Toronto Sketches 9. Mike Filey
also expected to help pay for a new viaduct and the associated bridges and underpasses that would be required to allow the trains unobstructed access to and from the station.
The estimated cost of the project was $28.5 million, and officials of the CPR eventually decided they wanted no part of it. They would build their own station instead. And it would be far uptown, adjacent to the company’s cross-town main line.
It’s summer 1916, and the CPR’s new North Toronto Station awaits its first visitors. The tower clock tells us it’s 10:00 a.m.
This decision having been made the company then hired the prestigious Toronto architectural firm of Darling and Pearson to design the new station. The first set of drawings was altered when it was decided that the Canadian Northern would use the same facility. Finally, on September 9, 1915, Toronto’s popular mayor Tommy Church tapped the station’s cornerstone into place.
The mayor was back a little more than nine months later to officially open the new $250,000 station. Within weeks of the opening approximately 10 trains a day were calling at the new CP North Toronto Station.
Still a stately building, even though the clock has long since vanished, the station awaits its future in this photo I took more than a decade ago.
The Canadian Northern wouldn’t use the station very long, though. It, along with several other financially embarrassed railways including the Grand Trunk, were taken over by the federal government and combined into the new Canadian National Railways.
Before long the new North Toronto Station was overcrowded, but the company still refused to get involved in the new waterfront station. Rumours started to circulate that the CPR had acquired a large parcel of land close to where Maple Leaf Gardens now stands on Carlton Street, just east of Yonge. The rumours suggested that it would be here that CPR would build a mammoth new underground railway terminal of its own complete with a huge hotel soaring high above the proposed station. A 100-foot-wide tunnel would be built through the terminal, and trains would be brought to the proposed new downtown terminal from the main line at the existing North Toronto Station. Of course, it was all rumours.
Eventually, CPR officials thought better of their decision not to be part of the majestic new Union Station on Front Street, and by late 1929 CPR trains were operating out of the new facility. Meanwhile, the North Toronto Station, now devoid of any railway traffic, soon took on a new role as the site of beer and liquor outlets.
The building has suffered over the past few decades, but now with its facade and interior all nicely cleaned up and its 140-foot-high tower featuring a clock once more, the CPR North Toronto Station is a shining example of what can be done with our city landmarks if someone cares.
February 2, 2003
Car Show on the Road Again
The Canadian International Car Show is one of Canada’s most popular consumer exhibitions. It usually takes place at the Toronto Convention Centre on Front Street West, where at least 300,000 visitors are wowed, dazzled, and amazed by the hundreds of cars, trucks, and specialty vehicles on display.
Newspaper records seem to be unanimous in the conclusion that the first gasoline-powered “horseless carriages” seen on Toronto’s frequently dusty, often muddy streets were those driven by anonymous American visitors who crossed the rather porous border on exploration trips into what many of them still referred to simply as British North America.
Incidentally, the term gasoline-powered is important in this story since once the visitors got here they would probably have seen a local patent attorney, one Frederick Fetherstonhaugh, roaming the city streets in a “battery-powered” machine built for him in the small Yonge Street factory of inventor William Still. By the way, that vehicle, the battery of which was recharged using power from the overhead of the Toronto and York Radial Railway that ran in front of Mr. Fetherstonhaugh’s place on Lake Shore Road near today’s Royal York Road, was still in service more than a decade later.
As for the first Canadian to own a gas-powered auto, there’s little doubt that the honour belongs to Hamilton, Ontario’s John Moodie. He purchased an American-built one-cylinder Winton on April 2, 1898, from none other than Alexander Winton, the company president who travelled to the Steel City from his Cleveland plant to conclude the deal in person. It’s been suggested that had Moodie made his acquisition one day sooner he would have been the purchaser of the first gas-powered car on the continent.
An awesome array of new vehicles awaits the crowds that will visit the 1929 edition of the National Motor Show of Canada held on the two floors of Simpson’s Arcadian Court in downtown Toronto.
Nevertheless, Moodie’s new car had cost him $1,000, but as usual there was still the duty to be paid. The customs people classified the strange vehicle as a “carriage” on which the duty was 35 percent. Moodie insisted that the car should be regarded as a “locomotive.” Moodie eventually won his case (the last in history to do so) thereby saving himself 100 bucks. Moodie didn’t keep the car very long, selling it to Torontonian Dr. Perry Doolittle, who then claimed the distinction of being the purchaser of Canada’s first used car.
Doolittle, who is buried in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery, is an interesting person in his own right. He became a major player in the development of both cars and highways throughout the Dominion and was one of the founders of what we know today as the Canadian Automobile Association. He was also the first person (with friend Edward Flickenger) to drive a vehicle (a 1926 Model T Ford) from coast to coast under its own power, although for part of the trip flanged steel wheels replaced the car’s rubber tires to allow the vehicle to travel over railway tracks through otherwise inaccessible areas.
As the years went by, an ever-increasing number of vehicles from a wide variety of manufacturers began to appear on city streets, and it wasn’t long before impromptu “car shows” erupted on the side of the road as curious crowds gathered around the latest models. Every so often, local automobile dealers filled their showrooms with different models they had the rights to sell and then advertised the event as a “car show.” However, the first time that an “all-models” event was held, not just in Toronto but anywhere in the entire country, occurred on March 31, 1906, when the Canadian Automobile and Boat Show opened in the covered rink in the rear of the old Granite Club on Church Street (a portion of which still stands as 519 Church Street).
Other Toronto venues for automobile shows over the ensuing years were the Armouries on University Avenue (now the site of the Court House) and the Transportation (destroyed by fire in 1974) and Horticultural (still standing) buildings at the Canadian National Exhibition. So important were these shows that in 1929 a building dedicated specifically to cars and trucks was built at the east end of the CNE grounds. It was here that the newest models were first seen by the Canadian public attending the fall fair. Unfortunately, when the CNE decided to move its show dates from early September to late August, the only vehicles available for display were the previous year’s models. As this was of little use to the dealers or of interest to the public, the last of the once extremely popular CNE car shows was held in 1967.
One of the most unusual venues ever selected for a car show in Toronto was the one chosen for the February 1929 edition of the National Motor Show of Canada. Its exhibition hall was none other than Simpson’s magnificent two-storey Arcadian Court on the eighth and ninth floors of the store’s recently completed Bay Street addition. To get the cars into place, they had to be hoisted up the Richmond Street side of the building and hauled in through the windows. No doubt quite a sight. After the car show, the Arcadian Court would be advertised as the largest restaurant in a department store anywhere in the world.
February 9, 2003