For 11 years Kim Couture has been one of the many friendly school bus drivers in the Cariboo Chilcotin.
Originally from Hazelton, B.C. she moved to Williams Lake in 1999 with her son and as a single mom, wanting to better her life.
“I had aunts and uncles here and I wanted to move closer to family,” she said at the School District 27 bus garage where she also works as a dispatcher.
It was her own children’s bus driver, Gay Turgeon, who encouraged Couture to consider becoming a school bus driver.
“I was a stay-at-home mom and had three children by then. She said, ‘why don’t you be a bus driver,’ and it got the wheels turning. It was like the best job for a mom.”
She could be at home with her children, drive the bus when they were at school, go home after the to-school run and do some house duties, and then go back for the home-from-school run.
Her first route was Esler and Hodgson, the bus her children rode to school.
“It was perfect. My daughter was in kindergarten, my middle son was in Grade 3 and my oldest boy was in Grade 9 and I got to be their bus driver,” she recalled.
From the very beginning, Couture loved driving a school bus.
“It is so much fun. I love the kids,” she said.
Cindy Harvey, a former bus driver, is back out of retirement helping with dispatch and said in order to be a bus driver a person has to enjoy driving and love children.
“We have had drivers that aren’t kid-oriented and they don’t last,” Harvey said, noting she drove routes such as Borland Valley, Alkali, Spokin Lake and McLeese Lake. “You become so attached to the children.”
Couture said in all the years she has been driving she has never had harsh situations.
“It is about how you handle the kids. You are the first person they see in the morning and you are the last person they see,” she said.
“You can set the tone and the environment for them. There are all walks of life getting on the bus and everybody is treated equally.”
Presently Couture has the Meldrum Creek run, which involves driving 21.5 km down a logging road off Highway 20. She leaves Williams Lake at 6 a.m.
Many of her passengers are from ranches and farms who are on the bus at 7 a.m.
There are 37 runs, 39 or 40 drivers for the Williams Lake dispatch area, and of those 23 are female.
Being a woman driver often means some students call them mom, although Harvey and Couture said they’ve said, ‘no, call me bus mom,’ to the children.
Pride is a big part of it, they added, noting there is also the sense of being responsible for all the children on the bus, which can be daunting when roads are snowy and icy.
“There are some harried days, but you take your time and you get through it,” Couture said.
“My husband is a truck driver and he tells me he could not do what I do.”
Children are often generous with hugs, cards, presents and saying thank you, and those gestures make the job even more satisfying.
Couture said she goes home happy from work every day.
“I’ve been dispatching the last two weeks and I miss my kids,” she added.
Having another income for the family is also a huge stress relief, she said.
Newer school buses carry 77 passengers, while the older ones hold 81.
The district does need drivers if anyone is interested, Harvey and Couture said.
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monica.lamb-yorski@wltribune.com
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