Ex-Con at the Bus Stop
November 2, 2025
Picture this.
I’m waiting at the 420 & Stanley GO stop in Niagara Falls waiting for the #12 bus to take me back to St. Catharines. There are many others at the stop and they all flock to the approaching #12B, the express bus to Burlington GO.
All except one. He’s in his late 40s, a bit scruffy, obviously having not shaved for a few days, wearing a black cap and toting a gray backpack. He asks me if that bus is going to St. Catharines. I tell him no, he’ll have to wait for the #12, which was scheduled to come in about 25 minutes.
He thanks me. Then as the #12B pulls away, he shakes my hand and introduces himself as Tom. Well, no, he didn’t call himself Tom. But for the sake of discussion, I’m calling him Tom and not using his real name, which was cleverly stenciled on his backpack.
After taking a seat next to me in the shelter, he goes on to tell me he just got released from jail and without his cell phone, he couldn’t call his girlfriend or a taxi to pick him up. So he was left to have to take the bus. “They don’t care,” he says. Poor guy, I thought. Then he turns his head around and looks over at the travel information center behind us. He wonders if they’ll let him use their phone so he could call her. With plenty of time on his hands before the bus comes, he figures it’s worth a try, so he moseys off there.
As the minutes pass, I’m hoping he doesn’t return. Maybe he got lucky, I thought. But then I see him coming back. Guess he struck out.
Taking a seat next to me once again, he goes on to tell me they just let him go after he spent the night in jail. “Missed an appointment for something I did to a lady a couple of years ago,” he said. “Said I had a warrant.” Of course, the snarky writer in me wanted to know more. But I hardly wanted to engage him further.
Then he opened up a package of cookies. He offers me one. I politely decline.
As this is going on, I continue to wonder when he’ll try to hit me up for bus fare. And what he’ll do to me if I refuse. He seems friendly enough, but they don’t send first-time or nonviolent offenders to jail these days. This guy probably has a pretty long and sordid rap sheet, I thought.
Almost as if he was reading my mind, he proceeds to tell me that they told him you get a free bus ride if you show them the papers stating that you just got out of jail. He said he hopes the driver will let him on. I tell him it shouldn’t be a problem. People give sob stories all the time and the drivers let them on. I’m just relieved he isn’t asking me for money.
Then he takes off again. Odd, I thought. The bus was scheduled to come in less than 10 minutes and the next one isn’t for an hour. Whatever. I just hoped he wouldn’t come back. But a couple of minutes before the bus’s scheduled arrival, there he is once again. He has a drink in his hand. Must have gone to the nearby McDonald’s, I thought.
With the bus within sight a block away, he asks me if it makes any stops on the way. “Just Niagara College,” I tell him. “Then right to Fairview Mall.”
“Here goes nothing,” he says as it pulls up.
I am one of the first to board. Just in case he had any designs on taking a seat next to me again, I make sure to grab the one-seater near the front. He follows soon behind. When he pulls out his papers, as I expect, the driver doesn’t give him any trouble. He’s not about to risk a confrontation with an ex-con. The guy smiles as he walks past me, proud of getting over that hurdle.
When we get to Fairview Mall, I get off and head for the mall entrance. Turning around to see if he’s following me, I breathe a sigh of relief as I spot him going the other way. Let him go back to his homeboys.
Alone.
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