April 1955: Last Ride on Vancouver’s Street Cars

I have a single, very vague memory of Victoria’s street cars.

It would have been when my father was away in the navy as Mom and I boarded a street car in the Cloverdale Road area of Saanich to go to town. (A long walk from our home on Brett Avenue for someone my age, I can tell you.)

I remember the driver at the front and the glass-sided box filled with coins and paper tickets, and a well-worn floor and hard seats, but not a whole lot more. Then, for years after motorized buses had taken over public transit, several downtown Victoria streets with their flush-mounted iron rails yet intact, and the giant, corrugated iron barn on Cloverdale where the trolleys were kept and repaired. It stood, unused, until into the 1960s or so when the Hudson’s Bay Co. finally razed it to build a warehouse.

And, even after that, two of the old trolleys retired to private acreages, one in Saanich, one in Colwood, for use, I suspected, as chicken houses.

But that’s it.

I have two books been written about Victoria’s and Vancouver’s street cars in my library and now, thanks to friend and reader Lorelei Rondeau, an illustrated booklet published by the B.C. Electric Railway Co.

This special April 1955 issue of The Buzzer, entitled Rails-to-Rubber, “cordially invited” the public to “take a last ride FREE” aboard Vancouver’s street cars which were about to be retired.

Next week I share this Buzzer with Chronicles readers who will, I’m sure, find the photos of this now long-gone mode of public transportation as fascinating as I have. Anyone who has ridden a bus lately will realize how far we’ve come in 65 years!

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