License to ham

>> How much personality can a bus driver show?

By NOEMI LOPINTO

Climb aboard the 80 bus along du Parc and you could find yourself cruising through Mile-End with a fistful of jelly beans and a big red balloon for your kid, thanks to unconventional bus driver Christian Lachance. Or you could board the 165 along Guy and be rattled in your boots by Jacques Roy's big, booming baritone as he sings show tunes in your ear.

After complaints against Roy sparked a citywide debate last week, the question now is: how much personality can a bus driver show?

The local bus brass knows of four or five other unorthodox souls who blast out opera tunes, tell jokes and sing along with the golden oldies as they cruise the concrete, according to Odile Paradis, media director of the MUCTC. But Paradis says Montreal's bus drivers are given one mission: to transport clients.

"What is important to us is passenger security. We don't care if they sing, what we ask is that they be discerning." Paradis points out that Roy's singing might be fine at 6 p.m. on a Friday, but not on a Monday at 5 a.m. Roy has been the subject of 60 customer commentaries in the last six years, about half of which were complaints. Paradis says Roy's complaints exceed the norm. "We certainly don't get calls for all 3,000 employees. People will usually only call if a driver has been rude or careless."

When Roy was asked in by supervisors to discuss "toning it down," he collected a petition in his favour signed by 150 bus patrons. He collected them while off duty, in less than three hours. "Imagine how many I would have gotten had I spent the whole day!" he says. Upon exiting the impassioned meeting, Roy says all the off-duty bus drivers greeted him with a rousing rendition of "Chante la, ta chanson."

Roy told the Mirror that a Télévision Quatre Saisons report on him, combined with a favourable interview with Radio-Canada, has drowned out the 30-odd complaints by passengers. He says singing is a part of his Gaspé heritage and he wouldn't consider driving in silence.

Lachance, on the other hand, was inspired to become the "Candy Man" on Halloween in 1995. Reactions were so positive he has been handing out jelly beans, balloons and decorating his vehicle ever since. He also tries to keep abreast of any national holidays: "I try to celebrate all the different nationalities in Montreal. Sunday [Aug. 13] was a national holiday for Pakistan, so I decorated the bus with Pakistani flags. When it was a Peruvian holiday a while back I played salsa and merengue all day."

Lachance knows that he too has inspired complaints, mostly from parents concerned that their children were accepting candies from a stranger. "I asked my supervisor, 'Was I aggressive, did I drive badly? Was I reckless?' No. Which means they don't like my personality. I can live with that."

Concludes the MUCTC's Paradis: "Our drivers serve over a million people a day from all languages and cultures. They're in all kinds of moods. You can't please them all. Somebody's not gonna like something."

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