Toronto Sketches 9. Mike Filey
separated in time by more than 90 years.
To the extreme left is the Seventh Toronto Post Office (1851–53), a Greek temple-like structure now occupied by the Argus Corporation. Still on the left and at the top of the street is the Excelsior Life Building erected in 1914–15 and designed by “Old” City Hall architect E.J. Lennox. Opposite it, and barely visible in the modern photo, is the Consumers’ Gas Building (erected 1876, with an 1899 addition).
At the top of the street in the old photo is the Eighth Toronto Post Office of 1876. It was sacrificed in 1960 for the modern office building that looms in the background of the 2002 view. For transportation buffs, the old view features a horse and wagon, a couple of bicycles, and a half-dozen or so of the new-fangled gas buggies.
January 5, 2003
Bridging the Western Gap
So there I was reading one of Toronto’s newspapers when I came across another of those articles concerning the building of a bridge from the foot of Bathurst Street over the Western Gap to Toronto Island. This one had some interesting comments that I thought the reader would find of interest.
While on a recent tour around the harbour, the chairman of the Toronto Harbour Commission stated that the work of constructing a bridge connecting the city and the Island at the foot of Bathurst Street should be started at once.
“How would you finance it?” he was asked.
“I believe that the Dominion and Provincial governments, the city and the Harbour Commission should contribute to its construction,” he replied.
“And what about the objections raised by the Island residents that it would mean cars over there?”
“I have only this to say, that the Island is for all the citizens, and not for a few.”
With the Island bridge very much in the news these days, one might conclude that this article appeared in a recent edition of the newspaper. However, eagle-eyed readers will no doubt have noticed references to the “Toronto Harbour Commission” and the use of the expression “Dominion government” in the article. The former vanished in 1999 with the creation of the new Toronto Port Authority, and the infrequent use of the word Dominion these days provides clues that the news item as quoted is an old one. But how old you may ask?
It actually appeared in the Telegram on April 1, 1924! And mercy me, they’re still haggling over the project.
Actually the idea of connecting the Island to the mainland is much older than that. In fact, we find that building such a bridge was one of the conditions attached to allowing streetcars to operate on Sundays in Toronto.
In this day of wide-open Sundays it’s difficult to believe that at one time in Toronto’s past the operation of public transit vehicles of any kind on Sunday was illegal, and those who tried to do so could and would be fined and/or put in jail. And with the adoption of the Lord’s Day Act in the early 1900s other things that we now take for granted (buying bread, participating in sports, going to the movies) were also defined as being against the law.
This streetcar is typical of the kind that would have been used on the proposed Toronto Island route over the Western Gap. The sides were removed during the warmer months, resulting in these vehicles being known as “convertible cars.” This particular vehicle, seen here at the Dovercourt and Van Horne (now Dupont) intersection in 1904, was built 10 years earlier and scrapped in 1925.
In the case of Sunday streetcars, arguments were made both pro and con for their operation with a series of referendum votes being called to settle the question. The votes in 1892 and again in 1893 saw the use of the cars on the Sabbath defeated, while that of 1897 resulted in the operation of Sunday streetcars approved by a margin of slightly more than 200 out of a total of 32,324 cast. It was close, but Torontonians were now able to go to church on a streetcar.
Part of the scheme put forward by the privately owned streetcar company to influence the approval of the lucrative Sunday streetcar operations was its agreement to establish a new streetcar route to the Island. This line, which would be part of the city system accessible from any other city route using a transfer, would permit the less-affluent Toronto population a day on the Island without the necessity of paying the extra 10-cent fare to cross the bay on a privately owned ferry boat.
The street railway company, while appearing to be on the side of the general public, knew that there was little likelihood of ever having to build this line since the cost of erecting a bridge over the Western Gap on which the tracks would be laid as well as the access road from Bathurst and King streets were the sole responsibilities of the city. It was a well-known fact that the cash-strapped young city didn’t have an extra $104,720 lying around for something as frivolous as a bridge to the Island.
By the way, today’s estimated cost of building an Island bridge, now referred to as a “fixed link,” has increased somewhat and is now estimated at many millions of dollars.
January 12, 2003
Transporting Toronto
Located just north of the city’s busy waterfront and steps from the CN Tower and SkyDome is the ancient CP Roundhouse. Where Canadian Pacific Railway’s mighty steam engines were once serviced, the folks at Steam Whistle Brewery now turn out a tasty Pilsner.
While it’s good to see somebody occupying what was just another abandoned historic building, a brewery certainly wasn’t what many of us hoped would be the fate of the old structure that was constructed in 1929 on the site of Canadian Pacific’s first Toronto roundhouse.
Steam engines continued to be serviced in this unique building for more than half a century with the huge doors closing for good in 1986. After the building’s closure, I remember attending meeting after meeting during which a multitude of interested and well-meaning people discussed a whole bunch of ideas that might bring the old building back to life. Some believed that an operating steam railway museum would be the perfect re-use while others, myself included, thought that it would be a great place to tell the much broader story of Canada’s fascinating transportation history.
Our plan would include, but not be limited to, just the era of steam. Showing the world what Canadians have done on land and sea and in the air would, we believed, do more to maximize visitations and increase income.
Souvenir postcard of the Toronto-built passenger steamer SS Kingston. Note the biplane overhead.
But those discussions ultimately went for naught when in the late spring of 2000 Steam Whistle began brewing operations in the roundhouse. Since that time any ideas to use the rest of the building for museum purposes seem to have been deleted from the old building’s future role in Toronto.
That’s unfortunate because there’s quite a story to tell. Any plan to tell the country’s transportation story in a roundhouse setting certainly wouldn’t lack for content. In fact, you could use all of the building’s massive interior space just to tell the story of Toronto’s contributions to that fabulous story.
For instance, here are just two events that took place in Toronto on January 19, the day I originally wrote this column, that prove my point.
It was on a cold January 19, 1901, that one of the finest passenger lake boats ever seen on the Great Lakes was launched in Toronto. And on that same date, a mere 49 years later, the first all-Canadian fighter jet designed and built in this country took to the skies out at the Avro Canada plant northwest of Toronto.
There is no question that January 19 was, and remains, a special day in the history of transportation in Ontario’s capital.
The steamer Kingston was built for the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company (R&O)