Every couple of years, I get my knickers in enough of a twist to fire off a letter to the editor of our local paper. I’ve got a pretty good record of getting them published. I’ve got another one published this morning.<\/p>\n
The back story <\/a>has to do with a mother of a two-year old and a baby who was trying on the weekend to get onto an OCTranspo (city) bus at a stop with another mom pushing a stroller also waiting. The driver got into a spat and ended up denying access to the two moms and strollers. Except, the two-year old daughter of one of the mothers had already boarded the bus. He drove a short distance away, and then stopped when the other passengers either (a) screamed in horror or (b) informed him that the two-year old was on the bus, depending on whose version of the story you believe.<\/p>\n Regardless, the ensuing shitstorm has been all over the media, and has brought the anti-stroller lobby out of the woodwork. It was to these kind souls, who think that mothers with strollers have no place on public transit, that my letter<\/a> was addressed.<\/p>\n Stay off buses? Re: Strollers are headache for drivers, passengers, Oct. 8.<\/p>\n I read with interest Doloros Swallow’s letter and union leader Andr\u00c3\u00a9 Cornellier’s comments in Kelly Egan’s column (“Try sitting in the bus driver’s seat”) about strollers on OC Transpo buses.<\/p>\n As a mother of three boys under seven and a regular user of OC Transpo, I’d like to ask these people: what else should mothers of babies do? Do you recommend they leave the strollers at home and carry their babies and toddlers everywhere? That’s not so easy with a 30-pound napping toddler.<\/p>\n Perhaps they should stay off the buses altogether? Isn’t one of the main tenets of public transportation supposed to be that it should be accessible to those who don’t have other means of transportation?<\/p>\n You might argue that there are smaller strollers available on the market. Even if you overlook the fact that umbrella-type folding strollers are not appropriate for very young babies, you should try pushing one through even the thinnest sheen of slush on Ottawa’s winter sidewalks, let alone in more than a couple of centimetres of fresh snow. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford more than one stroller — one for foul weather and one for small spaces. Many other parents are not so fortunate.<\/p>\n Yes, it’s difficult to manoeuvre around one or more strollers at the front of an OC Transpo bus. Yes, mothers (and other caregivers) should do what they can to take up as small a space as possible.<\/p>\n But I think we all have enough things to worry about right now without castigating people who are simply trying to do the very same thing you are — to get from one place to another with as little hassle and inconvenience as possible.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a9 The Ottawa Citizen 2008<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ha, now that I think about it, my last published letter <\/a>to the editor was about public transit as well!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every couple of years, I get my knickers in enough of a twist to fire off a letter to the editor of our local paper. I’ve got a pretty good record of getting them published. I’ve got another one published this morning. The back story has to do with a mother of a two-year old … Continue reading “Strollers on buses – my letter to the editor”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-ottawa","category-rants-and-rambles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Ottawa Citizen
\nPublished: Thursday, October 09, 2008<\/p>\n