The Ottawa Citizen has published an opinion piece by Associate Professor Janine Debanné on the loss of the old Ottawa central bus station.

“How can the Canadian capital not have a bus station? And how did this happen so quietly?” she asks.

The article, Quiet loss — Ottawa’s lack of a central, inter-city bus station hurts us all, was published online on October 31 and appeared in the hard-copy newspaper on November 1.

“In letting the bus station close and sell to private condo developers without outcry, we have relinquished what for some was an affordable luxury and for others an essential lifeline,” she says.

The terminal on Catherine Street, now razed, “was the bloodline linking the capital and a constellation of small and larger towns and cities in Ontario and Quebec, an agent of nationhood and regional understanding,” writes Debanné.

“It is time to fight for territorial connectivity and the relationships that keep us going, one 56-seater at a time.”

Read the full article here.