driver from that era still ferrying passengers on that nostalgic trip across the river — though these days they’re mostly tourists or history buffs.
He says most drivers were glad to see the streetcars taken out of service. On Jasper Avenue, car traffic was restricted to one lane in each direction, and even then he would have to be extra-careful so riders wouldn’t be hit by cars when they disembarked from his vehicle. “Today,” he says, “traffic would be backed up for miles behind them.”
In winter, the only interior heat came from a small coal stove the driver was required to light when his shift started. “They gave us a bundle of kindling and some newspaper,” he says.
On frosty mornings, when the cars approached slopes on each side of the High Level, the driver had to get out and spread sand on the tracks. Oleschuk says it wasn’t uncommon for the wheels to be spinning as he drove up the hill near the Alberta legislature.
As a young driver, he also operated a sweeper car, which would clear the tracks of snow before regular service began. “I started work at 3 a.m.,” he says.
But he always enjoyed a good rapport with riders. “I always said good morning to them,” he recalls, “even though there were a few who only mumbled.”
Through the years, Oleschuk eventually drove every kind of bus that came along, eventually becoming one of the first drivers of the then-new LRT system.
“My first day of work was when the Commonwealth Games opened,” he says.
He finished his career in 1984 as an LRT inspector, but says he still takes the bus whenever he can.
“I won’t drive a car when I go downtown.”
jholubitsky@see.greatwest.ca
