How steel helped Toronto build Canada’s first subway

This year the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) celebrates the 60th anniversary of the construction of Canada’s first subway system — the section of the subway that stretches from Union Station in the south to Eglinton Station in the north.

An information bulletin released, following the launch of the subway system, indicates the importance of steel in the line’s construction. Work crews placed 10,000 tons of structural steel, 14,000 tons of reinforcing steel, and 4,200 tons of rail steel in addition to 420 tons of cast iron pipe. Total cost of the project: $67 million.

All of the planets seemed to align to unite drivers, transit enthusiasts and Toronto boosters during a January 1946 referendum on the subway plan, notes Jay Young, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History at McMaster University whose dissertation at York University focused on the history of Toronto’s subway system.

“The referendum passed by about 10 to one in favour of the subway,” he says. “Toronto got behind the civic pride of building the first subway in Canada — which also meant that rival Montreal could not be first. Riders of the Yonge streetcar line were looking forward to the promise that their commuting times would be chopped in half, while drivers were delighted with the idea that both Yonge Street and Avenue Road would be free of streetcar rails.”

However, commencement of construction on the project was delayed for several years, primarily because the steel required to build the system wasn’t readily available domestically in a post-WWII economy.

“Despite the large amount of steel ultimately used in construction, apparently the design of the subway was altered to minimize the use of steel in favour of concrete where possible,” says Young. “The TTC reported that the design change was actually urged by the federal government.”

Work began in 1949 with a cautionary note from TTC Commissioners: “The work of constructing this greatest single improvement to the transportation system ever undertaken by the Commission will of necessity cause some inconvenience. The benefits to be gained, however, are so great and far reaching that the Commission is confident everyone affected will co-operate to the fullest possible extent.”

The work was divided into five projects with a U.S.-Canadian conglomerate of general contractor firms — Pitts, Johnson, Drake, Perini — awarded the three downtown sections of the subway. Rayner Construction took the two northern sections. Construction was limited to open cut methods down the centre of Yonge Street for the downtown portion and through expropriated property alongside Yonge in the north.

“They would dig short trenches along both sides of the street to look for utilities, and then drive in steel piles six feet apart,” says Young. “They would then dig between those beams, supporting the sides of the excavation with wood plank shoring. Once they’d excavated to the proper depth, they would place steel beams across the road to support temporary wood decking. Because of the steel shortage, those horizontal beams were removed and used further along in the project.”

So important was the existing Yonge streetcar line that temporary steel tracks were installed on top of the wood decking to allow its continued operation during construction. Additional steel trusses were placed underneath the portion of wood decking supporting the tracks.

Steel was supplied by companies including the Dominion Steel & Coal Company and Bethlehem Steel Corporation. However, Canada’s increasing involvement in the Korean War through the early 1950s and plans to construct the St. Lawrence Seaway again put a strain on steel supplies and spiked steel prices.

“The general public was fascinated by the construction process, so the TTC issued a series of ‘Sidewalk Superintendent Manuals’ designed to explain the construction process in laymen’s terms,” says Young.

“It was almost as though they were encouraging people to come downtown and check out construction. A lot of the downtown businesses also staged subway sales throughout construction.”

Despite the steel shortages, the original Yonge subway line was completed and cars were ready to roll on March 30, 1954. Young compares the vigorous progress of construction to the much slower progress of transit plans championed by organizations such as Metrolinx.

“The power of government to expropriate properties and simply say ‘this is what we’ll do’ eventually gave way to neigbourhood activism that protested how such a subway would be built,” says Young. “It would be almost impossible today to see that kind of project completed, despite steel shortages, in only four years.”

Young is the author of the soon-to-be-published Boomtown Subway: How Toronto Built Rapid Transit In The Automobile Age by the University of Toronto Press.