A “retired” Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) bus, now out of  service for several months, is expected to be ” soon back on the  road.”

But   it  will  not  be picking up  regular passengers.

Instead, it  will become a  mobile shower for the homeless.

Dominica-born Deborah Daniel, a program manager with a  Toronto  organization  of women artists, told the Caribbean Camera this  week that the bus which was  donated for her “hygiene  on  wheels” project has to be stripped of its seats and installed with toilet and bath facilities.

And funds  are being raised ” to get the bus back on the road,” she said.

She said that while many people have volunteered to help on the “hygiene on wheels” project, it  needs about $100,000 ” to get things going.”

And a GoFundMe  campaign has been  launched.

Daniel got  the idea for the project after her visits to a branch of the Toronto Public Library where she  kept seeing a lot of homeless people – ” people in need of something as basic as a shower.”

“And I asked myself: How can we  expect  people to get jobs if  they continue to wear the same dirty clothes and haven’t had a decent shower?”

She said she then did some research and discovered that ” in  Australia and in California in the United  States there are indeed showers on buses.”

“So I  felt if there are showers on buses in these places, why not Toronto?”

She then contacted the TTC  and asked whether  it would donate a bus for her proposed ” hygiene on wheels”  project.

The  response was positive. Last December she got the bus  which has been stripped of the  TTC logos, its fare box and its Presto reader.

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said the bus had been in service since 2003.

“Hopefully, it will continue to serve  a good purpose,”  he added.