Pearson Airport to Trent University

How do I get from Pearson Airport to Trent University?

There is no train to Peterborough and no direct bus from the airport; the public route is the GO Transit bus from Terminal 1 to Union or to Oshawa and a coach north from there — three to four hours with the changes. A taxi from Pearson is a metered gamble on the 407's tolls. The chauffeur is the two-hour version that runs from the arrivals curb to the college door at a fixed fare with the vehicle sized to the load, and the Oshawa route page covers the first hour of the drive for the Durham campus.

The Symons campus: colleges on both banks

Trent's main campus is built around the river. On the east bank, Champlain College and Lady Eaton College are the original residences of the 1960s campus, with the library and Bata Library's terrace looking across the water; on the west bank, Otonabee College, Gzowski College and Traill's newer residences sit along the ridge, joined to the east by the Faryon footbridge. Each college has its own drive: Champlain and Lady Eaton from the east-bank ring road off Nassau Mills Road, Otonabee and Gzowski from the west-bank road off Water Street. The chauffeur knows which bank the college is on — arriving at the wrong bank means a twenty-minute drive around — and which entrance is closest at move-in when the campus roads are marshalled. Traill College, the downtown college, and the student houses and towers on Water Street and in the East City neighbourhood are an ordinary Peterborough address at the same fare.

The Durham campus in Oshawa

Trent's Durham campus on Thornton Road in Oshawa is an hour from Pearson on the 407 and the 401, and its students are mostly commuters — but the international students and the ones who live in the Oshawa student residences arrive at Pearson the same way. The fare to the Durham campus is the Oshawa fare, lower than the Peterborough one, and the Oshawa route page covers the drive; a student with classes at both campuses books the leg between them, fifty minutes on the 115, as a fixed fare.

Move-in, orientation and the international arrival

Trent's move-in runs the weekend before Labour Day with assigned windows per college and the campus roads marshalled by the college staff, and its orientation week — the college cheers, the river, the Head of the Trent regatta later in the fall — is small enough to be personal. A family flying in for it lands at Pearson, is at the college two hours later in a Sprinter sized for everything a room needs, and stops at the Lansdowne Place mall on the way through Peterborough for the things left behind. International students arrive in the last week of August — Trent's international intake is large for its size — as single arrivals from long-haul flights, met inside Terminal 1 or 3 with a name board on the meet-and-greet add-on, driven two hours and delivered to the college check-in with the luggage inside and a text to the parents overseas. The pickup page explains the meeting points; the family and accessible page the luggage allowance and the extra time.

Parents, visits and the Kawarthas

Peterborough's hotels for a visit are the Holiday Inn on the river downtown, the Best Western and the Comfort on Lansdowne Street, and the Elmhirst's Resort on Rice Lake twenty minutes south for families who want the lake; the Friday arrival from Pearson and the Sunday departure are two fixed fares on one confirmation. The Saturday is the Kawarthas: the chauffeured day with the student collected at the college to the Peterborough Lift Lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway, the Canadian Canoe Museum, Lakefield and the lakes north of the city, or — for a family with a day to spend — Algonquin Park two hours north. Convocation in June is on the campus with the family car on the college drive.

The working visitor and the Kawartha economy

Trent's professional traffic is smaller and more particular than the city universities': the environmental and Indigenous studies programmes bring visiting scholars and government officials from the ministries in Peterborough — the Ministry of Natural Resources has its headquarters in the city — the DNA and water-quality laboratories bring industry visitors, and the Peterborough manufacturing base brings the auditors and the customers. A visitor's day is a hotel pickup, a chauffeured block between the campus, the ministry and the industrial parks, and the departure timed to the flight, on a corporate account with monthly invoicing; the Peterborough airport south of the city has no scheduled flights, and Pearson is the gateway.

Winter on the 115

The January intake and the return from the winter break put the drive into the snowbelt north of the 401: the 115 between the 407 and Peterborough crosses open country where the snow drifts and the squalls off Lake Ontario reach, and the last stretch on Water Street along the river is the coldest. The chauffeur reads Ontario 511 before leaving, the vehicles run winter tyres, and a drive that cannot be made safely is rescheduled rather than attempted. Students returning from Christmas overseas land into this, and the fixed fare and the tracked flight are what make the trip routine.

Departures and what the fare includes

The departure to Pearson is the 115 south and the 407 west, planned backwards from the flight: pickup at the college at the time that reaches the terminal ninety minutes before a domestic departure and two and a half to three hours before an international one, with the terminal finder confirming which terminal. The fare is fixed by vehicle class for the Peterborough address and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, the 407 toll, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area, a stop on the way and the included waiting; meet and greet is the paid add-on; gratuity is never added; a cancellation before dispatch is free.

Graduate students, exchange terms and the mid-year arrival

Trent's January intake, its exchange students on a single term and its graduate programmes bring the arrivals outside move-in weekend: a master's student in the first week of January, a visiting scholar with a family and a year's luggage, a teacher-candidate arriving for the education programme's winter placement. The addresses are the graduate apartments at Traill College downtown, a rented apartment in East City or on Water Street whose keys are collected from a landlord, or a hotel for the first week, and the booking carries each of them; the child seats are fitted before the pickup for a family. The winter arrival is where meet and greet inside the hall earns its price: a student who has never seen snow, landing at 9 pm into a squall, walked to a warm car and driven two hours to a college door on the river that is expecting them because we called ahead.

Groups, camps and the summer campus

Trent's campus fills in summer with the sport camps, the canoe and outdoor-education programmes that use the river, the language schools and the conferences that use the colleges, and each brings its own airport traffic: a group of twenty arriving on the same flight for a three-week programme, met at the group meeting point inside the terminal and driven in the Sprinter on one manifest; a conference's delegates arriving through the day on the shuttle pattern; the camp families on a Sunday afternoon. All price as the same Peterborough fare by vehicle class, and the group bookings are invoiced to the programme on a corporate account.

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