by Queen Elizabeth on June 7, 1939.
Originally known as the Middle Road, so named because it was located between the Lakeshore Road and the Dundas Highway (#5), the routing of this pioneer thoroughfare would become the right-of-way for the Toronto–Hamilton section of the new Queen Elizabeth Highway. This 1923 photo is from the Ontario Archives.
During their visit to Canada in 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth spent some time in Toronto. On May 22 they visited Woodbine Park (Queen Street East) to watch the eightieth running of the King’s Plate. Two weeks later, the queen dedicated the St. Catharines–Niagara Falls section of new Queen Elizabeth Way.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the lake, the new Toronto–Burlington/Hamilton Highway (they hadn’t yet decided on its final name) was still being referred to as the New Middle Road Highway.
This highway was merely an upgraded version of the existing Middle Road that had started life as an extension of Toronto’s Queen Street and was given the name the Middle Road because it was located midway between the ancient Lake Shore Road and the Dundas Highway.
It wasn’t until August 23, 1940, that provincial officials declared the stretch of highway that ran between Toronto and Niagara Falls open. The entire stretch would be known as the Queen Elizabeth Highway. Another year would pass before extensions to the Rainbow Bridge and to Fort Erie opened to traffic.
June 6, 2010
Namesake Is Forever Yonge
Aw nuts! I forgot his birthday again. And now it’s too late to send him a card. Actually it’s much too late, since he passed away in 1812. And while I haven’t yet mentioned this person’s name, it’s one that virtually every Torontonian, heck every Ontarian, or quite possibly every Canadian, will recognize instantly. He’s the man for whom Toronto’s main street is named.
Interestingly, Sir George Yonge (his actual birth date was June 17, 1731) never even visited our community. So perhaps one has reason to wonder how his name came to be attached to one of the nation’s best-known streets, the very same street that was recognized for a time by the Guinness people as the world’s longest (changes to the provincial highway system made in 1998 by the Mike Harris government put an end to that claim to fame).
The real reason for Yonge Street being so named has more to do with the province’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, than anything else. And here’s why. Soon after Simcoe’s arrival from England in 1792 to begin his tenure, he started to change many of the existing place names because, as he often stated, their sounds were “foreign to his ears.” Thus Cataraqui became Kings Town (Kingston), Niagara became the New Ark (Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake), and the most foreign of all, Toronto, became York (to honour King George III’s second eldest son, Frederick, the Duke of … you guessed it, York!
Looking south on Yonge Street from just south of the dusty Lawrence Avenue intersection, circa 1905. Note the tracks of the Toronto and York Radial Railway, a sort of early GO Transit operation that carried people and freight to and from the city on high-speed electric streetcars.
Just days before the new Yonge subway was to open, a crowd waits to board a northbound Yonge streetcar at the Richmond Street intersection, March 28, 1954.
And when it came time to give a name to the new path his Rangers were cutting through the forested hinterland north of the York town site, Simcoe remembered his neighbour back in Devon, a man who had also been a colleague of his in the British House of Parliament.
Sir George Yonge, 5th Baronet, was born in a little Devon town called Colyton and he was destined to serve as the country’s Secretary at War (1782–1794), Master of the Mint (1794–1799), and the governor of the Cape Colony (1799–1801).
As important as these positions were, it’s more likely that Simcoe selected his friend’s name because of Yonge’s fascination with and expertise in the art of Roman road-building.
What better tribute than to name the pioneer road Yonge Street.
June 20, 2010
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Sir George Yonge (1731–1812), in whose honour Toronto’s main street is named.
Courtesy of the National Archives.
Royal Twist to Street Name
There is still much interest in this country today in the affairs of the British Royal Family, so I thought it only fitting to present my readers with a column with a “royal” twist. That twist has to do with the name of one of Toronto’s most interesting streets and one that bears the name of our present queen’s (Elizabeth II) great-great-grandmother.
Queen Street, looking west toward the split with King Street, just west of the Don River. Note the dangerous level railway crossing, which disappeared when the present bridge was built in 1911. This view is circa 1900.
City of Toronto Archives.
Looking west along Queen Street from the bridge over the Don River, 1948.
A similar view today.
Soon after the community we now know as Toronto was established by Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe in 1793, his land surveyors created a map of the area on which an east–west “base line” was delineated. Starting at this important geographical element and moving northward, additional east–west streets were added to the map, with each of these being exactly one hundred chains apart (a chain being a surveyor’s measuring device, with one chain equal to sixty-six feet). Mathematically, this one-hundred-chain distance translates into 6,600 feet, or one and a quarter miles. These streets, known as concession roads in the beginning, would eventually become the major east–west crossroads we now know as Bloor, St. Clair, Eglinton, Lawrence, York Mills/Wilson, Sheppard, Finch, and Steeles.
The original “base line,” which ran across the bottom of the grid, eventually took on the descriptive name Lot Street because it formed the southern boundary of the one-hundred-acre parcels of land (or lots) that were awarded to the settlement’s privileged newcomers. These lots were a kind of reward for giving up the amenities of the province’s established communities, such as Kings Town (Kingston) or Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) for a life in the undeveloped hinterland around York.
It wasn’t until after Alexandrina Victoria (the granddaughter of King George III, after whom our King Street is named) ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1837 that her loyal subjects here in Toronto changed the name of Lot Street to Queen Street to honour their new monarch.
July 4, 2010
