Year: 2014 (interview with her daughter, Lisa Andrews)
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Kathleen Andrews was Edmonton Transit Service’s first woman bus driver. For years she was Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 569’s only woman member. Later, she became ETS’s first woman dispatcher and their first woman in management.
Born in England, she came to Edmonton at age 14 with her family. Andrews completed school, married, and had two children.
After divorcing in 1970, Andrews sought paid employment, becoming an ETS information clerk. Her wages could not support her family. So she inquired about becoming a transit driver. She passed the ETS strength test, and her transit driver wage more than doubled her previous income. But she faced resistance from male co-workers and some passengers.
Transit driver work hours were long and irregular. Her switch to dispatcher meant routine hours and weekends off. Three years later she became a Special Services charter officer, the management position she held until retiring in 1998. Her two children are ETS transit operators, and daughter Lisa Andrews leads efforts to have her mother’s historic accomplishments recognized.
Kathleen Andrews died in 2013. In 2014, the City named its prospective new transit garage the Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, and also named three Ambleside neighbourhood streets in her honour. The Garage began operating on February 9, 2020.
Keywords: Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 569; Bus dispatcher; Bus driver; Edmonton Transit Service; Transit operator; Workplace discrimination based on gender.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Amalgamated Transit Union; Women and Work in Alberta
To go to the page about the inaugural bus run from the new ETS transit garage named in honour of Kathleen Andrews, click here.
To download a PDF of the panel from which this information comes, click here.
To download a brochure about Kathleen Andrews in PDF format, click here.
See the profile and video clip of Lisa Andrews, a Transit Training Instructor with Edmonton Transit Service, and the daughter of Kathleen Andrews here.
