I recently had the pleasure of visiting Canada – Toronto & Vancouver to be precise. A wonderful country and I had a very good time indeed.
One of the great things about Canada, in my experience anyway, that people are so polite and friendly to a level that even bus drivers are jolly.
Here’s a couple of examples from my particular jaunt.
In Toronto on the street car (not technically a bus I know, but I’m lumping all public transport together with this theory) we were around the Chinatown/Kensington Market area and needed to get back to downtown. We had run out of tokens required and there was no subway station near to buy them from. We figured that surely we’d be able to buy some on the street car to get downtown. A tram approached and I asked the driver whether we could buy tickets/tokens on the tram. He politely informed us that you used to be able to, but you couldn’t anymore, then told us that if we stayed on board he’d drop us off near a subway where we could buy one – essentially giving us a free ride.

In Vancouver we got on a bus, which was virtually empty, the driver asked us where we were from (obviously my blending-in-with-the-locals skills are lacking and the bumbling Englishman in me shines through) he then gave us a tour of the city, telling us about all the landmarks on his route. He even mentioned the rougher parts of town we drove through, not just the nice bits.
These two examples of bus driver geniality would never happen back in Britain. You are lucky if you get a grunt of acknowledgment. Bus driver drivers back at home are generally grumpy bastards. There are exceptions but these are few and far between and you often get the impression that those British transport conductors that are jolly have some kind of mental issue as their cheeriness is so rare.
I came away with the feeling, not just with bus drivers but other Canadians we encountered – waiters, bar workers, hotel staff etc, that they were proud of their country and proud to show it off to tourists, which possibly explains why they come across so happy to help and impart with information. This civic pride is something that you find is rapidly disappearing, if already gone, here in the UK and possibly explains why we shuffle around on our public transport with miserable down-turned expressions as the driver grunts his displeasure at having to actually ferry people around.
One way token to Canada please…