Route 52

There was a bus route in Ottawa, back in the day, where the morning driver was a local hero. Not because of some dramatic event, but because he spent forty years doing what he was born to do, and doing it well.

City buses back then were noisy, grimy, overcrowded, reeking of diesel and sweat. I suppose not much has changed. For a nickel, the bus would get you downtown, and for another nickel, would take you home at night. Never the transportation of choice, but you couldn’t argue with a nickel a ride, no monthly parking, no automobile insurance and upkeep. Practical, but no pleasure ride.

Route 52 was different, and it was different because of the driver. I never did learn his name, and I wish I had. But I will never forget him.

Mr. Route 52 knew everybody and everything about them. He knew them by name, or by his nickname for them, he knew if they had kids, or were at the university, or worked for the Deputy Minister. He knew if they were Jewish (because of the days they were absent), or from Venezuela (because he’d pick up on the accent and wheedle it out of them), or how a young man’s romance was going (by the look on his face on Monday morning).

Every morning, when you dragged yourself, half asleep, onto his bus, he had a joke or a wisecrack for you. As if the whole point of his bus route was to pick up you, and only you, as if he were your friend and your chauffeur. More the former.

On one or two occasions, when a young woman’s baby decided to arrive early, the whole bus load got a speedy detour to the Civic Hospital. And more than once, he arranged on-the-spot translation services for a new immigrant.

He loved his job, he loved his people, he loved his life. And when he retired, he was irreplaceable.

Not every professional is a neurosurgeon or in the National Hockey League. Mr. Route 52 was a professional. He was everything that the man in charge of getting you downtown on a gloomy Tuesday morning should be. When you got on his bus, he reminded you that you were a somebody, a somebody different from everyone else, a somebody with a story, a somebody important. And then he got you to work safely and on time. Except for the Civic Hospital detours.

Sure, he got you downtown safely, but he also got you downtown ready to face the world, understanding that you were part of something much bigger than yourself, living in a place where we all depend on each other.

Mr. Route 52 was lucky. He got a job driving a bus, but he also got a job where he could be everything he was meant to be– caring, gregarious, perceptive, discrete, wise, encouraging…. He embodied the principle of alignment. He got to live out his giftings to serve the people who needed them.

I wish I had known his name.

(Dedicated to my friend Doug. He wasn’t Mr. Route 52, but he could have been.)