(National Post, 28 Feb 2003)
by Liz Clayton
This 1894 map of Toronto is a lot different than that of today's — though
many names remain the same.
(Click image for enlarged map.)
They say you can't go home again, and sometimes it's true — like when your street packs up and moves somewhere else. Or disappears completely.
This has happened often, sometimes when little streets grow up to swallow littler streets (like Bay Street), or east-west streets have been reoriented to run north-south (University Street became University Avenue) and streets that had never met one another (College and Carlton streets) were suddenly introduced by the wonders of civil engineering.
Here are 10 of Toronto's most interesting examples.
1. Lot Street
This was the original (though unoriginally named) baseline of Toronto, extending
from the Don River to the Garrison Reserve, opposite where the Queen Street
Mental Health Centre is now. Early landowners measured their lots from this
point, though by the 1830s those original lots were already being subdivided.
By 1850 the name had been changed to Queen Street.
2. Carlton and College
Streets
While they seem like good pals now, Carlton and College weren't always so
close. They each ran into Yonge Street, but dozens of feet apart, requiring
streetcars to make an awkward S-curve to get from one to the other. They were
aligned in 1931, making it much easier for everyone to get to the new Maple
Leaf Gardens.
3. Lower Bathurst Street
The monumental task of dragging College and Carlton together is rivaled by
the installation, also in 1931, of the Bathurst Street bridge from Front Street
over the railways tracks. A large obsolete railway bridge was dragged over
and straightened out so Bathurst could extend south to Fleet Street (to the
south of where the Gardiner is now).
4. Parliament Street
You may have noticed there are no houses of parliament on Parliament. In the
1790s, when Front Street was called Palace, the first legislative buildings
of Upper Canada were built along it at the intersection of a road called Parliament
(today's Berkeley Street). Eventually the name was moved a few blocks over
to what was then Castle Street. Americans burned the parliament houses down
in 1813, and the buildings that replaced them again burned down in 1824. Parliament
eventually moved to Queen's Park, leaving only its name as a reminder of its
earlier location.
5. Sherbourne Street
This street was originally named Caroline, after Caroline of Brunswick, the
wife of Britain's George IV. Caroline had the nasty habit of exposing herself
in public and sleeping with the servants, which inspired her husband to call
her "the vilest wretch this world was ever cursed with." When she
fell into disfavour the street was renamed Sherbourne, a misspelling of Sherborne,
a town in England.
6. Bay Street
Until the early years of the 20th century, Bay Street existed south of Queen
(and before that Lot). The segment of Bay between Queen and College was for
years known as Teraulay Street, a name conceived by estate owner James Macaulay.
He and his wife, Elizabeth (née Hayter), combined the last halves of
their surnames to form Teraulay. In 1922, the city opted for continuity and
renamed Teraulay, and several smaller streets to the north, to create what
we now call Bay.
7. Czar Street, formerly one block south of Bloor Street running west off Yonge Street, was named "in honour of the autocrat of all the Russians," according to 19th-century city records. This name disappeared in 1908 when the city thought better of this honour and renamed it Charles.
8. Dundas Street
John Graves Simcoe once envisioned Dundas as the grand route from Detroit
to Buffalo. Originally a small street starting from the asylum on Queen, Dundas
veered west out of the city. While never becoming that fantasy superhighway,
Dundas did change numerous times: the north-south portion eventually became
Ossington Avenue, while the east-west Dundas grew to swallow up smaller streets
all over town, laying waste to more than a dozen other names, from Applegrove
to Wilton.
9. University Avenue
If you think street duplication in the megacity is confusing, imagine the
mess Torontonians had to contend with in the 1800s. The University of Toronto
was bordered by University Street, College Avenue and College Street, and
to confuse matters further the two named College interesected each other.
The solution? Get rid of University Street and College Avenue and create University
Avenue.
10. Front Street
Where better to put a street named Front than along the waterfront? A fine
idea, but with the railroad new streets such as the Esplanade shoved in front
of Front. Landfill projects in 1865 and in the 1920s ensured that the city's
waterfront soon extended even further from good old Front. They may as well
have changed its name to Back.