from the AAS Files of Airport Absurdity
It was the early 1970s — bell-bottoms were wide, sideburns were long, and Toronto’s Terminal 2 had just been born, looking like a concrete shoebox with delusions of grandeur.
Enter Samantha, aka “Sam the Slam,” the undefeated queen of the Airport People Pusher 3000 — Air Canada’s proud fleet of motorized granny wagons, known officially as “Passenger Surreys” and unofficially as “Terminal Turtles.”
Sam had 20 years of airport mileage on her, more runway time than some planes. Her job? Shuttle fragile folks from the terminal doors to gates that were always mysteriously 12 kilometers away. No GPS. No brakes anyone trusted. Just Sam, a whistle, and a horn louder than a DC-9 engine on takeoff.
She loved her gig — every day a new adventure, every shift a new chapter of “Wheel of Misfortune.”
One fateful Tuesday…
A young woman named Sarah staggered aboard the surrey, luggage in tow, eyes wide like she’d just seen the duty-free prices. Sam spotted a classic rookie traveler from a mile away — nervous, lost, and clearly unaware that gate 74 required a Sherpa and three oxygen tanks.
Sarah whispered, “I’m trying to get to see my sick mom,” and before she could finish, Sam slammed the lever into “LUDICROUS SPEED.”
The surrey careened down the concourse like a shopping cart with a jet engine. Senior citizens clenched their hats. A child in a wheelchair pointed and yelled, “GO, SPEED RACER, GO!”
They dodged snack carts, clipped two flight attendants, and launched over a poorly placed carpet wrinkle near Gate 63. Sam was in the zone. Sarah? Not so much. She held onto her suitcase like it was a flotation device.
When they finally screeched to a halt at Gate 74 (after narrowly avoiding a man on crutches and a priest with a boarding pass), Sam leapt off, personally escorted Sarah to the gate, hijacked a check-in kiosk, printed her boarding pass, and even bribed the gate agent with a half-eaten Aero bar to hold the door.
As Sarah waved goodbye, teary-eyed and thankful, Sam nodded like a grizzled cowboy who’d just wrangled her last steer. Another passenger saved. Another story for the surrey scrapbook.
And so, the legend lived on…
Though Terminal 2 would go through renovations, demolitions, and questionable paint jobs, the passenger surreys — and Sam — remained an immovable force of rolling Canadian compassion.
Until one day, when someone decided to replace them with golf carts.
RIP Terminal Turtles.
Gone… but not nearly as slow.
