Toronto's Bay subway station is best known for its "lost" subterranean track, an abandoned lower link that now serves film crews rather than passengers.
It's also home to a different sort of lost item — or more precisely, a slew of them. It's the home of the Toronto Transit Commission's (TTC) Lost Articles department. This is where any item left behind on a seat (that isn't stolen first, of course) eventually finds its way.
And anyone who's forgotten a bag, an umbrella, glasses, or even a cell phone can appreciate the relief that comes after being reunited with that object; a sense that you've somehow defied the odds.
"This is the one bit of the TTC where you get to make people happy," chief customer service officer Chris Upfold said to the Toronto Star. "It's somebody's rent, it's somebody's Christmas shopping."
"You feel good when people actually get back stuff," added customer service employee Diane Wisdom.
But it's not always run-of-the-mill stuff, like wallets, glasses, or cell phones. Lost Articles veteran Sandra D'Amato, who has been sorting through piles of missing goods in the department for more than two decades, told The Star she's seen some bizarre things circulate through the doors in her day.
Take the box of prosthetic limbs that once landed on an office shelf. Or how about the set of dentures? And more random still, the Mississauga Ball Hockey League Tier 3 champion trophy that was last awarded in 1994.
The odds of finding strange items are good. Between the TTC's 1.6 million daily riders, Lost Articles gets anywhere between 120 and 200 items at the end of each workday.
When the daily haul arrives, staff members slip on their purple rubber gloves and dive in separating and cataloguing the items. Wallets head straight into one pile as someone tries to locate a phone number to inform the owner where he or she can pick it up.
A video shows Upton shoveling through a large box of cell phones, while dozens of umbrellas lie stacked on a nearby shelf.
Backpacks, bags, and purses take up an entire wall, but before they land on the shelf, someone will search through them for food, drugs, and alcohol. Passports go directly to the police station. After three months, unclaimed items are either auctioned off by police, or given to charity.
The staff also has to try to discern whether the people who come in to collect items are, in fact, the real owners. The most dubiously claimed item? Black folding umbrellas on rainy days.
(CP photo)
44 comments