Toronto, Ontario
As the commercial and cultural capital of Canada, Toronto is in an
enviable position among North American cities. It has a vibrant
downtown, great cultural institutions, a flourishing commuter rail and
streetcar system, and an intact, very much alive, classic railroad
terminal. Today Union Station serves a city many times the size of
the provincial one into which it was born. During the peak years
of rail usage, well over 150 daily arrivals and departures called at the
train gates.
Toronto began to grow rapidly in the 1960's, and some urban
planners advocated demolition and replacement of Union Station with a
sterile box topped with an office complex. Luckily, common sense
and an awakening of preservation efforts stymied such nonsense, and
Toronto Union Station is today one of the showpieces of this great
city. It is at the very heart of Toronto's excellent metropolitan
transportation network.
Toronto's Union Station was opened in 1927, replacing an older
structure located near the present site. Interestingly, old photos
show the Toronto harbor area quite close to what is today's Front
Street. Planning for the current station preceded World War I by almost
ten years, after a disastrous fire cleared much of the waterfront
area. Years of controversy had to be overcome before the new Union
Station would welcome its first travelers. It was not until
January of 1930 that the railroad viaduct serving the station would
finally be completed and arrivals and departures could proceed entirely
from the new building.
The Great Hall, Toronto Union
Station, September 2, 1995. John Dahl photo.
The station is designed in the Beaux-Arts style. Its exterior
facade on Front Street is dominated by a high colonnade of Bedford
limestone. The Great Hall is still one of the finest interior spaces
anywhere in the world. Take a moment some time to glance up and around
while in the station. The attention to details carved in stone and brick
is astounding. How can one not be impressed by this grand "Open
Gate" as Union Station has been called? A favorite pastime of
mine when in Toronto is to wait in the Great Hall and listen to the
train announcements. Perhaps my favorite was "The
Canadian" when it was still mostly a CP route. When it was
announced, images of the gleaming streamliner and of several happy
journeys within its elegant confines are recalled from memory.
City names carved around the perimeter of the upper walls tell a litany
about Canadian geography and history better than any textbook could dare
to match.
Pierre Berton, the great Canadian journalist, probably summed up
best what Union Station means. "A railway station, especially a
large one, is something like a home: it acquires a certain aura after is
has been used. I do not believe in ghosts or haunted mansions but
I am always conscious when I enter any old building of the unseen
presence of those who came before. It does not matter if the
furniture and bric-a-brac have been stripped away; a sense of presence
remains - a feeling, an echo perhaps, that tells you lives where lived
there, tragedies enacted, triumphs rewarded, loves consummated, and that
this building knew the cycle of birth, life and death, of hope and
despair, of sadness and joy."
