Let the man sing!
I’VE NEVER BEEN a huge fan of OC Transpo’s management, but when their decision to silence Yves Roy—the Singing Bus Driver—hit the press, it really struck a chord with me.
Roy, who is a full-time OC bus driver, was ordered to cease his long-time prac- tice of singing loudly at work following the complaints of 12 patrons this past week. It’s a move I disagree with on a number of levels from the political to the more personal, and it seemed to crystallize a lot of things I’ve been thinking about our public transit system and the way it’s run.
Considering all the recent OC controversy, from the route-cutting “Optimization” plan to the YouTube.com footage of an irate bus driver threatening and verbally abusing a passenger, it was the last thing the service’s reputation needed.
If you’ve lived in Ottawa for as long as I have, you know it’s not controversial to say that our public transit system has an image problem. The advertisements emblazoned on bus shelters across the city reminding us of the important jobs tran- sit workers do is an acknowledgement of this fact as much as an effort to solve the problem.
In a week where one cellphone video after another emerged showing the ugly side of OC Transpo, the decision to si- lence Roy was like reloading and shooting themselves in the other foot. If the online reaction is any indication of public opin- ion on the matter, a move to let him sing would be a much-needed step in the right direction.
Gagging Roy is part of a greater pattern of petty authoritarianism on the part of OC Transpo management that has raised tensions in our city. It brings to mind one of the perennial demands of the transit workers’ union: More accommodating schedules. When the men and women many of us depend on to get where we’re going are being told to shut up, stop sing- ing, and drive whenever and wherever they’re told, it makes our buses an un- happy workplace.
As someone who takes the bus nearly every day of his life, I have always been struck by what a solitary experience it is. We all sit around, lost in our newspapers and our music (or, sometimes, our neigh- bour’s music), not speaking or even look- ing at one another.
The news coverage about Roy, however, has turned up some heartwarming stories of groups of passengers joining him in renditions of their favourite songs. Whether it’s on that first commute early Monday morning or after a long day at the university, couldn’t we all use a rousing chorus of a classic like “Que Sera, Sera” every now and then?
Issues relating to OC Transpo havelong divided us as students and residents of this city, from the 2008–09 bus strike to the controversy surrounding the new U- Pass. When Roy’s story exploded into the media and onto the Internet, few people were as pleasantly surprised as I was to see such a groundswell of support and sympathy for one of our city’s bus drivers. Wherever else we may disagree, students and transit riders across the city can rally around one simple demand: Let the man sing!
—Edward Roue
