A brief history of what is now known as Dundas Street

As an east-west thoroughfare, Dundas Street in Toronto is rather unusual. Even at ground level, numerous jogs, kinks and gentle curves in the road give the street a crooked, doglegged feel not found in the ruler-straight Bloor or Queen streets. The main reason for Dundas' odd route is its origin as several unconnected streets through the centre of the city. For many years, there was no major east-west street between College and Queen.

The street we know today was gradually stitched together from west to east starting around the time of the first World War. When Dundas arrived, numerous smaller streets and intersections - including a now-impossible Queen and Dundas junction - were eliminated or renamed. Without the arrival of the new street, the Dundas bridge over the Don would still be Wilton Square and Wilton Street Bridge. Yonge-Dundas Square might be something else altogether.

According to Sean Marshall at Spacing magazine, it's a common misconception that Dundas is named for the town of Dundas in western Ontario--its ultimate destination. In fact, Marshall writes, the town is named for the road, which was named for Henry Dundas, a British Secretary of State.
Arriving from the west, Dundas used to angle south at its intersection with Ossington Avenue to intersect with Queen Street (shown above.) The section of Ossington south of Dundas today was renamed when Dundas diverted east.


Between Ossington and Bathurst, Dundas took over a stretch known as Arthur Street that passed north of Trinity Bellwoods Park. Arthur itself had been extended west from Manning (formerly Hope Street) at a cost of $2,350 in 1883 through the property of Edward Oscar Bickford - whose daughters gave their names to Beatrice and Grace streets - and over the grounds of Trinity College.

Arthur Street terminated at Bathurst opposite a large property known simply as The Hall. Once owned by Sir Casimir Gzowski, the sprawling, well-manicured plot with its large home was once the nexus of social life in Toronto, thanks to its famous lawn parties. After Gzowski's death in 1904, the property was sold and carved up to create Alexandra Park and the site of the Toronto Western Hospital. A new road, St. Patrick Street, was created between Bathurst and McCaul through the property.

When Dundas Street arrived, a slight jog between Arthur and St. Patrick streets had to be removed, resulting in the significant kink near Denison Avenue. At the Grange, when it was still St. Patrick Street, the road sliced off roughly a third of the old property when it cut through to reach McCaul, formerly Renfrew Street. The severed slice of the Grange became housing.


At McCaul, Dundas had to make another slight southward deviation to connect with and absorb Anderson Street, a little road to University Avenue (below). The route correction is visible today at St. Patrick Street - a road formerly known as Dummer - which received its name presumably as compensation for the loss of the old St. Patrick. Adding a chicane to Dundas better aligned it with Agnes Street, a road running east from University Avenue, though another slightly staggered intersection was still necessary.


Like old St. Patrick Street at Bathurst, Agnes Street terminated in a T-junction at Yonge Street. To continue east, drivers had to turn south on Yonge then immediately left onto Wilton. Between Yonge and Victoria, Wilton Street was dubbed Wilton Square. The name would later be changed to Dundas Square to reflect the street's new name - this portion of the street lives on in the southern edge of today's Yonge Dundas Square.


To ease passage for cars and streetcars over Yonge, the city created another significant deviation west of Bond (above). In 1998, the north side of Dundas Square would be opened up to create Yonge-Dundas Square as we now know it.

Continuing east, the defining characteristic of Wilton Avenue was Wilton Crescent, a gentle curve in the road that once formed the northern boundary of Moss Park. The curve is still there, exactly as it was, between Filmore's Hotel and Sherbourne. Moss Park is now considerably smaller and tucked well to the south and the surrounding neighbourhood, once affluent, has fallen on hard times.


Dundas claimed the remainder of Wilton Avenue - east of Wilton Crescent, over the Don to Boulton Avenue, just past Broadview. As I wrote last week, the bridge over the river was originally named for Wilton Avenue before Dundas arrived. It was here, at Riverside, that the new street terminated until after the second World War.


When Dundas was extended further east to its present terminus at Kingston Road, the city decided to incorporate several minor roads and even some laneways. As Sean Marshall says in his Spacing piece, many houses still have garages on Dundas near Jones as a result of that plan.

Moving east between Boulton and Jones, Whitby and parts of Dagmar were strung together to allow Dundas to reach Doel Avenue. Interestingly, the diagonal part of Dundas below Greenwood isn't one of the many deviations that line the street - it was present in 1916 too.

In its final stretch past Greenwood, Dundas was built out of Applegrove Avenue, Ashbridge Avenue, Maughan Crescent, and Hemlock Avenue, which were built around Small's Pond, a long-lost body of water just north of Queen and Kingston.

In all, Dundas Street links 15 former streets in its kinked route across the city. If you're having visualizing all of this, click here for a map of the route (rotated ninety degrees) between Ossington and Kingston Road.

MAP
Ossington to University

University to Broadview

Broadview to Woodbine


Photos: City of Toronto Archives and University of Toronto

Toronto: Boom Town

Like many major cities, Toronto has been bursting at the seams for hundreds of years, absorbing smaller towns in its wake in an endless clatter of construction. This 1951 National Film Board video shared by Spacing writer Jonathan Zettel Friday shows Toronto the "Boom Town" a city "growing like mad, bursting at the seams."

Enjoy the delightful, wide-eyed wonder from the narrator and the vintage shots of the city:

Toronto Boom Town by Leslie McFarlane, National Film Board of Canada

A brief history of crossing the Don River

Thundering over the Don Valley on a westbound subway train it's easy to underestimate the shining river below. In numerous locations - Bloor, Gerrard, Dundas, Queen, Eastern, and the Gardiner - it's possible to entirely skip over the lower Don without so much as a bump in the road. Man one, nature nothing.

It wasn't always that simple. Scattered throughout the valley are several abandoned, seldom used, and vacant spaces left by demolished former bridges that once crossed the Don at the river bank rather than the valley wall. Almost every major crossing point south of the Evergreen Brick Works is on its second or third bridge, with the old structures torn down in favour of greater strength, width and height.

The first crossings over the lower Don River, once a powerful, meandering waterway prior to a major engineering project in the late 1800s, were probably nothing more than logs lashed together over a narrow part of the water, much like Playter's Bridge, (shown above, and drawn by Elizabeth P. Simcoe, the wife of John Graves Simcoe).

Playter's Bridge was located parallel to Winchester Street in today's Cabbagetown - a road that once continued down into the Don valley past Necropolis Cemetery. The same crossing point would later be home to the first major bridge over the Don, the larger Winchester Street bridge, shown below with The Isolation Hospital - a precursor to Bridgepoint Health - in the background. The Riverdale Park pedestrian bridge stands just south of the old Winchester Street crossing, which is now, sadly, gone.


Heading south, the Gerrard Street bridge is the next crossing point. The bridge presently transferring traffic between Broadview Avenue and River Street is actually the third structure to stand on the site. The first, known as Bell's Bridge, was washed away by a flood in the late 1800s, but the second was rather more substantial.

Traversing the entire Don Valley and the railway corridor on the west bank, the metal and stone bridge was a significant upgrade from its predecessor. But, like many other bridges, it became an obstruction as river traffic increased. The third Gerrard Street bridge, the one in use today, features steel arches tall enough for highway, railway and river traffic to pass underneath. The wider road deck has enough room for four lanes of traffic - two in each direction - and two streetcar lanes.


It's a similar deal over at the Dundas Street bridge, which is in its second incarnation. Dundas Street itself is actually a relatively new addition, frankensteined together from numerous east-west streets. At the time of its construction, the bridge connected Elliot Street in the east, with Wilton Street in the west. Fortunately the road deck was built high enough for the Don Valley Parkway to pass underneath.

Continuing south, the next major crossing point is the Queen Street Viaduct. There have been at least three bridges at this location since the 1800s. The first captured on film is a low-slung, girder bridge that hopped the river until 1911. It's likely the bridge was replaced for several reasons: to prevent damage from ice break-up on the river below, allow river traffic to pass underneath, and allow increased traffic over the top.

When it came time to replace the bridge with the green truss we know and love today, the old bridge was left in situ while workers hammered away on the ramps and new intersection of King and Queen to the south. The Queen Street Viaduct, to use its official name, was renovated in the 1990s and the famous clock and quote added in 1996. The clock stopped working and was stripped out in 2010.


The flow of ice down the Don caused the destruction of several early bridges and was one the key components of the "Don problem," a list of gripes and obstacles to industry that led to the dredging, straightening, and general taming of the river south of Gerrard Street.

The original Eastern Avenue bridge, now considerably further south than the street it used to carry, was one such structure to be claimed by the raging river. The rusting truss bridge still standing today, cut off by the highway on one end and the Lower Don Recreation Trail at the other, once met Sunlight Park Road, formerly part of Eastern Avenue.

At some point the Eastern Avenue truss was doubled in width; early photos show it at just half its original size. The concrete arch bridge beside it is actually still functional; it carries a major Enbridge gas main over the river. Because it's cheaper to maintain than demolish, the old Eastern Avenue bridge remains stranded in place.


South of here, the Don is traversed by several box girder highway ramps connecting the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway. The Gardiner itself passes over the river just before the waterway makes a sharp right-angle turn - necessitated by an old land dispute - into Ashbridges Bay.


The most southerly crossing point of note is the famous Cherry Street lift bridge. Built in 1968, the pivoting structure allows lake vessels to access the Keating Channel and the port area off Villiers Street. The bridge replaced a basic wooden swing structure which, amazingly judging by its rickety appearance, carried a single train track over the channel.

Of course, no tour of bridges in the lower Don Valley would be complete with out the big daddy: the Prince Edward Viaduct between Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue. The complete viaduct system is actually two bridges and a large embankment at the top of Parliament Street, built together in 1912.
The western phase created a connection between Bloor and Parliament Streets north of Howard Street while the smaller western section of bridge traversed the Rosedale Valley. The largest piece, the stunning three hinged concrete-steel arch bridge over the Don, was finished in 1918 and named after the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII.


Showing remarkable foresight, both bridges in the viaduct were built to accommodate a subway that wouldn't arrive for decades. Thanks to the roughed-in train deck, only minor modifications were needed when the Bloor-Danforth line arrived in the 1960s. The bridge over the Rosedale Valley is also capable of carrying subway tracks, but the curve to Sherbourne station was considered too tight, necessitating the separate, covered bridge out of Castle Frank.

The suicide prevention barrier, dubbed the luminous veil, arrived in 2003 to reduce the alarming number of people jumping to their deaths over the low railings. At one time, an average of one person jumped every 22 days.

Several rail bridges also cross the Don throughout its lower reaches. The most impressive is the mostly disused CPR "Half Mile" bridge near the Evergreen Brick Works. Soaring above the valley floor, the structure - actually less than half a mile long - was built in the 1880s to ease trains up a change in elevation. It was renovated in spectacular fashion in the 1920s to safely support more weight. In daredevil fashion, workers built a new bridge beside the old one and slipped replacement pieces into position between trains without ever interrupting service. Can't say I would like to be on the first train over a hastily installed section of bridge, but it was a different time
.
Several smaller steel and stone bridges are visible from the Lower Don Recreation Trail, which is perhaps the best way of viewing the current crop of Don bridges first-hand. I heartily recommend a trip while the weather holds up.

MORE IMAGES:
A later incarnation of the Winchester Street after renovations in 1909.The newly completed Gerrard Street bridge.
A makeshift bridge over a frozen Don River.
The old Queen Street bridge is shifted to make way for its replacement.
Photos: Toronto Public Library and City of Toronto Archives.

A brief history of Toronto's high-speed TurboTrain

Head down to Union Station or Billy Bishop airport today, book a ticket to Montreal, and you're likely looking at an $80 to $250 ticket. A Via Rail train, according to the company's website, takes about six hours to make the trip from Union to Central Station while an airplane can cover the same distance in just over an hour - two if you factor in check-in, boarding, and other necessities.

Right now, train journeys between the two largest cities in the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor take just as long as the road, and provide few savings or incentives for people to ditch their wheels; free wi-fi and a snack service is about as good as it gets.

It could have been so different - in 1968, CN Rail debuted the TurboTrain, a monster of a locomotive capable of making the journey between Toronto and Montreal in just two hours, a third of the time it takes today. Looking like rudolph the red-nosed reindeer on steroids in its CN livery, the TurboTrain was poised to make Canada a global leader in rapid transit.

Unfortunately, as you might suspect, things didn't entirely go to plan.
The TurboTrain - or simply "Turbo" as it was called in early promotional material - was built by Montreal Locomotive Works and operated by Canadian National at a time when countries like Japan and France, now leaders in high-speed rail, were planning or tweaking their fledgling services.


Built like an aircraft, the TurboTrain was the first of its kind in North America to utilize aluminum alloy and proper streamlining. The large, distinctive nose-cones on the front and rear "power domes" were designed to slice through the air while recessed doors and windows created less drag. In total, each seven-car unit weighed just 185 tons, a third less than diesel trains of the time.

Unlike Via's present fleet, passenger doors were in the middle of each car. The semipermanently-connected carriages shared special wheel sets at the coupling point that allowed the train to lean into bends - counter to centrifugal force - for faster cornering without nauseated passengers.

Each power dome had five 400-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 gas turbine engines. Four were used to power the locomotive, one provided electricity for the interior. On the test track, the TurboTrain was capable of 274 km/h but in service it would often only be allowed to reach half that.


Though speed was the TurboTrain's raison d'être, the new service aimed to provide top-notch customer service, too. The insulated and pressurized carriages shut out external noise and, according to a promotional video, the interior was lined with hand-spun fabrics.

The video makes a point of highlighting the train's "young and exciting" (and apparently all-female) hosts. The girls, all of them in their 20s, wore one of three uniforms during the Toronto to Montreal run. A red knee-length trenchcoat and white beret, a white blazer and matching skirt, or a black pantsuit for evening meal service. The duds were also "easy and elegant," according to the voiceover.



The "TurboClub" cabin in the dome at the front and rear parts of the train was where the real luxury was to be found. Suited businessmen quaffed cocktails and chowed down on filet mignon, veal cordon bleu, roast tenderloin of beef, coq au vin, and Cornish game hen with a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside and passing towns.


The proletarians in the rest of the train had to make do with microwaved snacks from the catering car where, the excited promo boasts, "hot food specialties [are prepared] in a matter of seconds!" The menu was, apparently, "tested in experimental food labs" but looked suspiciously like airplane food.
During the TurboTrain's inaugural run from Toronto to Montreal in 1968, while packed with reporters, the locomotive struck a meat van at a level crossing near Kingston. Although no-one was injured and the train suffered only superficial damage, this was to be the first bump in a series of issues for the new service.

Soon after clocking a Canadian record 226 km/h near Gananoque, Ontario, the original TurboTrains began to suffer from technical problems. The brakes froze in winter and the engine exhaust spat soot over the roof windows. In 1971, the erratic service was halted altogether while CN went back to the test track.


In June 1973, the service returned with longer, nine-car trainsets. Spare power domes and passenger carriages were made into two, four-car trains and sold to the U.S., where Amtrak operated the same model of train. Before either could be delivered, one of the units had to be written off after sideswiping a freight train in testing. As a result the purchase of the remaining unit fell through and the vehicles sat idle until a fire damaged one of the primary fleet in 1975.

In 1978, the trains were transferred to Via Rail, the company created to take over CN's passenger operations. Crucially, control of the track itself remained with CN. Without the necessary authority, the Via-branded TurboTrains had to yield to slow-moving freight trains at every opportunity - a problem that persists to this day.


Level crossings, as I outlined earlier, were also a problem for high-speed locomotives on the line. Without a dedicated passenger track for non-stop, full-speed service, trains had to slow down significantly to ensure a safe passage through intersections with the road, adding crucial minutes to the travel time. The trains sometimes had to stop completely to navigate CN freight services.

In fewer than twenty years after its introduction in Canada, the TurboTrain was withdrawn from service entirely, replaced by the hideous diesel LRC locomotives of the 1980s. As if to deliberately erase the rapid-rail experiment, all of the remaining trainsets were scrapped, with none retained for posterity.

Though it eventually outran its technical issues - reaching 97 percent availability over its lifetime - still nothing travels near the speed of the TurboTrain on Canadian rails today.



Images: Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives Inc., public domain, and Wikimedia Commons.

A brief history of the S.S. Noronic disaster

It took just minutes for the S. S. Noronic, "The Queen of the Lakes," to erupt into a blistering inferno that lit up the late-summer Toronto night in the early hours of September 14, 1949, sixty-three years ago this week. In just a couple of hours the racing, white-hot fire had claimed more than a hundred lives and gutted the ship, leaving the warped metal hull of the vast ship resting on the bottom of the shallow lake bed.

In the aftermath, the ship's crew, dangerous design, and lack of safety features would come under harsh criticism from the public and federal investigators. As a result of the disaster many old passenger ships would be forced out of service on Lake Ontario. The Noronic disaster remains one of the deadliest incidents in the history of Toronto.


The S. S. Noronic was completed in 1913 by the Western Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company at Port Arthur (Thunder Bay), Ontario for the Northern Navigation Company. Its distinctive short prow and single, aft funnel made it relatively easy to identify on the water.

The 6,905-ton vessel embarked on its delayed maiden voyage late that year, showing off its wooden interior complete with ballroom, library, beauty salon, music room, and full orchestra to entertain the capacity 600 passengers.

Interestingly, the Noronic was unable to leave the ship yard on schedule because of the "Big Blow" of 1913, a violent winter storm that battered the Great Lakes, wrecking or stranding a total 38 ships. Winds in excess of 128 kilometres an hour brought sudden snow storms and gigantic rolling waves.
Serving as a cruiser, the ship made the majority of its income during the summer taking those with enough cash on pleasure trips between major ports on the great lakes. In the off-season, the Noronic - later owned by Canada Steamship Lines - made several journeys from Detroit through the Thousand Islands via Toronto.


On September 14, 1949, the Noronic was moored at Pier 9 in Toronto for the night close to the present-day ferry terminal. With the cool late-summer breeze blowing across its decks, only a few 131 crew and a handful of 574 passengers remained awake on the vessel.

At 2:30 a.m., passenger Don Church reported seeing smoke billowing under a locked linen closet on C-deck, roughly in the middle of the vessel, and alerted bellboy Earnest O'Neil. Without sounding the fire alarm - presumably because he wasn't sure if the fire was substantial enough - O'Neil opened the closet, releasing a sudden, powerful backdraft. In seconds, the polished wood interior of the hallway was on fire. All across the ship passengers remained asleep.

O'Neil, Church and another crew member initially attempted to extinguish the flames themselves but were soon forced back by the terrifying intensity of the fire. The ship's distress whistle sounded eight minutes after the fire had spilled from the linen closet but by this time several decks were already alight.

By chance, a worker from the New Toronto Goodyear Tire factory heading home after the late shift happened to be passing as the distress whistle cut the quiet night. Realizing just two gangplanks were attached to the shore, Donald Williamson pushed a painting rig in place to help stranded passengers escape. By the time the first emergency services arrived, terrified, burning passengers were already leaping into the oily lake water.


The flames had already breached the top deck and were almost as tall as the mast. The first fire pumper arrived at 2:41 a.m. - 11 minutes after the fire was released. Fire-fighting boats also arrived on the scene but many passengers remained trapped within the vessel by burning stairwells and disorientating walls of smoke. Authorities smashed portholes and attached ladders to the hull while the screams of burning passengers trapped within the craft grew louder.

As panic increasingly took hold in the face of the blinding flames, passengers began to leap to their death onto the concrete dockside and overwhelm the few escape routes. One wooden ladder tied to the side of the ship snapped under a crush of escapees, sending women falling into the obsidian water below.

20 minutes after the first alarm, the metal structure of the Noronic was white hot and the melting metal sent the decks collapsing in on each-other. So much water had been dumped on the vessel by this point that it had begun to lean toward the pier. It would take two full hours before the flames could be extinguished.



At 7:00 a.m. the gruesome task of recovering the bodies began in earnest. Crews found blackened skeletons lining the hallway - some locked in embrace - while others were found still in their beds. It's believed many of the remains were simply vaporized. Most deaths were attributed to suffocation, crushing or burns. Just one person drowned after leaping into the lake.

The near-impossible task of putting a name to each of the incinerated bodies - the vast majority of whom were American - fell to Ontario's fledgling Medical Identification Committee who meticulously examined x-ray records to piece together the final list of the deceased. All of the roughly 139 deaths - the number has never been precisely pinned down despite the best efforts of investigators - were passengers.

The crew were severely criticized for their handling of the fire in the immediate aftermath. Many fled on seeing the flames and failed to wake sleeping passengers. A federal inquiry by the Kellock Commission concluded that the fire was started by a discarded cigarette, possibly by someone loading the linen closet, but no-one was ever charged with causing the accident. The investigation also found that no crew member had contacted the fire department in the crucial first minutes of the blaze.

In contrast, the actions of the Noronic's captain, William Taylor, were praised. Taylor smashed portholes and lowered numerous passengers to safety.

Canada Steamship Lines suspected arson in the fire, a notion supported by a similar linen closet blaze aboard the Quebec in 1950. The sunken hull of the Noronic was partially dismantled at the scene and the rest was towed to Hamilton and scrapped.


CSL would eventually pay out roughly $2 million in compensation. As a result of the disaster, materials such as wood were restricted in the construction of lake-going vessels. Fire-proof bulkheads, fire extinguishers, automatic alarms, and sprinkler systems became mandatory. The Noronic's legacy is improved maritime safety for all.

Images from the investigation:Investigators line the dock before entering the hull of the Noronic
Workers pick through the fragile remains of the gutted interiorInvestigating an area of interest in what was the purser's office

Images: Library and Archives Canada, Wikimedia Commons, the City of Toronto Archives and Derek Flack

Back to school in Toronto, vintage edition

Heading back to school after the summer break is always a day of mixed emotions for kids. I recall bursting to tell my friends about my summer vacation and which Sega games I had completed while simultaneously dreading the prospect of being trapped in a tiny classroom for much of the next ten months.

Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of Ontario school kids went through the same time-honored tradition of traipsing back into the classroom for the first day of the new academic year, so what better time to round-up vintage pictures of Toronto's schools.

You will most likely recognize many of the buildings shown here since so many of them are still in use. There's a common design thread linking all of the structures - many of the schools built in the early part of the 20th century are, frankly, terrifying in their institutional grandeur. There's no chance kids looked forward to a nose-blowing class (yep, it's real) in the middle of winter at any of these institutions.

Shots of the classrooms, however, don't seem half as scary. Sure, there's a sense of strict discipline, but the outdoor classes at Victoria Park Forest School can't have been so bad. Some of the creative classes look fairly decent, too. That said, the thick coats and hats some students wore indoors in one of the classroom shots make it seem like winter education was something of a drag. I'm glad I could take the furnace at my school for granted.

IN THE CLASSROOM:
Students take part in an auxiliary art class
Boy caning a chair
Health inspection by the school nurse
Boy taking an auxiliary mental test with shapes
Mimico school band pose for a photograph
Students take part in a public nose-blowing class in 1913
Mr. Brown's outdoor art class
An outdoor class at Victoria Park Forest School
Puppet making class
Outdoor classes in fall
A chilly classroom in winter
Students drink up all their milk, like good little kids
EXTERIORS:
Adam Beck Junior Public SchoolAgincourt CI
Allenby Public SchoolBroadview Avenue School
Charles G. Fraser Public School
Crawford Street Public School
Danforth Tech
Duke of Connaught Public School
Earl Beatty Public School
Earl Grey Public School
Edith L. Groves Public School
Givens Street Public School
Harbord Street Public School
Hillcrest Public School
Huron Street Public School
Islington School House
The original Jarvis CI building
Kent Public School
Leslie Street School
Malvern Public School
Northern Secondary School
Parkdale Public School
Riverdale CI
Rosedale School
Toronto Junction High School
Victoria Street Public School
Western TechWilkinson Public School
Images: City of Toronto Archives