and the future of the once-proud ship again seemed bleak.
Eventually the ship was purchased by a wrecking company, and plans were formulated that would see it return to service as either a floating hotel adjacent to the CNE or as a new waterfront restaurant similar to Captain John’s Jadran. But it all came to nothing, and in 1960–61, after rusting away in Toronto Harbour, Cayuga’s days came to an end when it was unceremoniously scrapped.
Thousands of artifacts from Cayuga were saved and became part of the collection at the late, lamented Marine Museum of Upper Canada that was located in the historic Stanley Barracks on the CNE grounds. The collection was moved to a new location on Queen’s Quay called The Pier, where visitors could relive the “good old days.” But sadly this museum was also closed and today all those memories are stored out of sight in a city warehouse.
February 28, 2010
Crash Course in History
Shortly before 7:00 p.m. on the evening of November 17, 1904, streetcar number 642, owned and operated by the city’s private transportation provider, the Toronto Railway Company, was proceeding east along Queen Street. As it approached the Grand Trunk Railway’s level crossing just past De Grassi Street, it became clear that something was wrong. Orders issued by the company required streetcars to approach all railway crossings at minimal speed, but for some reason number 642 was travelling well in excess of this limit. Suddenly, the crossing gates began to drop — a Montreal-bound train was approaching. Motorman Willis Armstrong tried, but he couldn’t bring his vehicle to a stop in time. The heavy steam engine smashed into the wooden streetcar, reducing it to kindling. Two passengers were killed instantly and a third died later in hospital. A dozen others suffered a variety of injuries.
Motorman Armstrong was charged with manslaughter and held in jail for several weeks until inspection of the ill-fated streetcar’s braking system proved his statement to police that the system was totally ineffectual. Inspection also determined that a secondary safety feature installed by the company, something called a “Scotch dog,” which, when the crossing gates dropped, caused a five-inch-long bolt to rise above the streetcar tracks and derail the car before it reached the railway tracks, was also deemed totally useless at the speed the car was travelling.
Officials recommended that the level crossing be eliminated and a railway bridge be built as soon as possible. The bridge opened twenty-three years later.
March 21, 2010
View of Queen Street, looking west from the Grand Trunk railway crossing between De Grassi and McGee streets, circa 1892. Note the early electric streetcar on the Lee route stopped at the crossing gate. This route, from the St. Lawrence Market along King and Queen Streets to Lee Avenue in the Beach was only in service for short time.
A similar view in 2010.
The Birth of Toronto Island
It was 1858 when one of Toronto’s most treasured attractions, our own Toronto Island, first came into being. This historic event was recorded in the following day’s Globe newspaper:
The Peninsula Hotel Washed Away
A disaster which has for some time been anticipated occurred yesterday morning (April 13) with the washing away of Mr. Quinn’s hotel on the Island. The storm commenced early on the afternoon of the previous day (April 12) and towards night the breeze freshened, and continued blowing steadily from the north-east. Such was the fury of the tempest on the bay that serious fears were entertained that the hotel would be blown down, but it withstood the violence of the hurricane. Towards morning the waves were breaking on the beach in rear of the house and at about five o’clock the water made a complete breach over the Island, undermining the house and leaving it a total wreck, and at the same time making a wide channel four or five feet in depth which will make a convenient eastern entrance to the harbour for vessels of light draught. Fortunately, Mr. Quinn, who was anticipating the cataclysm, succeeded in removing his family and the greater part of his furniture to a small dwelling which he had erected a short time ago, a little to the west of his late residence.
Before this severe storm wreaked havoc across the young city’s waterfront, what was to suddenly become Toronto Island (while in this case “island” is a singular term, numerous large and small islands covering a total of 825 acres are involved) was originally nothing more than a series of long, sandy “fingers” of land known collectively as The Peninsula. This formation trailed westward from a swampy landmass at the east end of the harbour, an area originally called Ashbridge’s Bay, then the Eastern Harbour Terminal District, and now simply as the Port Lands.
A map of the Town of York (renamed City of Toronto in 1834) sketched prior to the tremendous storm that struck the young city on April 13, 1858, that resulted in the creation of Toronto Island. Note the narrow and extremely vulnerable isthmus that connects the town with what would later become the island.
Geologists tell us that much of the material that made up those “fingers” actually originated as sand and rocks that over countless centuries had eroded from the weather-worn surfaces of the bluffs located a few miles east of the town site. (This geological feature was first referred to as the Scarborough Bluffs in the late 1700s by Governor Simcoe’s wife, Elizabeth, soon after the couple’s arrival to take up residence in the new Province of Upper Canada).
It was the counter-clockwise circulation of water on this side of the lake that resulted in this eroded material migrating in a westerly direction. Over time, sufficient quantities of silt and sand dropped out of the solution when met by the outflows from the Rouge, Don, and Humber watercourses to create a substrate to which, centuries later, newcomers to the area added harbour dredgings and construction debris, resulting in the much enlarged Toronto Island that we have today.
While the first breach in the narrow isthmus took place more than 150 years ago, it wasn’t until this newly created channel was widened, made deeper, and stabilized over the next few years that it became a truly useful entrance and exit to and from Toronto Harbour.
April 11, 2010
The Eastern Channel had been in existence for less than half a century when a photographer captured these two ladies watching the passenger ships SS City of Ottawa and SS Chicora, a sailboat, and the tug D.W. Crow traverse Toronto Harbour’s Eastern Channel.
Titanic’s Toronto Connection
On April 18, 1912, the Cunard liner RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Carpathia arrived at the Port of New York carrying 705 survivors of one of the worst sea disasters in history: the sinking of the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic, which resulted in the loss of 1,503 of her passengers and crew. Among the survivors aboard Carpathia — Cunard’s much smaller Atlantic liner, which had been bound for Mediterranean ports when it’s crew had received the distress calls and without hesitation turned about and raced through miles and miles of thick pack ice to the scene of the disaster — was Toronto businessman and member of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, Major Arthur Peuchen, president of the Standard Chemical Company and a first-class passenger on the ill-fated White Star super liner. Peuchen had crossed the Atlantic dozens of times without incident. But this particular
