Arrival Of Railways In Toronto: Impact On The City's Economic Fortunes

The Arrival of Railways in Toronto Name Course Name/Section Instructor’s Name Date Introduction On sixteenth May 1853, Toronto’s first passenger train steamed out from a wooden depot situated near the location of the eastern passageway of now’s Union Station. As the century progressed, the railways profoundly impacted the city’s economic fortunes. What was once the disregarded small town of York transformed into a regional manufacturing center since goods could be conveyed by rail from Toronto to Ontario. Compared to Montreal, Toronto was a commercial backwater at the start of the railway epoch. However, by the 1890s and the conclusion of the railway epoch, Montreal was outstripped by Toronto as Canada’s economic engine. Like all extensive technological advancements, the railways were both advantageous and disadvantageous for Toronto’s people. The tracks damaged and deformed the city and successfully cut off Toronto’s citizens from Lake Ontario; the metropolis’s most paramount scenic and recreational asset. The town’s best real estate was hogged by the railway companies, consuming enormous tracts of major waterfront land for roadbed, buildings, stations, yards, servicing facilities, and tracks; this further distanced the lakeshore from Torontonians. This railway heritage contributes to Toronto’s most important debates: the resurgence of the waterfronts. Some stakeholders participating in this dispute understand the connection between the waterfront’s shape and Toronto’s railway legacy. Toronto’s railway history is a dynamic and fascinating story, abounding in colorful personalities, local rivalry, massive constructing and engineering projects, chimerical political leadership tempered by local rivalry, corporate corruption and the most superb railway terminal ever constructed in Canada. Discussion The Toronto Locomotive Works (TLW), in 1853, built and manufactured Canada’s first locomotive. Erewhile, locomotives were being imported from the United States or Great Britain. James Good, an immigrant from Ireland, who in 1840 founded a mill in Toronto that manufactured plows, stoves, kettles, stationary steam engines, and boilers, owned the TLW. By 1852, James Good’s TLW employed over one hundred artisans and was based in a vast complex of Yonge and Queen Street’s northeast corner, roughly where the Elgin-Winter Garden Theatre and St. Michael’s Hospital are located today. On sixteenth April 1853, the new locomotive was finished. The engine was twenty-nine tons in weight and twenty-six feet in length without the tender. Considered small by later railway yardsticks, at that time, the engine was deemed as one of the enormous proportions. The Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron (OS&H) called the locomotive Toronto, and it was exhibited for two days on Queen Street to admiring citizens. William Mackenzie, former political firebrand, and Toronto mayor, wrote lovingly about the engine, he called it, “Truthfully a stunning piece of machinery very sturdy and handsomely finished.”[Boles, Derek. “Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railway – Groundbreaking & The “Toronto.”Toronto RailwayHistorical Association. December 2011. Accessed March 19, 2018./resources/111015.Toronto.1st.Railway.by.Derek.Boles.pdf.] [‘Ibid, p.4’.] [‘Ibid, p.5’.] James good was stranded as he could not move the locomotive to Front Street – the closest OS&H location. Temporal tracks were laid which enabled the slow movement of the locomotive with assistance from crowbars. Furthermore, the tracks left behind from each movement were taken and re-laid in front of the engine. This toilsome procedure took five days, and on April twenty-sixth, the engine arrived at the trailhead. The TLW constructed a sum of twenty-three steam locomotives. The procedure was always impeded by the burdensome gap between the mill and the railway tracks. James Good tried to shift the works nearer to the waterfront; however, the city was incompliant, probably because some powerful city politicians had pecuniary interests in contending manufacturers. In 1859, James Good stopped constructing locomotives and concentrated on manufacturing domestic iron goods and stoves. In 1881, The Toronto was junked, and none of James Good’s locomotives endured into the twentieth century. The remnants of the TLW disappeared in 1909, the year the current Bank of Montreal was constructed and established on Queen and Yonge Street’s corner.[‘Ibid, p.5’.] [‘Ibid, p.5’.] The Grand Turk Railway (GTR) in 1858 built Toronto’s first Union Station.[Flack, Derek. “Toronto of the 1850s” BlogTO. January 31, 2011. Accessed March 19, 2018./city/2011/01/toronto_of_the_1850s/.] The GTRs history is one containing several chapters. The Canadian government in 1852 officially declared its intentions of constructing a railway linking Montreal to Toronto. On tenth November the same year, the GTR Company was incorporated. The GTR Company in 1853 started in the standard way, by purchasing five established railway companies. It acquired the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad Company, the Richmond and Quebec Railroad Company, the Guelph and Toronto Railroad Company, and the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada East. The Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad Company linked Quebec, Longueil, to Maine, Portland. It was constructed from 1846 to 1853 and gave access to Canadian manufacturers to a seaport with no ice all year round. The Richmond and Quebec Railroad Company linked Quebec to Richmond and was located on the St. Lawrence and Atlantic line. It was constructed from 1852 to 1854. The GTR Company in 1853 started constructing a railway linking Montreal to Toronto. This stretch was constructed by 1856 late October and stretched all the way to Sarnia. As the 1860s began, the company operated a railway between Maine, Portland, the U.S., and Ontario Sarnia. The GRT in 1861 had amassed an immense debt due to the expansion and a lack of rail traffic. The government then reorganized the GTRs finances which increased its debt, but the GRT was saved from bankruptcy.[Legget, Robert F. -- Railways of Canada. -- Revised edition. -- Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1987. -- 255 p.] [‘Ibid, p.255’.] [Mika, Nick ; Mika, Helma ; with Wilson, Donald M. -- Illustrated history of Canadian railways. -- Belleville: Mika Publishing Co., 1986. -- 288 p.] [‘Ibid, p.289’.] By definition, a union station is a facility shared by two or more railway companies. The station was made using three wooden structures and was primarily shared with Canada’s Northern Railway and the Great Western Railway. Even though both railways built their stations down the Toronto waterfront, it was Toronto’s first union station. On twenty-first June 1858, it opened and was called the “New Station.” Daily, three GRT trains departed to the east (to Kingston and Montreal), and tw...