Source: Ben Mark Holzberg / Library and Archives Canada, c. 1976-78
Walkway connecting Spadina subway station on the Bloor Line to Spadina station on the Spadina Line.

January 28th marks the 33rd anniversary of the opening of the TTC’s Spadina Subway line. This Sunday, Toronto’s best-known historian and author, Mike Filey will tell us about this significant moment in TTC history.

Click here to read about the other Toronto stories he’ll be remembering on ‘Mike Filey’s Toronto‘ at noon on AM740.

January 28, 1978 – Spadina Subway line opens from St. George to Wilson

In the beginning there was the Spadina Expressway. This controversial project had as its origin a rather simple proposal made in the late 1940s that a new “arterial route” be created by widening Spadina Avenue and Spadina Road from Fleet Street to St. Clair Avenue.

A few years later a plan was floated that would have seen Dupont Street connected with Wilson Avenue in North York via an extension of a widened Spadina Road. This extension would have included a tunnel under the Casa Loma hill and the creation of a number of peripheral service roads and ramps, the construction of which would have led to the demolition of the historic Spadina House as well as numerous stately Forest Hill Residences.

Source: City of Toronto Archives. A southbound subway train enters the Eglinton West station on opening day, while heavy Saturday morning traffic encounters the southern terminus of what had become known simply as the “Spadina ditch”.

Over the next two decades what had started as a seemingly innocent proposal grew into one of the most contentious municipal undertakings ever attempted in Canada. Following the opening of the stretch from Wilson Avenue south to Lawrence, the threat of extending the expressway into the heart of Toronto ended when the provincial premier of the day, William Davis, cancelled the project in June 1971. The only additional stretch of the expressway to be built (now known by a much less antagonistic title, Allen Road, in honour of William R. Allen, Metro’s second chairman) was a southward thrust to Eglinton Avenue that opened in the fall of 1976.

Source: Ben Mark Holzberg / Library and Archives Canada, c. 1976-78, Eglinton West

The idea of a subway being included as part of what was still touted as the Spadina Expressway first emerged in 1956 when the Metropolitan Toronto Planning board suggested that the proposed thoroughfare’s centre median encompass a subway right of way.

Source: Ben Mark Holzberg / Library and Archives Canada, c. 1976-78, Lawrence West

Two years later this same idea was being actively promoted by the TTC who optimistically suggested that work would commence on its $80 million subway project as early as 1968. Unfortunately, the necessary Ontario Municipal Board approval wasn’t forthcoming until May 24, 1973, and by then the price of the venture had almost doubled to $155 million.

Source: Ben Mark Holzberg / Library and Archives Canada, c. 1976-78, Glencairn

Finally, on January 28, 1978, two full decades after the TTC began talking about a so-called Spadina subway, the 9.9-kilometre (6.2-mile) line from Wilson Avenue to St. George and Bloor streets, complete with a connection to the University line, opened.

Source: Ben Mark Holzberg / Library and Archives Canada, c. 1976-78, Yorkdale

And by the way, that original $80 million figure advanced by the TTC in 1958 had nearly tripled to a whopping $220 million.

From “The TTC Story: The First Seventy-Five Years” by Mike Filey.

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Tags: 1978, city of toronto, january 28, mike filey, spadina, spadina line, spadina line opening, spadina subway, st. george, subway, toronto, toronto transit commission, TTC