Practically right next door to the Chong house there were free amusement rides in the dusty field at the Marpole Community Centre, clowns entertaining/frightening people, as well as taekwondo and belly dance demonstrations in the basketball court.
While it seemed the entire neighbourhood was there having fun, Julian Chong, 8, was perfectly content to sit behind a table decorated to Pinterest standards with sister Ginger, 6, to hawk lemonade, homemade cookies and polka-dotted boxes full of gummy bears.
“Mom teaches the packaging and marketing part of it,” said the kids’ uncle Peter So. “I teach Julian how to do customer service. I’m a financial controller so obviously I know how to sell stuff.”
Julian fished out a coin from his mini safe that he received for his seventh birthday and So stopped to inspect. “It’s an American quarter, it’s worth more,” he joked.
“He really wanted to do this on Marpole Community Day,” said mom Ivy. “In the past, somehow the weather doesn’t work out or I’m too busy but this was the year.”
While Julian counted fistfuls of quarters with an accountant’s precision, every other eight-year-old boy in Marpole seemed to be at Saturday’s annual fair. In the middle of a gravel field was a mini golf course, faded green from dust and where toddlers stumbled over the game’s obstacles while erratically waving tiny golf clubs. Parked behind was a transit bus flashing its universally disappointing ‘Sorry Not in Service” sign, which was next to a generator-powered mini swing ride to give the shadeless scene a child’s version of Burning Man.
Kids dashed for the bus for a chance to sit in the driver’s chair and lean on the horn while dads marvelled at all the toggles and switches on the front dash and expressing surprise the buses don’t have a start key or a gas gauge.
Under the giant plush head of Mr. Buzzer, Coast Mountain Bus Company’s mascot, was operations supervisor Jennifer Rioux, who was thankful she had extra staff this year to help with the crowds that rival the rush hour line-up at the Broadway and Commercial station.
“We’ve brought the bus out for the last few years, it’s more fun for the kids than the booth we used to have,” said Rioux. “Usually the papers focus on when something bad happens on transit so it’s nice for us to be a part of the community as well.”
While transit security made an appearance at the fair but were called away for an incident on the SkyTrain, Rioux’s biggest concern was watching the kids to make sure nobody accidentally took the parking brake off.
At the other end of the field was another bus, a rounded version instead of the modern shoe-box style. The pale yellow bus, a 1957 GMC “Old Look,” once ran the Vancouver routes and now lives out retirement with the Transit Museum Society.
“It was never officially called an ‘Old Look’ but the term ‘New Look’ came out so people thought, well, this must be an ‘Old Look,’” said society president Dale Laird.
This started an enthusiastic conversation between Laird and Harry Vagg, a retired operator who started with B.C. Electric in 1956, about the old “fishbowl” style buses.
“They’re still running, somewhere,” said Laird. “Last night at our meeting we were trying to think…. The last one ran in Toronto a year ago.”
Bus drivers are street-level people watchers with interesting observations of a changing city, its people, and its landscape over the decades. If Fred Herzog photographs were moving, they would be from the bus driver’s perspective.
“I liked the job and I liked meeting people,” said Laird while Vagg nodded in agreement. “The junior guys couldn’t understand us wanting to drive trolley buses.
Because it takes a little more skill to follow the wires, you know. They’d ask us why and it’s because they’re quiet and you don’t have to listen to that damn engine all day long.”
It was easy to get caught up in the rolling museum with the live narration of the storytellers. By the time the last visitors stepped off the bus, the only traces of Marpole Community Day at its 3 p.m. end was a deflated giant slide and workers packing up rides.
The end of the fair was good news for the Chongs and their sales goal of $20 — there was now a line-up at the lemonade stand.
