The Trolley Takes Command, 1892 to 1894 R
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Document généré le 27 sept. 2021 08:30 Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine The Trolley Takes Command, 1892 to 1894 R. B. Fleming Volume 19, numéro 3, february 1991 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1017595ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1017595ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine ISSN 0703-0428 (imprimé) 1918-5138 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Fleming, R. B. (1991). The Trolley Takes Command, 1892 to 1894. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 19(3), 218–225. https://doi.org/10.7202/1017595ar All Rights Reserved © Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 1991 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ The Trolley Takes Command, 1892 to 1894 KB. Fleming I Canadian cities. McLuhan argued that The newness of the electric trolley can• humans respond to electric-powered not be overstated. The old horse trams Canadian historians of electric street rail• inventions in three stages: anxiety, resist• had travelled at little more than a brisk ways have focussed on a variety of ance and finally acceptance.13 Reality jogging pace, between four and seven issues: patronage, corruption and Sun• usually resists clean divisions, and the miles per hour,18 allowing passengers to day cars (Meen, Armstrong and Nelles1); first two stages overlap; nevertheless board Dr disembark with little fear of financial investment (Armstrong and McLuhan's model is worth testing. In injury even while the tram was moving. Nelles, Bliss, McDowall and Hall2); com• order to do so, this essay relies on two Furthermore, horses were living creat• petition from jitneys (Armstrong and main sources familiar to passengers dur• ures, responsive to the human voice and Nelles, Doucet, Linteau and Davis3); trac• ing the early 1890s, the daily press and a link to a reassuring, even if invented, tion methods (Nelles and Armstrong and an oil painting, "Lights of a City Street." pastoral past. Horse cars "jogg[ed] Due4); civic populism and the municipal• Both sources provide contemporary along at a human society rate," one ization of transit (Nelles and Armstrong insights into the imagination and percep• Toronto journalist recalled, evoking 5 and Frisken ); costs of electricity and tions of urban dwellers. "pleasant recollections of the weekly 6 fluctuations in demand (Spry ); company trips to the village on Saturday night."19 strategy, political lobbying, the expan• Since the trolley or streetcar, the familiar In May 1894, in an ode called "The Old sion question and urban reform (Nelles term today,14 arrived in Canadian cities Lady's Lament for the Horse Car," an and Armstrong, Davis, Doucet, Roy, at the same time, between 1891 and anonymous Winnipeg poet expressed 7 Weaver and Rutherford ); factors shap• 1894, it is possible to examine one or two popular affection for the disappearing 8 ing street car networks (Selwood ); radial cities as typical. While regulations tram: 9 railways (Salmon, Wickson and Due ); governing privately-owned street cars workers and strikes (Nelles and Arm• varied slightly from city to city, and while You afforded an excellent cover 10 strong, Piva and Kealey and Palmer ); each city did enjoy topographical and From the sun and the blustering wind. and survey histories (Pursley, Filey, personality peculiarities, the reaction of How oft when the rain overtook me, 11 Blake and Baker ). American and British passengers was much the same across In response to my signal, you stopped, street railways have been dealt with in the country. Thus the response to the first How softly the driver-man shook me, similar ways by historians including street cars in Toronto and Winnipeg can When asleep on the cushions I dropped.^ Warner, Cheape, Ward, McKay, Taylor be taken as representative. 12 andSmerk. // In September 1891, when William Mac• Thus far, however, historians have not kenzie and three partners bought the If horse trams did not prepare passen• dealt with the question of how people franchise of the Toronto Railway Com• gers for the street car, one might assume responded and adapted to the new pany, 1,500 horses ambled through the that by 1891 steam trains had created a speed, punctuality and efficiency intro• city's streets on prescribed routes, pull• pattern of constant change and rigorous duced to Canadian cities by the street ing passenger-laden trams. The first elec• punctuality. Such was not the case, for car during the early 1890s. And although tric trolley was introduced to Toronto in the regularity, speed and "volume of historians of technology such as Marshall August 1892.15 By the end of 1893, most transportation" introduced by the steam McLuhan have attempted to explain the of the horse cars were gone, replaced by railway affected the farmer, merchant effects of electric-powered technologies, 70 miles of trolleys.16 In early December and manufacturer21 more than the ordi• they have neglected the street car. 1894, the last two horses, on McCaul nary passenger. While the train did Street between Queen and College, were cause some anxiety for passengers, their McLuhan's work does, however, provide retired from the streets of Toronto.17 The eyes "dim with pain" (from Lampman's clues and tentative explanations, and months between August 1892 and "The Railway Station," published in this essay tests some of his theories on December 1894 were an important transi• 1888), as they hurried to catch the next 22 human responses to innovative elec• tional period when urban dwellers often train, passengers who regularly used tronic technology in order to investigate reacted inexplicably, at least to their steam trains formed only a minority in people's reactions to the electric street descendants a century later. any city or town; furthermore, trains car during its first years of operation in reached maximum speed only outside 218 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XIX, No. 3 (February 1991) The Trolley Takes Command 'Lights of a City Street, ' oil (1894) by F.M. Bell-Smith (1846-1923), courtesy the Simpson's-Thomson Collection, Toronto. 219 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine VoL XIX, No. 3 (February 1991) The Trolley Takes Command cities, away from populated areas. Like son of the Hon. Mackenzie Bowel I, soon ogy," he adds, "respond most emphati• the telephone, telegraph and electric to be Prime Minister, had his foot cally because the new sense ratios .. light, the effect of the train was mangled by a trolley wheel when he present men with a surprising new world, gradual: the half century lag between the jumped off a moving trolley at Queen and which evokes a vigorous new 'closure,' inauguration of the first steam engine in Yonge streets. In September 1894, a or novel pattern of interplay, among all of Canada in 1836 and the introduction of man was killed by a trolley on Queen Street the senses together."27 The phonetic al• Standard Railway Time in 1884 suggests West.25 "The electric cars are running fast phabet and the age of print had taught that at least until the 1880s trains did not these days," making people nervous, com• people to perceive the world in a "visual" impose their messages of speed and plained the Toronto Globe in 1893. The way whereby the sense of sight became punctuality on the public. Winnipeg poet cited above expressed her op the most trusted sensory channel. The anxiety in her ode to the tram: electronic age, however, caused a In fact, in Metropolitan Corridors, his regression to what McLuhan calls the study of the effect of trains on American Though your old reputation has perished "acoustic" or "auditory-tactile" world of cities, John R. Stilgoe claims that it was This much we at least may recall, pre-literate man who lived in an "echoing not until the mid-1890s, in other words, Which deserves to be tenderly cherished, auditory world" where the senses two or three years after the introduction You were certainly safest of all. interpenetrated and interplayed in avast of the street car to Canadian cities, that When others complained of inaction sensory concert.29 people began "to grasp the imaginative A drowsiness came upon me, impact of the railroad and the corridor And a sense of serene satisfaction For linear, print-oriented people, the evolving along it."23 The real impact of I never have found but in thee. electric world was confusing, many of its the train, Stilgoe suggests, did not come messages transmitted in random, simul• until after the turn of the century with the Why these accidents and this unease? taneous bursts. This new "magical electrification of railway entrance cor• An oncoming street car, moving twice as resonating world"30 played on all five ridors into cities and the construction of fast as the old trams created, it seems, senses as well as on the central nervous huge complexes such as Grand Central an optical illusion. As the trolley drew system, a kind of sixth sense, and in and Pennsylvania stations, capable of closer, it grew larger as if a projectionist 1892 and 1893, the central nervous sys• handling tens of millions of passengers were manipulating a lantern slide while tem had difficulty interpreting the mes• each year.