of the city’s busy waterfront and steps from the CN Tower and SkyDome is the ancient CP Roundhouse. Where Canadian Pacific Railway’s mighty steam engines were once serviced, the folks at Steam Whistle Brewery now turn out a tasty Pilsner.
While it’s good to see somebody occupying what was just another abandoned historic building, a brewery certainly wasn’t what many of us hoped would be the fate of the old structure that was constructed in 1929 on the site of Canadian Pacific’s first Toronto roundhouse.
Steam engines continued to be serviced in this unique building for more than half a century with the huge doors closing for good in 1986. After the building’s closure, I remember attending meeting after meeting during which a multitude of interested and well-meaning people discussed a whole bunch of ideas that might bring the old building back to life. Some believed that an operating steam railway museum would be the perfect re-use while others, myself included, thought that it would be a great place to tell the much broader story of Canada’s fascinating transportation history.
Our plan would include, but not be limited to, just the era of steam. Showing the world what Canadians have done on land and sea and in the air would, we believed, do more to maximize visitations and increase income.
Souvenir postcard of the Toronto-built passenger steamer SS Kingston. Note the biplane overhead.
But those discussions ultimately went for naught when in the late spring of 2000 Steam Whistle began brewing operations in the roundhouse. Since that time any ideas to use the rest of the building for museum purposes seem to have been deleted from the old building’s future role in Toronto.
That’s unfortunate because there’s quite a story to tell. Any plan to tell the country’s transportation story in a roundhouse setting certainly wouldn’t lack for content. In fact, you could use all of the building’s massive interior space just to tell the story of Toronto’s contributions to that fabulous story.
For instance, here are just two events that took place in Toronto on January 19, the day I originally wrote this column, that prove my point.
It was on a cold January 19, 1901, that one of the finest passenger lake boats ever seen on the Great Lakes was launched in Toronto. And on that same date, a mere 49 years later, the first all-Canadian fighter jet designed and built in this country took to the skies out at the Avro Canada plant northwest of Toronto.
There is no question that January 19 was, and remains, a special day in the history of transportation in Ontario’s capital.
The steamer Kingston was built for the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company (R&O) by the Bertram Engineering Works whose shipyard was located at the foot of Bathurst Street. The factory where parts of the great ship were fabricated is now occupied, in part, by the exotic car dealership at the northeast corner of Front and Bathurst. The finished components were transported across the railway tracks, down to the waterfront where they would be fitted together in time to create a fine new passenger ship, the 290-foot-long SS Kingston, which was powered by an inclined, three-crank, triple-expansion steam engine that ran a pair of 23-foot-diameter side paddlewheels. Kingston operated on the Toronto–Thousand Islands–Prescott run. At that last port most passengers would transfer to other ships for the thrilling ride through the Lachine Rapids and onwards to Montreal.
However, following the tragic and deadly fire of September 17, 1949, that destroyed SS Noronic while at its berth in Toronto, Canada Steamship Lines (the successor to the R&O) decided to end all passenger ship service. The once-proud Kingston was retired from service and eventually scrapped.
Interestingly, even while this Toronto-built vessel awaited its fate, another creation from the hands of a new generation of local craftsman was about to make Canadian aviation history. With the world immersed in the uncertainties of the Cold War, the Royal Canadian Air Force was searching for a new aircraft to replace its outdated collection of piston-engine Mustangs and Sea Furies and pioneer Vampire jets. What was needed was an all-purpose, all-weather, twin-engine jet fighter.
Avro Canada’s second CF-100, FB-K, designed and built at the company’s suburban Toronto factory.
Officials looked at a number of jets designed and built by Americans, but decided our people could do as well or even better. This decision, one that was derided at the time by several so-called experts, would result in Avro Canada’s remarkable CF-100, the first of which flew January 19, 1950.
In total, 692 CF-100s were built at the Malton, Ontario, factory. Interestingly, even after 30 years had passed since that first flight, several of the aircraft were still active as electronic warfare trainers. One CF-100 has even been honoured in the form of a permanent monument in a park-like setting on Derry Road East (near Goreway Drive), just a short distance from its birthplace.
To learn more about this Canadian aviation success story (and one that could have been a feature attraction in Canada’s transportation story in the CP Roundhouse) read The Avro CF-100 by Larry Milberry from CANAV Books.
January 19, 2003
* After the sale of SkyDome to Rogers Communications in early 2005, the name of the stadium was quickly changed to Rogers Centre.
Bright, Shiny, and New
Almost without exception this column features an “ancient” photograph more often than not taken by some anonymous photographer. To be sure, where the identity of the person who took the picture is known the work is credited. Unfortunately, the passage of time since the photo was snapped usually precludes that possibility.
The matter of photo credits aside, in almost every instance where there are buildings in the old photograph, the vast majority of those structures has been demolished as a result of Toronto’s rush to replace what many regarded as passé, with things bright, shiny, and new.
One conclusion that might be drawn from all of this is that any photo containing an image of a building that no longer stands must have been taken by an old (or deceased) photographer. With this in mind you can imagine my consternation as I went through a bunch of photographs that I personally took since acquiring my interest in old Toronto some years ago. Many of those views showed buildings that are no more. Can it be that my stuff is also “ancient”? Is it possible that I am getting old? Or am I just older?
While I sit back and ponder my future I offer for your perusal a quartet of my “ancient” photos.
January 26, 2003
The University Theatre stood on the north side of Bloor Street between Bellair Street and Avenue Road. This was one of the first major motion picture palaces to be erected following the end of the Second World War in 1945. The 1,556-seat theatre’s official opening was postponed several times owing to the shortage of structural steel that had been diverted for use in the construction of electrical generating stations around the province. This same shortage resulted in the delayed opening of the Toronto-Barrie highway (now 400) and the Toronto Bypass Highway (now 401). The University finally opened in 1949 and was one of the city’s most popular movie houses until its closure in 1986. At that time there were plans to incorporate a portion of the theatre as well as the theatre facade in the new development planned for the site.
