When Nancy Griffin parked her vehicle at the Oshawa GO station on March 25, she expected a routine trip to and from Toronto. Instead, she says she found herself at the centre of a months-long ordeal involving a stolen vehicle, confusing bureaucracy, and a parking ticket for a car she no longer possessed.

Griffin, a resident of Picton, Ont., roughly 200 kilometres east of Toronto, returned to the station from Toronto at 11:45 a.m. that morning to discover her vehicle was gone. After double-checking the parking lot, she reported the theft to Metrolinx management and the Durham Regional Police Service (DRPS).

“I was stranded in Oshawa,” Griffin recalled, eventually securing a ride home with a friend. She spent the next month working with her insurance company to file a claim for what appeared to be a total loss.

But the situation took a bizarre turn in late April. As her insurance company was preparing to issue a settlement cheque, Griffin said she received a parking ticket in the mail from Metrolinx. The ticket, dated March 30, was for an infraction at the same station where her car had disappeared from five days prior.

“What the heck, where is my car?” Griffin recalled thinking. Griffin and her husband drove to the address listed on the ticket and found their car parked where she remembered leaving it. However, the vehicle was far from pristine.

There was mud on both the driver’s and passenger’s side, and the power steering had failed, Griffin said. The rear license plate was also dangling by a single side, suggesting that someone had been tampering with it. 

Fight to overturn ticket

Griffin said she was initially assured by Metrolinx that the parking ticket would be voided. However, when the fine remained active, she was directed to the Metrolinx compliance department.

In a brief response to CBC News, Metrolinx stated it was “unable to comment as the matter is under investigation.” 

But in an email that CBC News was copied on, Metrolinx informed Griffin the ticket had progressed to “conviction status” within the court system. “The reason that the matter entered a conviction status with the court is because the vehicle is still tied to your name,” wrote the transit agency. 

Metrolinx requested that Griffin supply them with a copy of the police report for its prosecutor to request that the conviction be struck from the courts’ record, noting the process takes “some time” to complete. Griffin stated she did not have the police report number, and instead shared the contact information of the investigator she first spoke to. 

“I can confirm that the information is correct, and this incident is still under investigation,” said Durham Regional Police Const. Nick Gluckstein in a statement to CBC News. 

He noted that vehicle thefts are common in large parking areas where cars are left for extended periods. Regarding security, he added, “in certain situations, video surveillance may not be available or may not have the range needed to capture accurate details.”

Gluckstein did not specify if that was the case in this instance, but Griffin said she was told her vehicle might have been “out of range” of cameras.  

As of early July, Griffin is still waiting for a court date to resolve the ticket, which has now become a provincial offence. She remains critical of how Metrolinx has handled the situation, citing a lack of urgency and poor communication between departments.

She believes a ticket never should have been issued in the first place.

“Metrolinx is who I will fault,” Griffin said.