TORONTO – An Ottawa Muslim student who dons Islamic face-veil thanked super courageous bus driver who came to her defense after being taunted by another Islamophobic passenger.
“I’m no hero. It’s just like a day-to-day thing. When it does happen, well, you deal with it,” OC Transpo bus driver Alain Charette told CBC News on Tuesday, May 31.
“You pay the fare to get a ride. Why should you feel threatened or harassed or have to justify your way of dressing? That has nothing to do with the ride. That’s it.”
Though Charette sees himself as no hero, Hailey DeJong, a revert to Islam who started wearing a niqab in the fall of 2015, thinks he is.
DeJong said she hopped No. 118 OC Transpo bus on May 12 to do some shopping at the downtown Rideau Centre mall when she was attacked verbally by another passenger.
“He was making comments like, ‘Oh, she could be a bank robber and we don’t even know,'” DeJong recalled.
“At that point, I was tired of the attention and I turned around and I said to him, ‘If you have something to say, don’t say it to the other passengers, say it right to me.'”
“After that, he just continued calling me a terrorist and a freak, and at one point he even screamed at me to assimilate,” she said.
“I was angry, but you can’t respond to hate with more hate, so I tried to keep it cool and just to explain to him. Other passengers at that point had started to speak up as well.”
At that moment, Charette parked the bus and came to her defense, saying he had called authorities.
“At one point, I heard [the driver] shout from the front of the bus, ‘Hey, if you have a problem with her, then you have a problem with me.’ So that got the man’s attention and he started to get out of his seat,” DeJong said.
Charette told CBC News on Tuesday he wasn’t going to move the bus until the situation was resolved.
“I presented to him that it’s either you leave or wait for security, but something’s going to happen,” he said. “Help is on the way, but in the meantime, leave the lady alone.”
The man told the driver there was no problem, that he loves Christians and Muslims and Jews, and that he was getting off the bus anyway.
Safe
Appreciating the driver’s act, DeJong took a selfie with before getting off the bus.
Later on, she wrote a public letter to thank him and raise awareness about Islamophobia in the community.
“It didn’t bother me at first, but after I got home, I guess the shock kind of started to set in, because I’ve never had this really happen to me before,” she said.
“I went months with just doing my thing, going to school, nothing ever happened, riding the bus safely. And so afterwards I started to feel a bit of anxiety and I still do every time I think about it and what happened.
“I really thought the bus driver deserved to be rewarded, because it’s often so easy to just ignore it, to let the situation take care of itself, but he really stood up and did what needed to be done.”
She added: “… I just told him what it meant to me and what it means to our community because Islamophobia is such a problem.”
DeJong wrote the piece for Muslim Link, an online publication in Ottawa, on which Charette posted a response saying he has been “overwhelmed by all the attention” and that sitting idle was “not an option.”
DeJong hopes to be able to meet him in person again to say thank you one more time.
“Hopefully I’ll get to see him soon. … I think it’s incredibly sweet. Like he said, ‘If you’re not helping then you’re part of the problem, you’re just a bystander,'” she said.
“And I think what he did was super courageous and I can’t thank him enough. And his comment is honestly so sweet. It touches my heart.”