EXCLUSIVE: Student speaks out about sexual harassment on Halifax bus

A Halifax student who says a man sexually assaulted her on a city bus in 2023 is calling for better crisis training for drivers as the transit union acknowledges security could improve.

Alexis Irvine told The Signal a man, who appeared to be intoxicated, approached her on the No. 3 bus in Halifax’s north end in July 2023. Irvine, a second-year psychology student at Saint Mary’s University, said the encounter quickly degenerated.

“I’m not sure which substances he was high on, but it was obvious he was high,” Irvine said in an interview at the Saint Mary’s campus in mid-March. “He had started to flirt with me, calling me pretty, nothing serious at first. Then he started getting a little bit aggressive when I wouldn’t respond to him, and then it escalated to him grabbing my hand and proceeding to try to kiss me and kiss all over my hands. It was really awkward.”

Irvine said she didn’t know what to do.

“I was terrified, I was very uncomfortable, it was definitely an awkward position to be put in, and I didn’t know what to do because I was on the bus.”

Many sexual assaults go unreported in Canada, including the bus attack against Irvine, who opted not to file a complaint.

The Signal filed a Freedom of Information request to Halifax’s transportation department in the fall of 2024 and obtained three years of data on sexual assaults in the Halifax Transit system. The documents include short descriptions of 11 reported incidents of sexually-inappropriate comments or sexual touching in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Nine of the alleged incidents targeted females, one involved a male complainant and one report did not indicate a gender. The 11 incidents included nine on buses, one on a ferry and one at a bus terminal.

The alleged victims were among nearly 63,000 daily transit users during the three years in question, but the data only references incidents that were reported.

Irvine said police were called to the scene of the assault against her, and that things had de-escalated by the time officers arrived. The assailant was arrested, Irvine added. When asked why she didn’t report the assault, Irvine said the only thing on her mind was getting to safety and that she wanted to move on from the “disastrous” encounter and get to work.

Crisis training ‘imperfect’: Union

The Halifax transit workers’ union told The Signal that bus drivers are trained to call police when a rider is being assaulted. But union local president Patricio Garcia, who drove a bus for 19 years, said drivers are told not to intervene for their own safety.

“We are trained to assess the situation, we are trained to stay in our seats, because we don’t have the means to defend ourselves,” said Garcia, who leads the Amalgamated Transit Union 508.

He said drivers are also trained to yell from their seats to try and de-escalate sexual assaults before calling their control centre. The control centre will then dispatch police and transit supervisors, who have more crisis training than drivers. For example, transit supervisors wear slash-proof vests.

Garcia added that bus drivers are not always aware that an assault even happened. The transit union occasionally finds out after the fact, and Garcia said he’s usually alerted to attacks by reading a Facebook group called Halifax Transit Chat, of which Alexis Irvine is a member.

Garcia said the current security system, while imperfect, is the best that drivers can currently do.

“We always have to look at the aspect of we need to keep the passenger safe, and we need to keep ourselves safe,” he said.

The Signal contacted Halifax Transit to ask what the agency was doing to prevent sexual assaults across the network. The agency had no comment.

Irvine said she wishes bus drivers were able to offer more help when riders, like her, are attacked.

“I think that they could have some sort of crisis intervention training so that when things like this happen, they know what to do and what steps they can take to intervene, rather than waiting for the police to get there.”

Freedom of Information data: Halifax Transit sexual assaults