Disclaimer: This article is published under the Charlatan’s satire section, the Partisan. All quotes have been fabricated.
It’s been just over a year since third-year Carleton journalism student Lillian Pepper has felt the warmth of a previous commuter’s ass on the hard, uncomfortable seat of an OC Transpo bus departing from campus.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, Pepper moved from Ottawa back to her small hometown of Big Britain, Ont. With only about 1,000 residents, the town is too small to warrant a public transit service.
Pepper said the adjustment to living in squalor hasn’t been easy, saying old habits die hard.
“At first, I would stand at the end of my driveway for hours, waiting for a bus to whisk me away,” Pepper said. “I finally snapped out of it when my neighbour yelled, ‘Just out for a rip are ya, bud?’”
Jack Countreeman, Pepper’s neighbour who was cracking open a few cold ones with the boys in his garage at the time, said the whole experience was “a bit fucky.”
“She kept muttering, ‘Classic OC Transpo, running late again’ while she laughed by herself and checked her watch,” Countreeman said.
Having a random man call out to her while she was minding her own business did remind Pepper of public transit memories. However, she said the interaction didn’t come close to the fond experiences she had in the city.
“I miss the creepy old men staring at me with dead eyes, the computer science students who would stand so close that the zippers from their massive backpacks would narrowly miss hitting my face with every bump,” she said. “Most of all, I miss the creepy Christian women who never stopped trying to convert me on the bus.”
Pepper isn’t the only student longing for the everyday thrill of an OC Transpo driver taking a corner way too fast. Many other students who moved home during the pandemic say they’re also struggling to adapt to commuting in rural Ontario.
RIP to freedom and fun
Fukeenma Cousen, a second-year sociology student at Carleton, came home to White Place, Ont., when the pandemic started ramping up in Ottawa. She said needing her parents to drive her around, because there is no public transit in the town, is her “13th reason why.”
“At school, I could take the bus when I was going to hook up or needed to get something—every outing wasn’t an event—but now because my family shares one car, I have to ask to be dropped off like a five-year-old,” Cousen said. “It’s embarrassing.”
Pepper, who does have access to her own car, said driving to work in rural Ontario doesn’t carry the same high stakes as it does in the city.
“There’s no pedestrians or cyclists to narrowly avoid as I make a hasty right turn. It’s just not the same,” she said. “The fear in their eyes—or in many students’ cases, the sweet, sweet relief—as they see me turning into them is the best part of my commute.”
Randoma Wumann, a Carleton researcher who studies the psychology of commuting, said students experiencing a loss in freedom and enjoyment of commuting-related activities will likely face challenges until they are back in a city with public transit again.
“There’s no way around it, commuting in the country just isn’t as fun,” Wumann said. “To those students, I would say: it sucks to suck.”
The results of Wumann’s study into solutions for students commuting in rural areas across Ontario align resoundingly with her sentiments. A whopping 98 per cent of those surveyed said the best way to deal with the difficulties of rural commuting during the pandemic are “to suck it up.”
Cousen, when told her commuting problems are small potatoes during a global pandemic, hesitantly agreed. “I never thought of it that way,” she said. “I’ll be damned.”
Nostalgia of poor transportation planning
The students interviewed for the article agreed that in addition to their loss of freedom and the joys of commuting, they missed the will-it-won’t-it-show-up anticipation of public transportation most.
Never knowing if the buses, LRT or any other form of public transportation in Ottawa would arrive on time (they usually didn’t) kept things exciting, Cousen said.
“It’s almost like foreplay. After waiting 45 minutes for a bus to pull up to your stop in winter, for example, you feel a sudden rush of energy and get maybe too excited when you hear the wheels screech to a halt,” she said.
Cousen equated the situation to the TV trope seen on the show Friends where turmoil and unrest in a relationship left viewers on edge, rooting for two characters in a love story to get together in the end.
“OC Transpo is Ross Geller and I’m Rachel Green waiting,” she said.
For Pepper, the bigger public transit gamble lies in city transit planning. The ever-changing and seemingly-random timelines for maintenance and route changes kept her on her toes.
“It feels like the City of Ottawa is always rolling the dice to see what kinds of plans it should make, but I’m here for it,” Pepper said. “Nothing that exciting ever happens here.”
Commuting, but make it rural
While rural student commuters are facing first-world problems, some of them have decided to take Wumann’s advice and make the best of the situation.
Jon Deere, a fourth-year business student at Carleton who moved home to Butefuk Nohwhere, Ont. when the pandemic hit, is one of those students. Growing up on his family’s farm, Deere said he came up with some creative solutions to get to where he needed to go.
“I had gotten used to all of the hustle and bustle in the city, so when I had to walk to a friend’s house, I was thinking of how I could get there faster,” Deere said. “Bessie was just standin’ there, and I figured she could make the trip.”
Bessie is one of the Deere family’s prized dairy cows. Deere said since the house wasn’t far away, saddling her up for the commute wouldn’t have adverse health effects for the cow.
“Was it any faster? Not really, but it was a hell of a lot more fun. Yee yeet,” Deere said.
Until Carleton reopens campus, giving rural students a reason to move back to the city and indulge in public transit and all of the amazing experiences that come along with it, students living in rural Ontario will have to learn to cope.
Taking a page out of Deere’s book, they can always rely on the people (and animals) surrounding them to help them through the pandemic. Yee yeet.
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
