This was no average fare, Vernon Warnor admits.
“No, it was quite an experience. And frankly, I would do it any day, anytime,” said the Beck taxi driver, who operates car number 2241.
The call from the dispatcher came in at 5:51 a.m.
A female customer called for a pickup on Prosperity Pathway in Scarborough.
Warnor says he had just finished sanitizing his vehicle as he came on duty, as he usually does first in the morning.
The woman wanted to be taken to an address in downtown Toronto, listed as a birthing centre.
But, soon after Warnor headed west along Highway 401, Warner heard a plea from the back seat.
“She said, ‘I need help.’ She said, ‘Driver, help me,’” Warnor told Global News in an interview.
Warnor made a decision to get off the highway, figuring they could get help faster.
He exited at Markham Road, and pulled in to a parking lot at a busy McDonalds. Warner called 911.
“I was advised to carry on to make it to the nearest hospital,” Warnor said, adding he planned to drive to Scarborough General.
But the quick-thinking cabbie realized along the way that he’d never make it that far in time. The woman in the back seat made that abundantly clear.
“She said, ‘The baby’s on the way.’”
The woman was on the phone with someone giving her instructions, apparently a midwife. Warnor was communicating at the same time with the 911 operator.
Calculating his options, Warnor decided to find a location that could be easily found by emergency personnel.
He crossed to the other side of Markham Road and pulled into a brightly-lit Shell service station.
Warnor brought the taxi to a stop and listened to the woman laying just behind him receiving final instructions.
“Hold on to the neck and pull down,” Warnor heard.
“I looked around like this and the baby was in her hands,” he said.
It was a boy.
Warnor heard a brief birth cry, and went to his trunk to retrieve a blanket for the mother to wrap up her newborn child.
Toronto paramedics arrived about five minutes later and transported the woman and baby to Centenary Hospital.
“Everything went right because he (Vernon) was the person that was meant to be there for her,” said Kristine Hubbard, operations manager for Beck Taxi.
“Vernon knew what to do, he engaged, he paid attention, and he was empathetic and wanted to take care of her,” Hubbard said, proud of the actions of the driver, who’s been on the job for about five years.
A hospital spokesperson said the mother, who was not identified, was discharged from about nine hours after she and her baby were admitted.
Warnor, who went on to answer some more calls for a few hours after the birth in his back seat, said it was the second time he’s attended a birth, but the first time in a taxi.
“The lady was quite grateful, happy it turned out to be me as the driver. I think I was the right person for the job.”