While Rudolph guides Santa through the blustery Christmas Eve air, a TTC streetcar driver winds through Toronto’s sleepy streets.

As you cross your fingers for delay-free holiday travel and jet off across the globe, a friendly airport staff member checks you in with a smile.

And while the Ramones belt out “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)”, a security officer at Toronto’s Christmas Market makes sure nobody does.

From bars to movie theatres to buses, some jobs just don’t stop — not even for the holidays.

They’re the holiday heroes.

On the 501 streetcar, a TTC operator takes the Christmas Day shift by choice

Christmas Day begins quietly on Toronto’s 501 streetcar.

Red-eye shifts are ending. Weary employees climb aboard to go home to their families. At the same time, holiday day shifts are about to begin — and those passengers peel themselves away from the merry festivities for work.

Other passengers float along without family to return to. Homeless Torontonians ebb and flow off the car, some headed to shelters or meals.

And, for years, streetcar operator Curt Richards has seen ’em all.

“There’s kind of like a camaraderie, you know?” Richards told the Star. “It’s usually people that are out there because they have to . . . So we usually talk about ‘Eh, somebody’s gotta do it!’ ”

But Richards — who chats with the Star in a booming voice, with his shades on indoors and bombastic hand gestures — isn’t there because he has to be.

When he started with the Toronto Transit Commission 15 years ago, he had to work holiday shifts because of seniority. But he now works on Christmas Day by choice. “My family just adjusted,” he reported cheerfully.

Richards has seven brothers and sisters, which he thinks is why his job was a good fit. “I’ve seen it all!” he said. He’s the middle child, four of eight.

“Doing this job, it’s kind of like a road trip, right?” he said. “It’s like my family time, the way we used to spend our drives.” He tries to put as much happiness into those drives as possible, which he says is contagious. In his early days, he gained notoriety for singing the stop names en route.

“Baaaaathuuuuurst,” he croons, chuckling at the memory.

The streetcar isn’t quite “dad’s station wagon,” as he calls it. There’s something about streetcars that Richards just fell in love with. “It’s quirky,” he explained. Not only is it a rail vehicle in the middle of downtown traffic, but it uses sand for traction. “Special grade sand, from Midland, Ontario!”

He loves filling up the sand hopper, just two seats behind the driver. And he especially loves the conversations with passengers. Being a streetcar driver was kind of like being a bartender, he said — you’re their captive audience.

“It’s a lot of personal things, like family issues,” he said. “And even people that are homeless, especially at Christmastime, they’re always so happy to be going to the Good Shepherd there on Queen, to have a family dinner.”

He recalled chatting about where in the city had good cranberries, or the best meal. “It’s a bit sad but it’s the reality of people not having connection to family, where they’re looking forward to that meal and they talk about it.”

“You just connect, because they’re human beings just like you are.”

His passengers had always been especially generous on Christmas Day, he added. He’d been brought a slice of cake here, a coffee there. One man even left him with a gift. “They really appreciate you being out there, doing the job, getting them where they need to go,” Richards said.

“You get everything on Queen. The whole city, the good, the bad, the ugly.”

—Victoria Gibson

Christmas at Pearson is an ‘electrifying’ experience

For staff at Toronto Pearson International Airport, the tearful reunions, lingering embraces, and passengers rushing to catch homebound flights with presents in tow are a touching sight during the holiday.

“It’s very, how shall I say it . . . electrifying,” said Maria Di Nuzzo-Lewicki, stalling to find the perfect word to describe Pearson in Christmas mode. Di Nuzzo-Lewicki, a passenger services representative with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, has done a Christmas Day shift for the past two years.

“Working on Christmas is amazing as well, only because you’ll get to see a whole different set of people coming through. You’ll basically get to share the moments that they’re experiencing,” she said.

Dressed in a sky-blue collared blouse, charcoal-grey vest and matching pants, Di Nuzzo-Lewicki calls herself a go-to person for help with navigating to your check-ins and questions about service delays.

Or if you need help with a marriage proposal.

In the first week of December, Di Nuzzo-Lewicki had a holiday hero moment when she helped a man propose to his girlfriend, who was arriving in Terminal Three from New Zealand.

“I saw that he was breathing heavily. He was extremely nervous, but he wanted to sing a song to her too,” Di Nuzzo-Lewicki said.

She helped to calm him down and practise the song, which he later belted out over the airport announcement system, accompanied by the crowd of curious passengers. “She was brought to tears. She said yes, and he was so happy. They were both so appreciative,” Di Nuzzo-Lewicki said, beaming.

About 2.7 million passengers are expected to travel through the airport between Dec. 17 and Jan. 7 during the peak holiday travel period. Dec. 21 is the busiest single travel day, with over 130,000 passengers shuffling through Pearson.

Though the summer is the busiest season for travel, emotions are much more heightened during the holidays, she said.

“The reunions are happy celebrations, laughter, hugs, kisses; it’s somewhere where you want to be. It just brings on that smile from ear to ear.”

But departures are more heartfelt, the lively airport worker said.

“They’re sad, they’re tearful, they (so) move me that I start tearing up so I have to start looking away because they’re just so emotional. The embraces, the hugs, the kisses, the long goodbyes, the children crying . . . it gets to be hard.”

But heavy hearts wears off quickly at the airport thanks to the bright atmosphere, decorated to delight even the most unwilling travellers. Giant Christmas trees festooned in giant red and silver bulbs stand about 4.5 metres high in the Terminal One baggage hall. The festive decor is part of what Di Nuzzo-Lewicki enjoys most about Pearson during the holidays, coupled with airport staff working together to ensure, “. . . All operations flow smoothly so that the passengers that are passing through Toronto Pearson have a very good experience.”

“And this is what it’s all about. It’s all of us pulling together as a team and making passengers happy people.”

—Vjosa Isai

The friendly giant who protects Christmas

At night, the Distillery District transforms into a storybook scene — twinkling Christmas lights magically glimmering over the lightly snow-clad rusted red and brown brick-walled buildings and grey stone pathways.

The quiet in the 13-acre pioneer village is interrupted only by the distant faint echoes of downtown Toronto traffic or the echoes of a streetcar bustling away, the footsteps of its passengers softly walking by.

This year, like every year, on Christmas Day, the chocolate maker, the baker, the brewer, and all the village jesters will go home. The only human inhabitant of the city’s oldest neighbourhood will be Jodie Leishman — a security officer who knows every nook and cranny, every portal and passageway of the ancient structures he has stood guard over for six years.

Some nights Leishman will be accompanied by the ghosts of the neighbourhood’s past. The south side of the district is watched over by an unnamed gentleman who wears an overall and flat-top hat. He walks the fermenting cellar — the stone structure is the district’s oldest building — announcing that he’s just there to “check in the molasses.”

Clad in the familiar black and white, Leishman’s face lights up when he recalls the many walks he has taken across, around and through the district he calls “the most unique place in the city.”

The holiday shift is the quietest the district ever gets, he says, “But it’s magical.” Some nights the alarms sound out loud for no reason, and lights flicker on and off dramatically.

“At first, it was creepy. Then you get used to it,” said Leishman, 44. “It’s second nature now. If anything happens, you just know it’s the ghosts.”

For 21 years, Leishman has served as a security officer — at a mall in Scarborough, at condos, at an LCBO. It’s a job that “fell into (his) lap,” he says, one that is in the business of taking care of people.

“You see somebody who’s lying down with their head on the table and you walk past them, there’s nothing wrong with asking if they’re OK, if there’s anything you can do,” said Leishman. “Just let them know you’re around and there.”

Everyone in the Distillery District knows Leishman and his smiling personality. Tenants of business call him the “glue” of the place, teasing the big, burly guard for the Christmas present he has yet to send him.

The children that attend the district’s private school yell his name when he walks by, usually guiding someone to wherever they’re trying to get to — the ATM, the bus stop, the exit.

The stories of his rescues will become part of the neighbourhood’s lore. Recently, while he was off-duty, he heard a female scream his name for help. An unknown man had followed her into the public washroom. He held him until Toronto police came.

When the annual Christmas Market opened this year, Leishman turned the search for a child’s lost teddy bear into a missing person’s case. Tenants received emails about it; every office was visited and asked about it. When the search didn’t succeed, Leishman sent the young girl a gift basket with an assortment of teddy bears and other delights. He sent it to her home in Newfoundland.

On Christmas Day, from noon to midnight, Leishman will be circling the Distillery District. When he’s done, he’ll circle again.

Some years his family, including his 10-year-old daughter, brings him dinner. Other years they send him pictures.

‘You walk around, always visible,” he said. “Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean stuff doesn’t happen.”

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—Fatima Syed

Superwoman saves the day at the multiplex

Hazel Ki always wanted to be a superhero.

“I grew up watching Incredibles and Fantastic Four and X-Men and I wanted to have superpowers,” she said.

The 20-year-old Ryerson University student hasn’t (yet) figured out how to run at lightspeed or become invisible at will, but her superhuman ambitions have still played a major role in her life.

“Obviously I don’t have superpowers but that led me to go into media work and that led me to work at the movie theatre instead of a part-time job somewhere else,” she said.

Ki has been working part-time as a “cast member” and team leader at Cineplex movie theatres for four years while going to school and balancing a handful of other part-time jobs. She’s one of the behind-the-scenes heroes who made herself available to work Christmas Day this year so that families can uphold a beloved holiday tradition: going to the cinema.

“I would say it’s even better working Christmas Day than a regular day. It’s more lively, people are happier,” Ki said. “Obviously you kind of dread it because you’re like, ‘Oh I’m not with my family — that sucks,’ but if you find out that your friends are also working the same shifts with you it’s kind of fun.”

Cineplex communications director Sarah Van Lange said the holidays are one of their busiest times of the year.

“For the team at Cineplex, the best thing about working over the holiday season is welcoming our guests and becoming part of their traditions,” she said.

While many employees give up their own family time to work at the theatre, Van Lange said some report that Christmas is the best time to work.

“There’s a joy associated with making people happy,” she said, “And people are happier at Christmas because they’re with their family.”

One memorable Christmas Eve, Ki was working at the Scotiabank theatre at Richmond St. and John St. along with a friend and co-worker from Korea, who didn’t have any family in Toronto.

“And his birthday was Christmas Eve!” Ki said, “So we both worked Christmas Eve and then we decided to go out afterwards for a Cineplex family dinner . . . We kind of did a thing with all the outcasts.”

Even though neither friend was with their family, the evening was “heartwarming,” Ki said.

And families going to the movie theatre is something Ki appreciates, since it’s a tradition in her family as well.

“A thing we’ll do very often together is dinner and a movie,” she said. “We often go to movies together so I can kind of relate, this is a family that’s coming to a movie.”

“If someone else is smiling, I smile,” she said.

—Alex McKeen

Bartender preps for Christmas shift with Santa hats and boozy eggnog

When other Toronto bars shutter for Christmas, the doors to the Drake Hotel will remain open.

Inside, you might find bar patrons decked out in Santa and elf hats, or a cheerful bartender wearing name tag that reads “Miss.Elle.Towe.”

That’s Drake Hotel’s Tabytha Towe. Originally from British Columbia, she’s worked the last four or five Christmases at the bar in the Queen St. W. hotel.

“One year, because my last name is Towe, I wore a mistletoe crown and I wrote a name tag that said ‘Miss.Elle.Towe’,” Towe recalled.

“So when I stood over tables or the bar to talk to people, I made everybody kiss. You do fun things . . . and just be in the Christmas spirit.”

Towe called working on Christmas “pretty hectic,” but added that it’s always fun.

“We just work as a team and then we all hang out and have drinks after and celebrate ourselves,” she said.

“But it’s really fun because everyone’s in a good mood, right? It’s a good holiday to work.”

Towe, who’s from Vancouver, said her family lives in western Canada.

People celebrating Christmas at the Drake are “either people, like me, who travelled to other cities and don’t have families here, or it’s too far, or they couldn’t get time off,” Towe said. “I think they just want to be somewhere with people.”

But there are also families and friends, and “people who just got off work and didn’t make it in time to go away,” she added. “It’s a pretty mixed group, actually.”

Since 2004, the Drake Hotel has been a popular place to make merry throughout the year. Condé Nast Traveller named it one of the best rooftop bars in the world, and CNN said the Drake Hotel has one of the world’s best hotel bars.

During the holidays, the Drake throws its Festivus Dinner, and will ring in 2018 with a New Year’s Eve celebration.

“We usually do a Christmas special with a rum flip or mulled wine or straight spirit drink, a lot of wine during the season,” Towe said.

The Drake’s Christmas drinks include Towe’s own Christmas eggnog recipe.

It includes six large eggs, ½ cup sugar, ¼ tsp salt, four cups whole milk, one tbsp of vanilla extract and ½ tsp grated nutmeg.

Mix the ingredients in a pan, whisking slowly as you pour in the milk. Heat the mixture to 160 C, then put the burner on low and wait for it to thicken.

Allow to cool for 45 minutes and strain. The mix will keep in the fridge for a few days.

Pour each serving over ice, and add two ounces of cognac or brandy and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

“With the booze, it’s just nice and thick and creamy and Christmas-y with all the nutmeg and spices,” Towe said.

—Tamar Harris