Part of Canadian life and reality goes down in history. Founded in 1929, Greyhound Canada has just ceased its operations across Canada, shutting down all connections.
The company ended its operations in the western part of Canada in 2018.
According to information provided by Greyhound Canada on its website, the following routes are being closed in Ontario and Quebec, which have been suspended since May 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic:
Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal
Toronto – London – Windsor
Sudbury – Ottawa / Toronto
Toronto – Kitchener / Guelph / Cambridge
Toronto – Niagara Falls
Ottawa – Kingston
Stuart Kendrick, Greyhound Canada’s senior vice president, said:
“We deeply regret the impact this has on our staff and our customers, as well as the communities we have had the privilege of serving for many years. A full year without revenue has unfortunately made it impossible to continue operations. Thank you to our dedicated staff for their commitment and service, and to our customers for choosing Greyhound Canada during better times. The company remains committed to honouring its labour agreements with employees and funding the commitments to our pension plan participants.”
Greyhound Canada explains the decision to completely close its services with many factors.
In recent years, the company has been reducing costs, adjusting timetables and trying to maximize its efficiency.
The first sign of hard times and drastic changes was precisely the suspension of services in western Canada. This was due to the decline in passenger numbers and the impact of changes in the transport industry, including deregulation and subsidization of competition such as VIA Rail.
The pandemic caused a 95% drop in passenger numbers, so the company was forced to suspend the system in May 2020.
The company tried to obtain financial support at the provincial and federal level, but government financial investment in this sector of the economy, which is long-distance bus connections, was negligible. The company could not run the business any longer without financial support.
While Greyhound connections between cities in Canada are shut down, international connections operated by Greyhound U.S. will continue to run on five routes across the border. They either start or end in the US, these are the following connections:
Toronto – Buffalo, NY
Toronto – New York
Montreal – Boston
Montreal – New York
Vancouver – Seattle
400 jobs will be lost – according to ATU – The Amalgamated Transit Union. 305 of these positions were unionized positions. ATU’s president’s John Di Nino opinion is that this could have been avoided if provincial and federal governments became interested in remote communities that rely on such transportation.
