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From 2012 to 2014 I contributed to The Grid . This article was originally published online on July 15, 2013. Given the ongoing debates over public transit in Scarborough, this piece will remain timely for a long time to come. You may also wish to read a piece I wrote for Torontoist several months later on the general history of public transit in Scarborough . Toronto Star , March 19, 1985. Click on image for larger version. Torontonians love arguing about the same proposed transit lines ad nauseum. Tuesday’s City Council debate—regarding which form the Scarborough RT‘s replacement will take—feels like a replay of past battles where a streetcar/LRT line was displaced in favour of a pricier, sexier option. Toronto Star , January 29, 1975. Among the priority studies recommended in January 1975—by a joint provincial/Metro Toronto task force on the region’s transportation needs for the next quarter-century—was a high-speed transit line linking the recently approved Kennedy s...

Background: besides writing Past Pieces of Toronto for OpenFile, I tackled several other assignments for the site. One was this piece, originally published on March 22, 2012. Subway construction along Yonge Street, 1949. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 16, Series 574, File 2, Item 4992. Click on image for larger version. Throughout the debate on whether LRTs or subways should be built in Scarborough, the construction of the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way has been a persistent bogeyman. Vilified by ardent subway supporters such as Mayor Rob Ford as one of the biggest disasters in Toronto transit history , the work carried out on St. Clair has been criticized for its delays and impacts (real and imagined) on local business and traffic. Those who imagine fewer hardships building a subway than a surface line may want to examine the miseries that surrounded the construction of the original Yonge line , which was far more disruptive to the local landscape than what occurred on S...

This post offers supplementary material for a recent edition of Historicist posted on Torontoist , which you should read first before diving into the following text. Headline, the Toronto Star , December 18, 1958. Accompanying several of the stories I drew upon were plenty of  screaming front-page headlines. Or at least there were in the Star and the Telegram - it appears the Globe and Mail thought they were below their sober, reserved standard. TTC Chairman Allan "Lampy" Lamport soon caused enough problems for the transit provider on his own when he resigned his position several weeks later.

Photograph by Alfred Pearson. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 16, Series 71, Item 10091. According to the City of Toronto Archives, these pictures show a "traffic tie up on Elizabeth Street south of Dundas with truck having lost a rear wheel parked on tracks on Elizabeth Street delaying a Peter Witt streetcar on the Dundas route" on January 10, 1934. Photograph by Alfred Pearson. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 16, Series 71, Item 10092. This incident may not have made it into the day’s papers, but Elizabeth Street figured in two stories in the following day’s edition of the Star . A front page headline noted that “GAMBLING DENS THRIVE IN CITY HALL’S SHADOW OPEN TO ALL COMERS.” An undercover reporter, “who had never placed a bet or risked a nickel in any public gambling house,” visited three bookie joints within three blocks of (Old) City Hall. Among those stops was “a rendezvous on Elizabeth Street” that was “known to the sophisticated. The reported wasn’t asked any...

I left the Mission via Valencia Street, stopping into book stores with comfy couches to rest my feet. The blinding facade of the thrift store shown above drew me in...and I walked out with 1960s issues of The Atlantic , Harper's and Ramparts . It was inevitable I'd wind up taking a trip on a cable car. Since my feet were aching, I sat on the inside, which reduced the number of photo ops. C'est la vie. *** Day three took me to Berkeley, where I arrived in the midst of graduation ceremonies. The campus and downtown were filled with students wandering around in gowns and mortarboards. One set of scholars made repeated attempts to capture their joy mid-air —I couldn't tell if the photographer wanted a pile of shots to work with or if the perfect ledge jump was proving elusive. Outside the Free Speech Movement Cafe, I was able to check out what was happening back home. The Globe and Mail was among that day's front pages on display. Until that mom...

By this point in the trip, the relaxed vibe of the west coast was sinking in, as I didn't feel an urgency to rush across the bay. I had settled into a pattern of processing photos, writing pieces of blog entries, reading the local papers and waking up to a steady diet of Norman Lear shows on cable (the final season of Good Times gave way to the first, The Jeffersons appeared to be near the end of its run, etc). Any tensions and stresses I felt before the trip had long evaporated, apart from occasional worries about how to park the Grand Marquis in compact lots. Day two in San Francisco started with a trek to The Mission to check out the neighbourhood's murals and sample some Bay-style burritos. The parade of art began upon exiting from the BART station at Mission and 16th, with a piece based on 1940s Wonder Woman comics greeting me at street level. Near the station were the murals of Clarion Alley (example shown above). SF Weekly's "Best of" issue...

The TTC's latest suggestions for escalator dos and don'ts, including a groove-y logo. This was among the first ads to be posted at Bloor when it ceased to be the Being Erica station. Had the TTC gone for shock value, they might have considered an updating this British public information film. Lesson: don't leave empty rubber boots on an escalator.

It's 1977 and there's a new ball team in town. You don't feel like battling for a parking spot to see the Jays for the first time. How will you get down there without feeling as jittery as the fellow in this ad? How about special TTC and GO services? Thanks to the detective work of James Bow at Transit Toronto , here is some information about this service. One account of the service, from Bill Robb: I'm looking back through TTC Headlights and I believe this service was short-lived. Express buses to hockey and football games date back to before widespread subway service. These express services operated to ALL home games. The Blue Jay special buses ONLY operated to weekend and holiday home games. The sporting fan was used to service to all games and people would show up for weeknight games, wait and find no bus. Also these were extra fare express services and as the subway lines reached further and further out the extra fare became a tougher sell. Sunday and...

Headed on the first of several trips downtown this week last night, to catch Spacing magazine's evening of urban planning/transit-related short films. Since I suspected I wouldn't know anyone there, and to re-jig my memory while writing this post, I brought along a notebook. It came in handy before the switch on the video player was flipped on. First time ever in the Drake. Not much light down here in the basement, so I suspect I'll be lucky to read anything afterwards. The room is filling fast - I'm four rows from he front in a folding chair, surrounded by lawn chairs and padded benches. It's been awhile since I've gone to an evening like this. Used to go to readings a lot during my "hermit" year, not so much since. Busy life. I flip through the weeklies, browse websites, see events that look interesting but never follow up. My timing was good. It was standing-room only when the films began. Starting with a sped-up trip down the University-Spa...