More retro STCUM ads: “Vous connaissez pas Telbus?”

I actually remember this ad from 1994, when the then-STCUM introduced and publicized its seemingly revolutionary system where you could call a phone number and get the arrival time of the next bus.

The Telbus system (in which each stop for each route had a phone number attached to it) was eventually replaced with the current AUTOBUS, which has a single phone number and a five-digit code for each stop.

A second ad returns to a dry, if accurate, talking point for public transit: It’s cheaper and more reliable than a car in the long run.

Plenty of other (non-transit-related) retro Quebec ads uploaded recently too, including some related to the 1994 Quebec election, a station ID for Musique Plus and a French ad for CHOM FM.

4 thoughts on “More retro STCUM ads: “Vous connaissez pas Telbus?”

  1. Jean Naimard

    Nitpick: “AUTOBUS” has been there since… forever (I remember it being around some 40 odd years ago). The “Telbus” initially used a Centrex™ line to separate out the various stops into considerably less lines, but I suppose it fell to budgetary tightness as a Centrex™ block of phone numbers is a lot slightly more beaucoup expensiver than some cascading lines…

  2. Fagstein Post author

    Back in Telbus’s days, AUTOBUS was the service which is now STM-INFO (though, really both are now run on the same system and you can just press a button to switch from one to the other).

  3. Edna

    Back in the good old days you could call the number from any phone and punch in the number of the bus route. It was a helluva lot easier to remember that I wanted the 371 heading north than 53294 or whatever the hell it is.

  4. ladyjaye

    Thanks for linking to my videos! I’ve been digitizing whatever I could find on my old tapes, with an emphasis on French Quebec ads. I also some English ads from CFCF in the 90s that I will eventually add. I gotta say that I was lucky to find some gems, including those you’ve linked. :)

    I also recommend that you check out Hifichet’s and Johnnys96’s accounts, as they also have tons of vintage Quebec ads in French.


Leave a Reply