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The fun & fascinating stories of Supply Chain & Logistics.
Bryndis Whitson: [00:00:03] Hi, my name is Bryndis Whitson and you're listening to the Zebras to Apples podcast, the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. In this episode where I'm talking with my friend Lorne Fleming on what is actually his 91st birthday, Lorne had a career in the military, and then when he decided to leave the military, he thought, "what am I going to do next?", And for 30 years he worked at Calgary Transit. He started out as a trolley and a bus driver, and then he went into training for upcoming bus drivers, trolley bus drivers. And then one day they were at a bus rodeo in Edmonton, and they knew that the LRT was about to come to Calgary. And they had a conversation and they thought, "huh, we're gonna have to set up a training program", and Lorne and his colleagues were actually the very first trainers of the Calgary Transit's Light Rail Transportation System, or LRT. And this is Lorne's story. Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful day.
Bryndis Whitson: [00:01:21] I'm here today with Lorne Fleming. Welcome, Lorne. So you were in the military for a few years, and then when you decided to leave the military, you were trying to figure out what career you were going to do next. And how did Calgary Transit become that next step?
Lorne Fleming: [00:01:39] How it affected me was I had decided, when I got out of the Air Force, that I'd like to find a job that would recognize my service, which was short enough, but still I felt that I could apply for it. The first place I went to was the police department, and I was the most unusual we ever had in my life. I walked in and the fellow said, “what did you want? " I said, "I'd just like to apply for a position to become a police officer, sir". He said, "Well, it doesn't matter. You don't meet the qualifications". I said, "excuse me, could you tell me what the first qualifications are?". He said, "if you don't meet them, why should I tell you?". I was absolutely floored. I thought that's not the nicest of answers. So my next thought was, well, another uniform force, and it wasn't far from the police station. It was the fire hall. So I went to the fire hall. The fellow was very courteous and handed me an application form. He said, you can fill that out and bring it back and we'll put it in that pile. The pile was about 2.5in inches high. So I thought, hmm, maybe a long time before I get this job. Now in desperation, I thought there's only one other uniformed service, Calgary Transit. So I went down and I walked in and the fellow looked at me. He said, "Well, I'm sorry to tell you, we just filled the last training class for this year". And he said, "Besides that you would have to know the city of Calgary". I said, "well, I was born in Calgary". He said, "I'll be right back". He came back, gave me an application form and said, "show up on Monday morning for your first class".
Bryndis Whitson: [00:03:41] Oh my goodness.
Lorne Fleming: [03:11] So that's when being a Calgarian was very applicable.
Lorne Fleming: [03:47] Well, the major thing was that we had one of the fellows if you came in and wanted, as a matter of fact, it still exists in downtown Calgary. You can go in and ask for a route map of the routes. Well, of course, that meant that when we were told the busses will now be carried straight through to such and such an area, one of our training officers used to go out and drive it first, and then find different places where it had to be very careful, tight on this corner, etc. to establish where a loop would be. And so that was part and parcel of our department, the training department to work on these things. Then it went to the publishers. So when you went into the downtown store and said, can I have a route map for such and such? You immediately had it.
Bryndis Whitson: [04:50] Well, and that reminds me because for the longest time we did have a lot of loops. Bow trail had the loop at the top of the hill. The buses could turn around and I could see that was probably part of the reason, now that I think about it, because at certain times of the day, or in certain weather conditions, it's safer to go straight than turn or something like that.
Lorne Fleming: [05:17] Well, that was particularly important with a trolleybus because they had to wire all of that.
Bryndis Whitson: [05:24] That's right.
Lorne Fleming: [05:24] And even in those days, copper wiring was very expensive. Now copper wire is impossible.
Bryndis Whitson: [05:32] Exactly. Did you have to drive any of the trolley buses?
Lorne Fleming: [05:38] Oh, yes.
Bryndis Whitson: [05:38] Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [05:40] The trolley bus training too. That was quite interesting because one of the things that could happen, they were held in place by springs.
Bryndis Whitson: [05:52] Okay.
Lorne Fleming: [05:52] Held them up against the wire. Now, the odd time you would hit a bump or something like that at the back of the bus, there were two big reels with ropes. Of course, if they flew off, they would go up so far. And the big things on the back end would retrieve. They were called retrievers. They would pull the pole down. Otherwise, if the bus was still moving, it could tear out a lot of the overhead.
Bryndis Whitson: [06:24] Oh, yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [06:26] So they used to use the retrievers and yours truly? Yeah. Being a bit mischievous would occasionally, the fella in front of me, would be going out. Years ago, we used to have to put a plate on the back of the bus to distinguish which route. I would let him go up to the front, and as he was going to the front, I would pull out the ropes, put a half hitch around the retriever, and he would start to go out and all of a sudden the wire would go up. And we went out the door and the retriever would realize something's wrong and pull the pole down. So a couple of times I said, Dave, you're going just out far too fast. You're going to have to slow down. He did that two days in a row. On the third day, however, I forgot that he came back to put the sign in the back of the bus, as I was walking the rope down. So a bit of mischievous fun.
Bryndis Whitson: [07:37] Yes, exactly. So how different was driving a trolley bus versus a regular bus?
Lorne Fleming: [07:43] Basically, there are certain areas that, well, I'll give you another example. They forgot to give us a notification that they had changed one bus loop. I went out to it started to turn where this was laid on the midnight trip. I went to turn and I found the retrievers locked down. I thought, why would they do that? Well, they forgot to tell us they had changed the position to the loop, so I'm sitting up on the top, luckily on a hill unable to move right. So I ended up locking the retrievers down and literally rocking back and forth till the bus slowly rolled back down under the wire.
Bryndis Whitson: [08:34] Oh my goodness.
Lorne Fleming: [08:35] Almost booked for overtime.
Bryndis Whitson: [08:37] Yeah. Well it's interesting now to think that we're going full circle and we're talking about electric buses again.
Lorne Fleming: [08:48] Mhm.
Bryndis Whitson: [08:49] All these years later having gone away from them and now we're like well why.
Lorne Fleming: [08:53] Right back to where we started from.
Bryndis Whitson: [08:55] Exactly. Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [08:57] Well the other thing too is with the LRV, if you're sitting near the front as you're riding one, look at the overhead wiring. It doesn't go straight. You'll see it going left and going right. Now the reason for that is with the trolleys. They used to have a shoe, and if there was hoarfrost, they would come out and they'd put on metal shoes instead of the carbon ones to scrape off the ice and hoarfrost on the lines, which was rather interesting to see because you'd see the bus sparking and arcing.
Bryndis Whitson: [09:39] I remember that, I remember this.
Lorne Fleming: [09:40] It would light up the whole area. However, when the bus got back downtown, there's a crew that was standing there and they would take off the scraper shoes and put on conventional carbon shoes. Now, they did have one occasion, one time, that the fellow forgot himself and had left the power line up, and he was starting to take off the other one. Shortly he became the ground.
Bryndis Whitson: [10:09] Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [10:10] And luckily it threw him off the ladder he was on. But he learned. I didn't do it again.
Bryndis Whitson: [10:18] Oh I bet. So before you could become a bus trainer, you had to drive buses for at least five years before you could officially become a training officer. And you also around that time also drove the trolley buses. What was it like driving trolley buses, buses and all of those different pieces before you became a training officer?
Lorne Fleming: [10:45] Basically, it's one of the things that I can understand about the city's theory. Unless you've driven it, you really don't understand it. And then, of course, as the city grew, you had to. And that's where the trolley was sort of eliminated, because you had to have a big space to turn the bus completely around where the diesel buses could maneuver different ways, so it had its limitations. When I started on Calgary Transit that time, you had to be, as I recall, you had to have about five years experience before you could cease being a bus driver and then become a supervisor of some type.
Bryndis Whitson: [11:36] Okay. Well, that's a good thing, because then you really understand the actual everything on the system.
Lorne Fleming: [11:41] Right. So that was through the bus end. And then I also was a bus training officer. And with those we would take them out and literally introduce them to the bus from one end to the other. And some of the features you had to realize were not air conditioned, but for the driver, there's a flap in the front that you have to be able to slide the bus to see. It will open up so you get some air, etc. like that. And then one of the most critical things in the bus is the seat for the bus driver. And for a long time you just sat on the upholstery. Then they came up with cool cushions to sit on. Then there was one time that things that should have never happened when you bought your tickets. They came in a strip, and as a rule, you, when a person bought the tickets, you handed it to them and they would take off the first ticket. Some of the drivers were handing it to him. The person would take the tickets. They would take that and put the ticket under their cushion. Oh. And then sell them. Which was very, very illegal.
Bryndis Whitson: [13:11] Very.
Lorne Fleming: [13:13] Especially if caught.
Bryndis Whitson: [13:15] Yeah, exactly.
Lorne Fleming: [13:16] Some of the bad habits.
Bryndis Whitson: [13:17] Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [13:18] Well, basically both Gene and myself were bus training officers, and we had to learn a new language when it came to the LRVs. The city of Edmonton had started into LRT operations before we did by about a year and a half. And we used to put on what we call bus rodeos. And that's where you have different challenges, for example, what they call diminishing clearances, a whole bunch of barrels. So the bus comes up, has to go through that without hitting any of the barrels, then backing into spots and all this type of thing. After we finished with that type of operation, then they had an awards banquet afterwards, and so on. It started in Calgary. We ended up taking it up to Red deer. While we're in Red deer, this friend of mine who I haven't seen since we were five years of age, was standing there in an Edmonton transit uniform. So here was my friend, and I said, how did this ever happen? Well, he said I was applying for a job and it was to do with railroads. He started with the railroad for a promotion. Okay. And they said, oh, by the way, you are bilingual. And he said, no, I'm not. And they said, well, sorry, you don't have the job. So then he turned around and said, well, if that's the case, put me on a year's leave of absence while he's on a year's leave of absence, he and his wife were reading in the Edmonton newspaper about LRT coming.
Bryndis Whitson: [15:11] Right.
Lorne Fleming: [15:12] So he said to his wife, you know, this is nothing more than a big railroad scaled down.
Bryndis Whitson: [15:18] Exactly.
Lorne Fleming: [15:19] Now, when they used that, they also went by a rule book called Uniform Code of Rail Operations. So he was looking through there and he said, well, they had been in transit. That's what it is. So he set up the LRT training program for Edmonton.
Bryndis Whitson: [15:41] Okay.
Lorne Fleming: [15:43] Now at the same time, we're working on our end. So I went to my boss and explained to him the situation that we had this gentleman that was very well versed in railroading in general. Therefore, what happened was he said, well, maybe we should go visit him.
Bryndis Whitson: [16:04] Yeah, exactly.
Lorne Fleming: [16:05] Now, at the same time, we were doing a situation that was coming through Edmonton. Therefore, Edmonton was running out of railroad, out of buses. So we took two sets of our buses up to Edmonton. My boss left first with the first group, I left with the second. Then when we got up there, we distributed the busses for them. And then afterwards we came back to Calgary and on the way back we decided we should get into this LRT training. So that's how it started.
Bryndis Whitson: [16:49] Oh, wow. So I know you've got a piece of paper here that you've printed off. You printed off a whole bunch of different things for this interview, which is wonderful. And you wanted to go a little bit over the history of the start of the LRT with some facts and figures.
Lorne Fleming: [17:06] In May 1977, City Council gave a green light to Calgary Transit, implementing the light rail LRT system. One of the very first North American. Three months later, Council approved the purchase of 27 light rail vehicles from Siemens-Duewag in Germany. The price of the 27 vehicles was $21.8 million, just under $340,000 per vehicle.
Bryndis Whitson: [17:42] If only. If only it could be that price now.
Lorne Fleming: [17:50] In June 1980, the first LRT arrived in Calgary. The vehicle was shipped from Germany through the Panama Canal to the Port of Vancouver. When transported to Calgary via Rail, they arrived at the newly built Anderson Garage and were assembled there. The first vehicle arrived in January 1980. They were assembled and built in Calgary at the Anderson Garage, which took approximately three months. After four years of construction, the LRT officially opened on May 25th, 1981. The first line, known as the South, spans 16 stations from Edmonton to downtown. The North East line to Whitehorn opened in 1985, and two years later the North Line to the university opened. Mayor Ralph Klein, at the helm of the C-Train, was opened on May 25th, 1981. Between 1980 and 1986, a total of 85 Siemens-Duewag U2 vehicles were delivered to Calgary Transit and are referred to as the series one, two and three vehicles. The last two U2 vehicles were delivered in 1989. Known as the series four, these were the first LRVs in North America with AC pollution theory. Today, one of these vehicles still exists. The original entire fleet completed the fleet until July 2001, when the first car of the newly Siemens-Duewag SD 160 began arriving.
Bryndis Whitson: [20:12] I love those U2's. There's something special about those U2's.
Lorne Fleming: [20:17] One little interesting point, the very first pictures of the cars. The line was across here. And I said, one day I said, you know, that cannot be seen coming at you.
Bryndis Whitson: [20:37] And you worked mainly on the U2's a little bit?
Lorne Fleming: [20:40] Basically the first ones. Matter of fact, most of the advertising, they'll show car 001. Now, how we work this. Maybe you could use this one. At the beginning of our training, we only could take the trains out through what's called the interlock, that's where the trains come into the station. They can go to the left side, or they can go to the right, depending if there's another vehicle there. Of course, they're automatically directed. My companion's name was Gene Blood, so he had the other end. We had a two car hookup. 001 and 002. So during our training period, we took it from there to the next station, and then we couldn't even get into the other station because they are on the line itself. They can disconnect part of it. There were people working on the platform right by the wire.
Bryndis Whitson: [21:48] Oh, dear.
Lorne Fleming: [21:50] So what happened is we went down there and I'd been advised they had now taken out the insulator and we could get into the station. So we thought, this is good. Now we can change around a little easier. So I took 001 into the platform and this fell on the platform came at me just yelling and screaming. How do you expect you're going to get this thing out of here? And I said, very easy, we've got power. And he just went blank. He said, the power is on this line. I said, yes, he said, I've had workers working within feet of that line wire.
Bryndis Whitson: [22:39] Oh, dear.
Lorne Fleming: [22:40] So the air turned blue.
Bryndis Whitson: [22:43] Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [22:44] And so then Gene took the train back the other way. So I said to him, "If there's no power, how are we going to get out of here?”
Bryndis Whitson: [22:54] Yeah, exactly.
Lorne Fleming: [22:55] Right? So.
Bryndis Whitson: [22:57] So going out to Southland, were you there the day the first vehicle arrived?
Lorne Fleming: [23:06] These were the first two vehicles. Now, it was interesting how they did those as they were assembling them. They literally had to lay on their backs to work overhead.
Bryndis Whitson: [23:20] Oh, yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [23:21] And there's something like 18 miles of wire in each LRV.
Bryndis Whitson: [23:28] Oh my.
Lorne Fleming: [23:28] Goodness. So as they were laying there, they were far more comfortable as they pulled this wiring through.
Bryndis Whitson: [23:36] Oh wow.
Lorne Fleming: [23:38] And then connected it to where it belonged. Well, the other thing that was rather interesting was the scraps of wire that were left over. Yeah. They literally were filling up little carts and stuff like that, which were bigger than this table and deep. Just throwing all these pieces into being copper, they could melt it down.
Bryndis Whitson: [24:03] So what was it like working with the various technologies of the LRT that was kind of neat to work with?
Lorne Fleming: [24:14] What happened, we originally. It would be nice if we had some way of announcing the next station as you're coming to it, because normally all we did, for example, if we were out in a training car, we pulled into a station and there's passengers standing there. As we came in, we would announce, this is a training car. Please do not attempt to board. So we had this facility. Then one time they thought, well, that's interesting to have that. Could we not use it for making station announcements? Now, we had one young lady. Her name is Holly McConnell. Holly was the one that they selected to make these station announcements. We merely put in a tape into the tape deck, and as we came in, we activated it, and Holly would say the next station is so and so. Now, I have a book with a picture of Holly in it. And what happened was she was riding on the train and the announcement came. The lady sitting next to her said, I wish that girl would speak clearer.
Bryndis Whitson: [25:39] You know, it's technology that we sometimes take for granted, but there always had to be a first.
Lorne Fleming: [25:47] Right. So it was using built in equipment. But now, as I said, that we would make the announcements over the outside PA, this train is out of service. Do not attempt to board. Yeah, well, then we had the internal speakers that could be used. Well, that's when Holly came up with this program to play these announcements. Now, of course, it's all automated. And it basically tells you, of course, you can have a problem if by chance the wiring goes down or something in this side of the station, the trains can get a crossover by operating in the opposite direction. So and then of course the station platforms will automatically record and say if you're going downtown, go to the other side of the tracks.
Bryndis Whitson: [26:44] Well, and it's a knowledge of these kinds of moments like as you're kind of going through. I think it would always be neat to see the Anderson station or those different yards and think, well, I remember when, you know, and knowing that history and knowing that the city of Calgary is different because of the work that you did all those years ago, and it really impacted the city.
Lorne Fleming: [27:18] Yes, and especially when it works so hand in glove with Edmonton, when Edmonton had us up there to take their training, they gave us a lot of handout material, some of it had to be slightly amended for Calgary.
Bryndis Whitson: [27:38] Well, and especially because both of the LRT in Edmonton and Calgary started around the same time.
Lorne Fleming: [27:44] There was a two year difference. They were online about a year and a half to two before us. And of course, then we could actually see how it operated.
Bryndis Whitson: [27:56] Yeah. Did you find differences between Edmonton's line versus Calgary's line because Edmonton's was [older], did you find a difference?
Lorne Fleming: [28:06] Well, there's another feature that we used to simulate. And now, as a matter of fact, they have produced a full simulated program where you go for your training rather than being online, getting in the way of their regular trains, because now they're far more frequent. When we had it before, you didn't have to worry about that because we trained over midnight. If you rode the train on October 19th, you received one of these. I rode the first C-train train on October 19th, 1980.
Bryndis Whitson: [28:50] Oh, wow. That's amazing.
Lorne Fleming: [28:53] Then I retired from Calgary Transit and they put on a beautiful banquet. And they had various people speak at that time. It seemed as though I'd worked directly with Edmonton Transit. The training officer in charge of LRT in Edmonton, who had basically taught us how to project the features of the LRT, came for the retirement. They presented me with, of all things, the we always said that the seats on the train were for the moment, a little bit uncomfortable. They had rigged up a little chair with a little doll in it. They presented to me as my retirement present and my nephew was going around and interviewing different people, and then Mr. Reed from Edmonton Transit gave me a special honor that I am an honorary LRT training officer in Edmonton.
Bryndis Whitson: [30:24] Oh even better. Yeah, it must have been really neat seeing the technology right when it started.
Lorne Fleming: [30:32] Exactly.
Bryndis Whitson: [30:33] Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [30:34] Well, there's parallels to the train and the electric buses. For example, if you were coming downhill with the trolleybus, if you had your foot down on the accelerator, if you brought your foot back and you noticed beside your foot there's a little pin, it's actually just a peg in the floor. It was called peg speed. So if you brought it back up to that point, believe it or not, it changed the electric motors to electric generators. Therefore, you were throwing power back into the line. Now that worked fine, except on one occasion I had forgotten. And when I was, I was told when I learned the bus trolleybus, that you had to be very careful of it if you were the only bus on the line, because it put too much power back into the line.
Bryndis Whitson: [31:40] Oh, so right.
Lorne Fleming: [31:43] Coming down Center Street Hill. Last bus that night I went to Peg speed and it blew out every light bulb in the bus. The servicemen, when I drove in, just shook his hand and said, thanks a lot. Because it wasn't a case of taking a light bulb and a little screw, you took down the lights, and put it in the light bulb.
Bryndis Whitson: [32:10] Exactly. You had to do a whole bunch. Yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [32:14] I think there were about 10 or 12 light bulbs to be changed. Yeah.
Bryndis Whitson: [32:18] Oh my goodness. Well, quite the hill too. How did you find going down that Center Street Hill?
Lorne Fleming: [32:26] Well, again, that was when you really did use the extra brake. This had an advantage. Now, I think, to find these new electric cars are somewhat the same that they can go into retarding, in other words, when you go to slow down, the motors are slowing down too, right? So if you could turn like you do automatically on slippery roads, you get your foot off the accelerator. But you had this other advantage, the accelerator pedal now started working as a brake by reversing the electric. Now, I've never driven one of these new cars, but I assume that being electrical, they do have the same feature.
Bryndis Whitson: [33:12] Exactly. What are some fun moments that you quickly think of?
Lorne Fleming: [33:17] As far as the city of Calgary? Some of these letters that I received were slightly embarrassed that they saw things that I never wanted to try and brag or anything else but to receive a letter from, for example, Bert Peyton, who was the one who very, very seldom ever complimented me. He was an extremely good manager. But as I say, when some of the things you just read were very complimentary. Especially when he did mention that we were one of the first in North America. Now, for example, we had an occasion where a couple of people came in from other properties, and of course we gave them a tour around. Now we realized that they hadn't started their training, so we showed them the facilities we had and some of the simulated programs that we had introduced, which they continued to use on their own. Then one came in and I had written up basically a whole day by day procedure on how our training was done. And I gave it to Larry Conti, my boss, and he then sent it to another. Well, it was San Francisco. He sent that information to them. Now, he had his Friday off and I was in the office. The phone rang and Burt Peyton said, you have to answer on the second call. So I answered and I talked to him, and this fellow said, oh, he said, "I just want to thank Larry for sending this resume about a thing he said, but I've been talking to my staff now. They had a group that they wanted to train", he said. "I talked to my staff and they said, we're not going to a place where you're going to freeze to death". So I said, "Excuse me, are you by chance watching the Olympics right now?" He said, "oh yeah". He said, "but what's this? They had to cancel the day". I said, "you have to realize that it is called a Chinook." And I said, "no, your staff is concerned about coming to Calgary. Tell them, why would the Olympics have to be canceled for that day? Because it was too warm.".
Bryndis Whitson: [35:55] Yeah, exactly.
Lorne Fleming: [35:56] So they came.
Bryndis Whitson: [35:58] That's a good reason.
Lorne Fleming: [36:00] So. And then they came. And of course, then we needed extra training officers. So I was able to go to management and suggest 2 or 3 extra staff. And so then that made our office even bigger and stuff like that. Well the other thing too, before we hired people, they'd bring people in off the street and they would have an interview with them. And then they had a test. Now, the test had been made up by one of our fellow training officers, in which he was using the rules and regulations. If you went in for a license. But putting in a little bit of a twist with regards to transit. So I went down with this lady. Her name was Anne Archer Janey. And the two of us used to give out these tests, and there was a little circle where you marked an X in and so on and so forth. A, B or C type of thing. Well, we found that every time we xeroxed these sheets, it would move it over a little bit. So we'd originally had a thing with holes. You lay over the top of the check mark and say, oh we got that one right. Well, now every time you printed it, that would realign, right. So it reached the point that I would bone down and Anna would be marking and I would be telling her first they would be Nexus D, etc. and so this is how we first started our friendship. And then one day I thought, well, that's fine. We're just telling these people that, but we're not telling them what the job is really all about. So I sat down and wrote out a deal whereby we would give this talk and say, okay, this job looks like it's wonderful. However, sometimes, like when we went on strike, when we came back, we had to literally go down to the garage to see if somebody had got sick or anything else like that. And the strike lasted for 43 days.
Bryndis Whitson: [38:31] Oh my goodness.
Lorne Fleming: [38:33] So and that basically was for wages. Now here's another interesting story. At that time, Harry Hayes was the mayor of the city of Calgary. He sent us a letter. I originally had a copy of it, and it was sort of laying on the facts that you're not going to get a raise. And his closing comment was, let us keep our jobs. Well, there were a lot of us, including myself, that said, well, he's got a point to a degree. But when he said, let us keep our jobs, we all said, that's a threat. So the strike vote went about 90%, and said, we're gone.
Bryndis Whitson: [39:19] Oh, yeah.
Lorne Fleming: [39:21] Now then that created a disaster because you would literally have to go down to the garage and sit there and come over. Joe didn't show up for his run, and if he didn't get in the door on time, they said, you got to be here exactly on time. So grab this one. You got the run. And we'd get a little bit of time. And after the strike to some of the fellas, the union asked him, can you maybe give up a little bit of your work? Now, if the fella is on his last run, could you have the time from Calgary, a city center up to the loop and back? Maybe 20 minutes. Half an hour. So that's what we were living on. As a matter of fact, I've got a stack of the checks that I made. Well, at the same time, they were still subtracting other things. I've got a check for $3 and some odd cents.
Bryndis Whitson: [40:29] Right.
Lorne Fleming: [40:31] So after the strike, it was dynamite. Oh, yeah. And as I was saying, it took a long time before it cleared up, too.
Bryndis Whitson: [40:40] Yeah, completely. So if you were giving advice to someone starting their career or transitioning from one career to another, what advice would you give them?
Lorne Fleming: [40:54] Basically, I think if you're honest with your dealings, like I found on the job, that as long as matter of fact, I used to teach it to my students. If you say please, thank you, and I'm sorry, that's the three key words of dealing with the general public. How can they ever change? I'm trying to think of the story of the lady that got on my bus. She got on my bus and the fare had just gone up by $0.05. She turned her back to me and I could see her in the mirror. And she's looking for this extra $0.05. And she said, this damn outfit takes us for a ride. I said, ma'am, that's why we're in business, just to take you.
Bryndis Whitson: [41:45] For a ride.
Lorne Fleming: [41:47] I thought you're dead. You just lost your job. She turned around and she said, young man, I've been put in my position in my life, but never as efficiently as that.
Bryndis Whitson: [42:03] That's good. I like that.
Lorne Fleming: [42:05] Yeah. So there was humor on the job, too?
Bryndis Whitson: [42:08] Completely. It's a good way. To a good way. I really appreciate the stories. I think about history and understanding. And our city is in the city of Calgary and the city of Edmonton has really been impacted by the work that you put into the city. And we're better for it. So thank you very much.
Lorne Fleming: [42:35] Thank you. It's been my pleasure to talk to you.
Bryndis Whitson: [42:41] Thank you for listening to this Zebras to Apple podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed the showcase of the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could give it a rating and review. For more information about this topic, you can go to ZebrastoApples.com or follow Zebras to Apples on the social media platform of your choosing, whether that's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky or LinkedIn, you can support the show on Patreon. Also, check out the show notes below. Please join me again for another episode of Zebras to Apples. Have a wonderful day!