Manitoba Transit Heritage Association

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Manitoba Transit Heritage Association (MTHA) is a Winnipeg nonprofit founded in 1989 to preserve Manitoba’s vintage buses, streetcars, and trolleys. Volunteers restore, maintain, and display these vehicles and aim to create a transit museum and to provide restored buses for parades and community events.

The MTHA has a fleet of historic vehicles dating from 1937 to 2019, with some still running and others waiting for restoration. The group began after Ron Alexander and John Kapusta, former Winnipeg Transit workers, found an old electric streetcar in a farm field in 1987 and decided to form a preservation group.

The first restoration was a 1941 Twin Coach 30GS bought for $1. The second project was a 1937 Twin Coach 23R, restored and unveiled in 1991. A 1946 Ford 69B was largely completed by 1992 and became fully operational in 2018. As of 2019, the 1979 OBI Orion I is planned to serve as a mobile transit museum.

Beyond vehicles, MTHA collects transit memorabilia such as badges, uniforms, passes, tickets, transfers, fareboxes, decals, and manuals. The association’s vehicles have appeared in Manitoba TV shows and films.