Toronto EMS Has Come a Long Way
One afternoon I was sitting in my local Tim Hortons reading the Sun (what else) and sipping on a hot chocolate, when all of a sudden several EMS paramedics and a number of firefighters rushed in. Together they began assisting an elderly gentleman in a nearby booth who was obviously in some distress. Within minutes they had him stabilized, on a stretcher, out the door, and on his way to the hospital. While I’ll never know the final outcome of this little drama, I hope I will receive the same quick and skilled response from the ladies and gentlemen of Toronto Fire Services and Toronto’s Emergency Medical Services if I’m ever faced with a similar crisis.
The event prompted me to look into the history of ambulance service in our city. Thanks to copious research that has been done by EMS historian Bruce Newton, the facts have been neatly presented on the department’s website (torontoems.ca/mainsite/about/history.html).
In the city’s earliest days, a form of ambulance service (and the term “service” is a bit of a stretch) was provided by local cab drivers and the odd Good Samaritan who would happen upon infectious, ill, or injured citizens and haul them off to the city’s only hospital. It wasn’t until the 1870s that the city fathers of the growing metropolis recognized their obligation to provide this necessary service. So they contracted a local undertaker to provide something a little more dependable.
Toronto Police Department horse-drawn ambulance, circa 1888.
Courtesy of Toronto EMS Archive.
A modern Toronto EMS multi-patient ambulance bus.
This ambulance was given to Toronto General Hospital by Sir John Eaton, circa 1912.
Courtesy of Damon Schreiber, Toronto EMS.
Over the next few years, and thanks to the generosity of department store magnate Sir John Eaton, the Toronto General Hospital began providing an ambulance service. So, too, did the police department, followed by the city’s Department of Health. Seeing this as a new source of income, many of the city’s undertaking establishments got into the ambulance business as well, and by the time the government stepped in and streamlined the activities, “customers” had their choice of twenty-seven different ambulance services. Anyone remember Kane, Ogden, or Hallowell ambulances racing along city streets?
Interestingly, two tragedies prompted government officials to at least consider taking some form of action. The first was the fire aboard the passenger ship SS Noronic, which destroyed the ship as it was moored at the foot of Yonge Street in the fall of 1949. The lack of proper communications, as well as far too few proper ambulances, resulted in many badly burned victims being transported to the downtown hospitals in regular taxi cabs.
Then, in November 1963, the city’s young mayor, Donald Summerville, suffered a serious heart attack while playing an exhibition hockey game in west Toronto. Because the closest ambulance was near Weston and the venue was outside its area of responsibility, and the next closest city ambulance took far too long get to the scene, the unfortunate mayor was beyond help by the time medical personnel arrived.
So finally, on February 12, 1975, all ambulance operations came under the jurisdiction of Metro Toronto’s newly organized Department of Ambulance Services. Today, this important and quite literally life-saving function is carried out by Toronto EMS.
February 14, 2010
Life and Times of the SS Cayuga
Over the past several decades, several entrepreneurs have tried to reinstate some form of passenger ship service across Lake Ontario from the Port of Toronto. Two of the most recent attempts involved Russian-built hydrofoils to and from Queenston on the Niagara River and an Australian-built catamaran that operated between Toronto and Rochester.
The latter vessel, known as either the “Cat,” the “Breeze,” or officially as The Spirit of Ontario, made a number of runs during 2004 and 2005 before being removed from service and, after lengthy legal hassles, offered up for sale. Eventually, the renamed Tangier Jet II began a new career in the Strait of Gibraltar, ferrying passengers between Tarifa, Spain, and Tangier, Morocco.
As hard as people tried to make a success of their cross-lake passenger service, none was able to match the achievements of the Lake Ontario steamers of the early to mid-twentieth century. Most impressive were the Niagara boats with stirring names such as Chippewa, Corona, and Cayuga. Over the years this trio carried millions of travellers between Toronto and the Niagara River ports of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Queenston, and Lewiston, New York. But of all the Lake Ontario passenger ships, the one that many readers of my column will remember, and the one that remained in service the longest, was SS Cayuga.
Components of the almost 122-metre-long vessel with a carrying capacity of more than two thousand passengers were fabricated in the old Bertram Engine Works factory at the northeast corner of Bathurst and Front streets in Toronto (the building is still there). The actual assembly of the ship took place in the harbour just across the railway tracks to the southeast of the old West Gap.
In this 1954 photograph, Toronto’s popular Lake Ontario cruise boat SS Cayuga is outbound through the East Gap on her way to ports on the Niagara River. At the time the ship was being operated by the newly formed Cayuga Steamship Company. After being given what would turn out to be an all-too-brief reprieve from the wrecker’s cutting torch, Cayuga’s new owners offered cross-lake cruises for as low as $3.90 return.
The ship was christened on March 3, 1906, by Mary Osler, daughter of Edmund (later Sir Edmund) Osler, one of the directors of the new ship’s owners, the Northern Navigation Company. Interestingly, Mary’s niece, Phyllis Osler, would do the same honours four years later at the launch of the new island ferry, Trillium, owned by Edmond Osler’s Toronto Ferry Company.
A little over a year passed before the SS Cayuga, perfectly fitted out and fresh from successful sea trials, began the Toronto–Niagara-on-the-Lake–Queenston–Lewiston, New York service. The date was June 7, and over the next half-century she carried passengers to and from Niagara, for a few years transporting recently enlisted young soldiers to the newly established military camp that had been hurriedly set up at Niagara-on-the-Lake following the outbreak of the First World War.
The amazingly popular ship operated on the route until 1952, when its owner, Canada Steamship Lines, decided to get out of the passenger business and devote all its efforts to moving freight. After being laid up for a couple of seasons, a group of enthusiasts purchased the vessel for its scrap value ($17,000), and in 1954 Cayuga was back in service under a new flag — that of the Cayuga Steamship Company. With the highways to Niagara becoming increasingly congested, it was hoped that both Canadian and American tourists would find travelling to and from Toronto by boat was the better way.
Now, if only Cayuga could get a liquor licence …
But without that elusive licence, nostalgia and a crowded Queen Elizabeth Highway just weren’t enough to guarantee the ship a prosperous new life. On
