The Toronto Transit Commission has apologized to an Etobicoke mother a week after she and her four-year-old daughter were detained on a bus when the driver suggested something might be wrong with the little girl.
“He said you need to stay here,” said Rebecca Clements, a regular rider of the Kipling 45 bus.
Clements said the driver first asked for her to pull up the cover on the stroller so he could see the girl’s face. The girl was sleeping at the time.
But instead of asking Clements to rouse the girl from her nap, the driver said he was calling a supervisor and Toronto police.
In the meantime, Clements and her daughter, Sophie, were told they had to wait.
“I had no choice,” Clements said, because the driver had placed himself in front of the forward door. Other passengers were allowed to leave.
“I said ‘you can’t keep me on the bus’,” Clements insisted, but she agreed to wait.
About 35 minutes later, a supervisor arrived, she said. The supervisor told Clements she was free to go and did not ask any questions.
Reached by Global News, the TTC said in a statement that the driver detained the woman for a “wellness check as the operator was concerned about the well-being of what appeared to be an unresponsive child,” wrote Stuart Green, the transit authority’s spokesperson.
“During the time the bus was stopped, the operator observed that the child woke up and appeared to be more responsive than what was originally observed,” Green said.
“We have spoken to the customer to apologize for the incident and will be following up once the review is complete,” Green added.
Clements confirmed she received a telephone call apologizing for what happened.
She told Global News she understands the concept of making sure children are safe but says the detainment was unnecessary in this case.
Clements says had the driver been specific about what he thought was wrong, she could have addressed his concerns quickly.
“I could have woken her up,” she said.
The driver is still working on the same bus route. Clements says she reluctantly boarded a bus he was operating because she was running late.
But she says the incident has affected her feeling of security on the bus.
“I am on alert, nervous. I never used to be,” she said.
And her daughter hasn’t forgotten what happened. Clements says the four-year-old now asks the same question at the bus stop.
“She says, ‘is that silly bus driver going to let us off?”
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