“Toronto will have a new sound tomorrow — a sound that will stamp it as a metropolis. That high-pitched, steel-meeting-steel rumble you’ll hear coming from the sidewalk gratings as the red subway cars start moving under Yonge Street will life Toronto one rung above the rank of metropolitan area given it at the start of this year. For in the eyes of those who live in great cities the world over a subway — tube, Metro, Underground, whatever you like to dub it — has become virtually a prerequisite of the metropolis.” — Ian Ball, the Globe and Mail, March 29, 1954
The opening of the Yonge subway line on March 30, 1954, ushered in a new era of commuter travel in Toronto and, coupled with the creation of Metropolitan Toronto the previous year, symbolized the rapid growth the region experienced during the postwar era. After five years of watching construction along Yonge Street, riders could enjoy the speed and convenience of the subway’s shiny red trains from any of its 12 initial stops.
While a streetcar subway line along Yonge Street had been proposed as early as 1910 and rejected by voters soon after due to Toronto’s eternal financial stinginess, serious efforts by the TTC to build a modern underground line began during the Second World War.
After proposals for two streetcar subway lines were rejected by the city in 1942, the TTC proposed a “rapid transit subway” below Yonge Street from Eglinton Avenue to Union Station and a streetcar subway along Queen Street from Trinity Bellwoods Park to Parliament Street. A 1945 report, Rapid Transit for Toronto, suggested this system was needed to alleviate surface-route traffic and provide “a substantial improvement in the speed and comfort of the ride furnished.”
The report concluded that “the present congestion of traffic on Toronto streets threatens the very economic life of our city. Its welfare varies with the ease and efficiency with which people and goods can move throughout the city. The Commission does not propose to stand idly by and allow this deterioration of its services and of the city itself to take place. There must be a gradual separation of public and private vehicles, both of which are now trying to operate on the narrow streets originally designed for horse-drawn traffic.”
A Progress Report on Construction of Canada's First Subway - Part 1
When voters cast their ballots during the municipal election on New Year’s Day 1946, they were asked to approve a TTC-run rapid-transit system on the understanding that the federal government would pay for 20 per cent of its cost, while TTC revenue would cover the rest — apart from some city infrastructure costs, such as rebuilding roads. The ballot question won by a landslide, with 69, 935 voters approving and only 8,630 opposed.
Though city council approved the plan in April 1946, it ran into some hiccups. Jurisdictional squabbling between Ottawa and Queen’s Park over an employment program supporting construction led to the feds pulling out. The city went ahead, although the reduced amount of funding meant the Queen line had to be shelved; an east-west line, which would be a full subway and run along Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue, was not approved until the late 1950s. Estimated cost of the Yonge Line: $28.9 million, plus an additional $3.5 million to cover trains.
A Progress Report on Construction of Canada's First Subway - Part 2
After postwar material shortages delayed its start, construction of the Yonge Line began with an official opening ceremony at a bandshell set up at Yonge and Wellington Streets on September 8, 1949, emceed by future Let’s Make a Deal host Monty Hall. Lieutenant-Governor Ray Lawson pulled the level to pound the first beam into place. Construction continued over the next five years, and by the time it was completed in 1954, the line cost $67 million ($754 million in today’s money).
Public interest in the ongoing work was assisted through information brochures designed for onlookers, whom the TTC nicknamed “sidewalk supervisors.”
Groundbreaking ceremony for the Yonge subway line, September 8, 1949. (City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1128, Series 381, File 2, Item 5914-7)
As the opening ceremony approached, some members of the city’s Board of Control (the elected-by-the-public equivalent of today’s City Council Executive Committee) believed that Mayor Allan Lamport wasn’t being shown proper respect, as he was the third-highest-ranking dignitary behind Premier Leslie Frost and Metropolitan Toronto Chairman Frederick Gardiner. “For the mayor to be ignored is the silliest thing that could ever happen,” complained veteran controller David Balfour. “I object to Toronto being brushed off like this.” Fellow controller Leslie Saunders was irritated by Gardiner’s piece of the spotlight, since the city had guided most of the subway’s construction, while Metro was a recent provincial creation. Lamport refused to comment, other than to note that he would play “an important part” in the ceremony.
Around 5,000 spectators attended the opening festivities, which began outside Davisville at 10:45 a.m. on March 30, 1954. TTC chairman W.C. McBrien noted that the line wasn’t a solution for the city’s traffic issues but “only the start of combating this monster.” He made five suggestions on how to fight congestion: eliminating parking on major downtown routes; eliminating parking meters, which “belong to the horse and buggy days and have no place in a large modern city”; building parking lots in outlying areas serviced by buses to bring commuters to the subway or into downtown; urging businesses in the core to stagger their employment hours; and reviving the Queen Street streetcar subway, so that 80 per cent of the existing downtown streetcar lines could be eliminated. McBrien also warned that government assistance would be required to build future subway lines.
Ad for the opening of the subway from the March 29, 1954, edition of the Telegram; Premier Leslie Frost and Mayor Allan Lamport throw the switch to launch the Yonge subway line on March 30, 1954. (City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1128, Series 381, File 298, Item 11847-45)
Following speeches by Gardiner and Lamport, Frost took the stage. “And now Mr. Mayor,” said Frost, “I am going to vary the program, by asking you to place your hand with mine on the control handle and, as we press it forward, give Canada’s first subway the green light,” thus relieving the worries of fretful councillors. Frost put his left hand on the switch, while Lamport used his right. As the pair posed for the cameras, the Telegram noted that Frost “shoved on the controls and shot the car ahead two or three hundred yards, then jammed on the brake.” Spectators laughed after somebody yelled out “We’ll revoke your licence!”
The first train of more than 600 dignitaries left Davisville at 11:50 a.m., heading north to Eglinton before switching direction and heading south to Union, where they were greeted by a pipe band. After an overflow train took the remaining dignitaries, the celebrations moved to the Royal York Hotel, where the luncheon delights included a scale model cake that bakers had worked on for a month. According to the Globe and Mail, the cake contained over 25 pounds of confectionary sugar and was covered with “a special icing finished with an edible lacquer.” Later that day, Frost related his experience on the subway to the Ontario legislature, declaring that it was “a great Toronto and Canadian achievement to have accomplished this for a great and growing community — the heart and centre and reflection of Ontario’s life.”
Service for the general public began at 1:30 p.m., coinciding with the last streetcar runs along Yonge Street, ending nearly a century of service. A banner placed on the last streetcar proclaimed “Goodbye Traffic Congestion.” The final trip was made mid-afternoon by members of the Upper Canada Railway Society. Streetcars service also ended on Avenue Road. The combination of the end of these services pleased motorists, who felt like race-car drivers over the next few days.
Sketches of opening-day passengers by James Reidford from the March 31, 1954, edition of the Globe and Mail.
The Globe and Mail observed that, back on the subway, “the congenital publicity seeker will be deprived of the opportunity of claiming the distinction of being the first subway passenger, for subway trains will be standing by for travel in both directions at each subway station when the gates open.” By rush hour, long lines flowed out station entrances, as commuters and the curious mingled to take their first ride. Delays of up to 15 minutes to reach the turnstiles were reported at King station. Later that night, crowds overwhelmed College Station thanks to a Maple Leafs playoff match at Maple Leaf Gardens. Overall, 200,000 riders used the subway on opening day. As a memento, the Telegram offered a form riders could use to commemorate their first subway trip.
The intense level of ridership on day one overwhelmed station infrastructure. Transfer stamping machines broke down, and token dispensers emptied. Staff were dispatched from Eglinton to Queen to hand out tokens during rush hour. One employee claimed to have sold $100 worth of tokens over a 50-minute span. As for transfers, people who didn’t need them grabbed one anyways, as a souvenir. Children ignored pleas from TTC staff to stop playing with the machines.
How to operate a transfer machine. The Globe and Mail, March 30, 1954.
Papers were filled with the experiences of first-day riders. Some were confused by the turnstiles, thinking they had to pay a fare to exit as well as enter. One mother told her son to “stop scuffing the nice red seats.”
The Globe and Mail observed a woman admiring the colour schemes of the Vitrolite platform tiling and wishing her kitchen were in Summerhill’s grey and red and her bathroom in Dundas’s yellow and black, thus proving subway-inspired decor ideas were nothing new.
Salesman Wally Nichol recounted comments he had heard. “The waitress in the Union Station soda bar told me there were so many tourist customers that it was like Christmas,” he told the Globe and Mail. “I heard a college student say it must be spring because every woman in Toronto seems to have bought a new hat to ride on the first day.” Globe and Mail society writer Lotta Dempsey felt the subway was “irrevocably democratic,” as all classes became commuters.
Much of the coverage noted an unusual feeling among opening-day commuters: pleasure. “Normally when they get on the buses,” observed TTC employee Victor Langdon, “they look tired out. Today you’d think they were on holiday.” Speed was a major selling point for the new line. An example of the time savings: travelling between King and College took three minutes by subway, compared to 17 on the old streetcar route. Telegram reporter Philip Murphy compared a test run he took as “a cross between a streetcar ride, a train ride, and a drop down a laundry chute.”
Sketch of a typical subway station interior by Walter Bell from the March 29, 1954, edition of the Toronto Star.
Traffic cops were ecstatic about the subway’s effect on downtown streets. “You wouldn’t believe it was the same city,” Sergeant Charles Hogg told the Globe and Mail. “There wasn’t a single traffic jam on Yonge, Bay, or Jarvis Streets. On some of the side streets, you could fire a gun without hitting anything.”
After the excitement of day one, passenger levels gradually settled down. The seemingly unending construction on Yonge Street continued as streetcar tracks were removed. Municipal and TTC officials demanded more lines. On the issue of long-term planning, a Globe and Mail editorial dispensed advice that could apply today. “It is not enough for people to think and act in a big way on rapid transit. They have got to think and act in a big way on housing, development, parking, expressways, cultural and recreational facilities — everything that goes into the making of a modern metropolis. They have got to forsake the parish pump, the ward pump, as definitely as, today, they will forsake the ancient cars that grind and clank their way up Yonge Street. They must think along new and bigger lines, under new and better leaders.”
Commuters waiting outside a downtown station on March 30, 1954. (City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1128, Series 381, File 298, Item 11847-16)
We give the final words to the Hamilton Spectator, which speculated on how riders might view the subway in the future. “Its cars immaculate and its station platforms as yet gum-free, Canada’s first subway is open for business today, and we wish it well. But we wonder if our Toronto cousins realize that subways are peculiarly subject to the quirks of time and that a generation from now the system of whose pristine functionalism and logical slickness they are today so proud will have developed strange aberrations — aberrations which will cause it to be both cursed and, in a human way, treasured the more fondly.”
Sources: the March 27, 1954, March 29, 1954, March 30, 1954, and March 31, 1954, editions of the Globe and Mail; the March 30, 1954, edition of the Hamilton Spectator; the March 29, 1954, and March 30, 1954, editions of the Telegram; and the March 29, 1954, March 30, 1954, and March 31, 1954, editions of the Toronto Star.
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