In July, the District of Mackenzie got something it had never before experienced in the almost 60 years since it was incorporated — transit service.
On July 15, Mackenzie Community Services and Kimta Transportation Society began offering twice-weekly bus service on Tuesday and Thursday.
Kimta already owned an accessible bus with a chair lift that it runs as a charter for special trips as well as a minivan used for shuttle service from Mackenzie to Prince George Airport and back five days a week.
Jacqueline McCulloch — the Better at Home Program co-ordinator for Mackenzie Community Services — said that the introduction of the bus route out of a desire to help seniors navigate the community.
Back in February, she said, Mackenzie lost its only taxi after the driver couldn’t make ends meet. Mackenzie Community Services provided vouchers to many of its Better at Home clients to help them afford using the taxi.
For people with mobility issues and without access to a vehicle, the loss of the taxi made it more difficult to buy groceries, pick up prescriptions and attend medical appointments.
Attending the National Community-Based Senior Sector Summit in Ottawa and its provincial equivalent in Vancouver last year, McCulloch said she found out that Mackenzie is considered a transportation desert.
When the United Way started the most recent edition of its Aging in Motion grant program earlier this year, McCulloch said she jumped at the chance to have Mackenzie benefit from it.
She was able to secure a year’s worth of funding for the program and they can reapply for a second year.
“It just became opportune for us to be able to do what we did when we did,” she said. “it’s hard, because districts don’t appear to want to invest time and energy. Like, Mackenzie’s had this shortfall for taxes and so property taxes are going up for everybody.”
Ahead of the bus service starting up, McCulloch said she went to the Mackenzie Mall and to seniors’ lunches to get feedback on how the service should be run.
“I’ve talked to people who’ve lived here since Mackenzie was formed,” McCulloch said. “They’re just in awe. They’re like ‘you can’t be serious.’”
Since another seniors’ group operates a shuttle to the hospital on Wednesdays, they decided to run the bus on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, the scheduled will need to be adjusted occasionally when Kimta has other clients or trips already booked.
The bus runs four loops around the community each day, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon with a roughly one-hour break from 11 a.m. to noon.
Mark Robillard, the president of Kimta, sat down with The Citizen during a visit to Prince George on Thursday, July 30.
He said he got involved with the society about a dozen years ago when he was asked if he would volunteer for the board and soon found out after accepting that he had been named president.
The name of the organization, he said, comes a mountain north of Mackenzie.
The genesis of the society came when School District 57 outsourced its school bus operations to an outside company.
Instead of finding a driver and paying gas to use a bus already located locally, school groups then had to get someone from the contractor to come up the night before with a bus and pay for their accommodation and meals beyond any other operating expenses.
The cost to do so was more than $2,000.
“A school doesn’t have very much money in their travel budget, so school teams would have to fundraise for a whole semester to raise enough money to rent a bus to go to zones,” Robillard said.
“But they haven’t had any practice games against any of the competition, so they get slaughtered and nobody wants to go to practice for four months to go to one tournament and get beat up.”
It also meant that kids couldn’t go on trips to Jasper, Mt. Robson or Powder King, the type of events that Robillard and his classmates got to go on when he was a high schooler in Mackenzie.
So, the society set out to collect funds to buy a bus for the community’s use. At first, they started out with bake sales, dances and the like, but they didn’t make a lot of money. With the decline of industry in Mackenzie, there also weren’t a lot of businesses left to donate towards the cause.
Eventually they turned to applying for grants.
Originally, the fundraising target was around $80,000. That would purchase a bus made on a Ford F-350 frame.
The summer they reached their target, Transport Canada added the requirement for three-point harnesses in buses, which added to the weight of the vehicle. That meant they needed to step up to a more expensive Ford F-450 frame, which nearly doubled the price tag.
After eight to 10 years of fundraising, they finally were able to buy the vehicle that met their needs. Robillard estimates that for school groups, the cost of using the Kimta bus for a trip is about one-fifth of what it used to be.
He said during the school year, the bus probably takes two trips to Prince George per month.
Apart from students, there are seniors’ groups who also rent the bus. When the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George’s board of directors went to Mackenzie for its June board meeting, the Kimta bus was used to take them on a tour that included a jaunt out to Powder King.
It’s also found use from the McLeod Lake Indian Band, which Robillard said hired out the shuttle to take elders to Edmonton when Pope Francis visited Canada in 2022 among other events.
Complimenting the bus service is the shuttle, which travels from Mackenzie to Prince George and back five times a week, also stopping at Bear Lake, McLeod Lake and Summit Lake if there are people to pick up or drop off along the way.
Robillard estimated that about half the people who take a $55 trip on the Toyota Sienna hybrid minivan use it to get to medical appointments while the others are looking to get to the Prince George airport.
“We’re helping Mackenzie be less isolated,” Robillard said.
“Another way to say it would be that we’re really improving the quality of life for a certain segment of the population. If they can’t drive, they can get to Prince George to see a specialist, they can see a dentist, they can see an optometrist because none of these things are in Mackenzie. For a certain segment of the population, they were foregoing all of that.”
When McCulloch approved Kimta about the fixed-route service, Robillard said he thought it was a good idea, also referencing the end of local taxi services in town earlier this year.
He said while there hasn’t been heavy use of the route yet, there’s hope that numbers will increase heading into the fall as awareness of the service grows. Both Robillard and McCulloch said they expect more passengers in the winter, especially among people with mobility issues.
The bus can handle up to 24 passengers at one time and has room for up to four wheelchairs.
However, Robillard doesn’t think the current bus is the right tool for the fixed-route service. Because of the size, it eats up a lot of gas driving around town.
Because of that, Kimta is looking for more grants and donations to help it purchase something smaller than its current bus and bigger than its minivan.
Those looking to donate to Kimta or arrange transportation can reach the society by email at [email protected].
Details can also be found online at mackenziebc.com/kimta or the Kimta Transportation Society Facebook page.
During the first week of operations, McCulloch said a Kimta board member rode the bus to see how things were going. Through seeing it firsthand and conferring with passengers, some adjustments were made.
She said they don’t want to constantly change routes from one week to the next, but over time, they’ll put out notices online and through the local radio station about alterations to the schedule.
On McCulloch’s to-do list was to create some laminated sheets showing the morning and afternoon routes and put them up at strategic locations like the Mackenzie Recreation Centre, the pharmacy and the Purple Bicycle coffee shop.
Like Kimta, McCulloch is also looking for donations and grants to help the program running. She can be reached by email at [email protected].
She said the manager of the local Co-op food store has nominated the program as a recipient from the organization’s annual Fuel Good Day event, where a portion of proceeds from gasoline sales are directed to good causes.
After some difficult decades for Mackenzie, she said she’s glad to be able to give something back to the community.
“It feels incredible,” McCulloch said. “Especially knowing how much our senior population has ballooned. We’re anxious for the next census to come out to tell us exactly how much, but we’re guessing that our population now at about 3,500 people we’re at about 35 per cent seniors."
