Toronto Street Railway horse car on Yonge Street at the Canadian Pacific Railway crossing, after 1885. From City of Toronto Archives, Fords 16, Series 71, Item 3367
Over the last few months, I have researched many books and maps and created a series of maps that attempt to illustrate the history of Toronto’s street railways, from 1861 to the present. Toronto is one of only a few cities in North America to continually operate a street railway network (others include Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New Orleans), which remains one of the busiest and most expansive tram systems in the world.
Before the Toronto Transportation Commission was created in 1921, Toronto was served by several private streetcar firms. The Toronto Street Railway, which began operations in 1861, built Canada’s first streetcar system; two routes were opened that year, with small railcars pulled by horses. The TSR’s successor, the Toronto Railway Company, electrified the network, but with few exceptions, refused to expand it beyond Toronto’s 1891 borders. Only with the creation of the publicly owned TTC was Toronto’s streetcar system unified and modernized to be the envy of cities across the continent.
Creating these 38 maps was a challenge, because published materials covering the pre-TTC era (before 1921) are sparse. William Hood’s Street Railways : Toronto: 1861 to 1930 provides some history of Toronto’s earliest transit services, but with only some details. I also consulted Transit Toronto’s route histories and other books such as Robert M. Stamp’s Riding the Radials and John F. Bromley’s Fifty Years of Progressive Transit which covers the years from 1921 to 1971.
This post, the first of three, will cover the years from 1861 to 1891, the era of the Toronto Street Railway (TSR), when horse power ruled the streets. I do not cover every year, and I omit some minor service and route changes. But this, I hope, accurately illustrates the rise, fall, and renaissance of Toronto’s streetcar system.
1861
The TSR begins operations on September 10, 1861, serving a small provincial city of less than 50,000 people. The first route, Yonge, operates from Yorkville Town Hall, just north of the city limits, to St. Lawrence Market at King and Jarvis. A second route, Queen, was established in December of 1861, running between the market and the Ontario Hospital at the corner of Dundas Street, now Ossington Avenue.
Sean Marshall 