Toronto Sketches 9. Mike Filey
foot of Bathurst Street. The factory where parts of the great ship were fabricated is now occupied, in part, by the exotic car dealership at the northeast corner of Front and Bathurst. The finished components were transported across the railway tracks, down to the waterfront where they would be fitted together in time to create a fine new passenger ship, the 290-foot-long SS Kingston, which was powered by an inclined, three-crank, triple-expansion steam engine that ran a pair of 23-foot-diameter side paddlewheels. Kingston operated on the Toronto–Thousand Islands–Prescott run. At that last port most passengers would transfer to other ships for the thrilling ride through the Lachine Rapids and onwards to Montreal.
However, following the tragic and deadly fire of September 17, 1949, that destroyed SS Noronic while at its berth in Toronto, Canada Steamship Lines (the successor to the R&O) decided to end all passenger ship service. The once-proud Kingston was retired from service and eventually scrapped.
Interestingly, even while this Toronto-built vessel awaited its fate, another creation from the hands of a new generation of local craftsman was about to make Canadian aviation history. With the world immersed in the uncertainties of the Cold War, the Royal Canadian Air Force was searching for a new aircraft to replace its outdated collection of piston-engine Mustangs and Sea Furies and pioneer Vampire jets. What was needed was an all-purpose, all-weather, twin-engine jet fighter.
Avro Canada’s second CF-100, FB-K, designed and built at the company’s suburban Toronto factory.
Officials looked at a number of jets designed and built by Americans, but decided our people could do as well or even better. This decision, one that was derided at the time by several so-called experts, would result in Avro Canada’s remarkable CF-100, the first of which flew January 19, 1950.
In total, 692 CF-100s were built at the Malton, Ontario, factory. Interestingly, even after 30 years had passed since that first flight, several of the aircraft were still active as electronic warfare trainers. One CF-100 has even been honoured in the form of a permanent monument in a park-like setting on Derry Road East (near Goreway Drive), just a short distance from its birthplace.
To learn more about this Canadian aviation success story (and one that could have been a feature attraction in Canada’s transportation story in the CP Roundhouse) read The Avro CF-100 by Larry Milberry from CANAV Books.
January 19, 2003
* After the sale of SkyDome to Rogers Communications in early 2005, the name of the stadium was quickly changed to Rogers Centre.
Bright, Shiny, and New
Almost without exception this column features an “ancient” photograph more often than not taken by some anonymous photographer. To be sure, where the identity of the person who took the picture is known the work is credited. Unfortunately, the passage of time since the photo was snapped usually precludes that possibility.
The matter of photo credits aside, in almost every instance where there are buildings in the old photograph, the vast majority of those structures has been demolished as a result of Toronto’s rush to replace what many regarded as passé, with things bright, shiny, and new.
One conclusion that might be drawn from all of this is that any photo containing an image of a building that no longer stands must have been taken by an old (or deceased) photographer. With this in mind you can imagine my consternation as I went through a bunch of photographs that I personally took since acquiring my interest in old Toronto some years ago. Many of those views showed buildings that are no more. Can it be that my stuff is also “ancient”? Is it possible that I am getting old? Or am I just older?
While I sit back and ponder my future I offer for your perusal a quartet of my “ancient” photos.
January 26, 2003
The University Theatre stood on the north side of Bloor Street between Bellair Street and Avenue Road. This was one of the first major motion picture palaces to be erected following the end of the Second World War in 1945. The 1,556-seat theatre’s official opening was postponed several times owing to the shortage of structural steel that had been diverted for use in the construction of electrical generating stations around the province. This same shortage resulted in the delayed opening of the Toronto-Barrie highway (now 400) and the Toronto Bypass Highway (now 401). The University finally opened in 1949 and was one of the city’s most popular movie houses until its closure in 1986. At that time there were plans to incorporate a portion of the theatre as well as the theatre facade in the new development planned for the site. Unfortunately, the curtain never went up on this interesting proposal. The marquee reveals that the feature presentation at the theatre when I took this picture in 1979 was Apocalypse Now.
When I was a kid, this imposing structure was usually referred to rather disparagingly as “999 Queen Street.” Built between 1846 and 1858, the Provincial Lunatic Asylum was regarded as one of the most modern treatment facilities for the mentally ill anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the stigma of what went on inside the asylum precluded the building having any future. And while pleas were made to at least save certain architecturally significant portions of the complex (the massive dome, for instance), the whole thing came crashing down in 1975. The Queen Street Mental Health Centre now occupies the site.
While on the subject of unimposing buildings (actually this structure still stands or was standing when I wrote this article), this building at the southeast corner of Dupont Street and Westmoreland Avenue is where Torontonian Norman Breakey perfected his Koton Koter in the early 1940s. Where who perfected his what? Norman Breakey was the inventor of the paint roller that Eaton’s and Simpson’s sold under the name Koton Koter for $1.98. Following a typically Canadian scenario, Norman wasn’t able to raise sufficient funds to protect his invention and soon variations of his creation had flooded the market, leaving poor Mr. Breakey as a might-have-been millionaire.
Constructed in the early 1900s to house the “Northern” branch of the Traders’ Bank of Canada, this imposing building on the northeast corner of Yonge and Bloor became a branch of the Royal Bank when the latter took over the former in 1912. It was demolished to clear the way for the unimposing Hudson’s Bay Centre that opened in 1974.
An Elegant Liquor Store
Located on the east side of Yonge Street, halfway between Davenport Road and St. Clair Avenue, is the former CPR North Toronto Station. Once regarded as a component of the city’s fast-growing passenger steam railroad network, the building saw its importance as a transportation hub vanish soon after the opening of Toronto’s new Union Station downtown on Front Street West.
Deprived of its passengers, the once-proud structure with its landmark clock tower was eventually converted to other uses. Perhaps it was its newfound popularity as a combination beer and liquor store that precluded any chance of its demolition, an irreversible fate that many of the building’s contemporaries had met. Whatever the reason, the station survived and re-opened in February 2003 as the site of Canada’s largest (and might I add most elegant) liquor store.
Interestingly, the reason that the CPR opened the new North Toronto Station in 1916 was actually nothing more than an act of defiance. The company, as well as the nation’s other two transcontinental railways, the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk, had been ordered by the federal government to construct and help pay for a modern new railway station to replace the city’s outdated 1872 Union Station that was located on the south side of Front opposite today’s University