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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

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ISSN 0703-0428 (imprimé) 1918-5138 (numérique)

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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

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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 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 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• 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 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. In Canada, stations such as casting that image on a screen. The first sages of the trolley—the new pace, new Union Station in Winnipeg were near con• steam engines were perceived in similar sounds and new silences, the mysterious temporaries of the big New York ter• fashion, resulting in strange accidents electrical power, the trolley's insistence minals. such as the death of the economist, Wil• that the passenger conform to its liam Huskisson, during the official open• rigorous schedule and to the dictates of With the inauguration of the electric trolley ing of the Liverpool and Manchester its speed. in cities across Canada three or four years Railway in September 1830. When his after the publication of "The Railway Sta• train stopped to take on water, he stood It took several months for urban dwellers to tion," the scene described by Lampman on adjacent tracks and watched as a assimilate and digest these new mes• 26 became a daily experience for urban second train hit him. There is no reason sages, during which time aspects of the Canadians who soon discovered that the to doubt that the first electric street cars trolley taken for granted today caused trolley was pervasive, embracing, un• had a similar illusory effect, which helps great anxiety. Immediately on taking con• avoidable and unfriendly. During the first to explain why some people stood hyp• trol of the system in September 1891, the months of trolley operation, people some• notized between the tracks and watched , by prior agree• times stood on the track, as if examining an as the street car approached and knock• ment with city council, reduced ticket oncoming trolley; or ran in front and were ed them to the street. Hypnosis, Mc- prices and introduced free transfers, which injured; or leaped off moving cars into an Luhan explains, sometimes results from allowed passengers to travel the entire sys• oncoming trolley. In June 1893, a pas• altered or amplified use of one sense or tem for the price of one ticket, rather than senger in Toronto jumped off a moving trol• one part of the body. "Those who ex• having to pay each time he or she trans• ley, injuring a cyclist. The same year, the perience the first onset of a new technol• ferred from one car to the next. In the ab-

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sence of paper transfers, passengers far apart was disconcerting. "There pressed: in September 1896, J.C. Lane simply told the conductor that they were seems to be a general tendency among of Birmingham, England, admired the transferring from an intersecting line. the operators," one passenger com• ease and speed of the "first-class" cars; Understandably, this honour system plained in May 1893, "to regard the time and a professor from Liverpool noted that resulted in verbal and an occasional tables as of primary importance, and the what impressed him most about Toronto, physical confrontation. A second system carrying of passengers as .. . trouble• next to its loyalty to the Mother Country, followed whereby a transfer man stood some and disagreeable."34 was the "perfection" of its street railway; on the sidewalk and shouted out the num• the Street Railway Review of New York ber of transferring passengers. His voice There were complaints about unheated liked the streetcars of Toronto; and Glas• was one more burst of information to be cars, discourteous conductors and gow railway officials also admired the absorbed by passengers and overcrowding 35 "I have tried to become system.40 pedestrians. During the fall of 1893, a reconciled to the trolley," complained third and improved system was intro• one journalist in July 1893. Like the Win• In January 1894, the Globe decided that duced to Toronto. A farebox, devised by nipeg poet, he disliked the "entangle• Toronto had a street railway system a Torontonian and operated by a conduc• ment of wires" and the trolley poles, "unequalled on the continent." Toron- tor, took money and issued transfer tick• which were "coy and hard to please." He tonians, thought the paper, were ets, which had to be used within ten took great umbrage at the clanging bell. demonstrating a sense of ease and minutes, a remarkably brief time span in "And the gong!" he complained, "Yes, familiarity with the new medium; they 31 1893. Thus even a welcome innovation the gong! The gong!" He worried that rode further for less money than any created new sounds and imposed new "everything except the gong and the col• other North Americans; cars were now time constraints on passengers. lection box [was] working by a well-lighted and heated and very mysterious agency." He pined for the speedy, now a positive feature. If the Unable to comprehend the street car, "less oppressive days . . . when people company continued to improve its ser• many passengers resisted it. The Win• did things, instead of having all things vice, the paper concluded, the citizens 36 nipeg poet objected to "electrical forces" done for them." and press of Toronto would have to find 41 and overhead wires and warned that the something else to complain about. In horse cars would return when women Ill March 1895, the Monetary Times, which were granted the vote. In August 1892, had been critical of the Toronto Railway when the first trolley ran up Church Street The third stage in the response to a new Company during the period of conver• and west on Bloor to Sherbourne, electric technology, according to Mc- sion to electricity, praised the city's 42 propelled by invisible horse power, one Luhan, is acceptance, indifference and "rapid street car service." In 1895, the elderly woman exclaimed, 'Well, I even boredom, when the "entire com• Globe also praised the system's "utmost on munity absorbs the new habit of percep• regularity" and the cars "unsurpassed" declare it almost seems wicked. tion into all of its areas of work and comfort and accommodation. Two years The new trolley made its money from association."37 After initial resistance of later, the same paper thought the service speed, precise schedules and the several months, passengers did indeed along to the Industrial Exhibi• economical use of electricity; hence the begin to celebrate the trolley, and rider- tion grounds "admirable," especially the company's desire to reduce the number of ship increased dramatically, even though fact that cars ran at 90 second inter• 43 stops. In March 1893, the Toronto Railway the last of the long recession retarded vals. The very characteristics that had Company asked the Mayor of Toronto for the growth of Canadian urban popula- caused such anxiety and resistance permission to reduce stops on Yonge tions. The trolley even became a focal were now the objects of adoration. Street by about 25 per cent, from 86 to 64, point for leisure activities—parties were thereby increasing the distance between organized on Winnipeg's Loop Line and In 1894, as the last horse tram was being 33 stops from about 300 feet to 400 feet, ap• Toronto's Belt Line, accompanied by a removed from the streets of Toronto, proximately the distance between bus and band. Special cars swept visiting dignitar• F.M. Bell-Smith was adding the final streetcar stops today. But for passengers ies over miles of Toronto streets.39 And touches to an oil painting, "Lights of a in 1893, the idea of fixed stops at points so during the 1890s, visitors were im• City Street."44 Bell-Smith was familiar

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with railways, having painted CPR the two big department stores, Eaton's of expression" which resulted in a scenery during the late 1880s for Sir Wil• and Simpson's, and many smaller stores, uniform, clear and simple style, made liam Van Home. He also knew Canadian book shops, art galleries, hatters, clothi• famous by Ernest Hemingway.46 There cities, particularly Montreal and Toronto, ers and jewellers. are hints that modern newspaper style where he lived and exhibited his work. and format—briefer, snappier articles His Realist painting tells us a good deal Along King Street is the spire of St James with bolder, sensational headlines—were about the relationship of people to trolley Cathedral, though now subordinate to being developed to appeal to the trolley when the initial shock and resistance better illuminated temples of commerce rider. C.S. Clarke noted in 1897 that the were fading. and finance, of retailing and transportat• World was popular with morning trolley ion. Once the high point of the city, the riders because its "condensed form" The painting's subject is rush hour at spire is now rivalled in height by a hydro could be digested during the ride King and Yonge, probably in late Novem• pole and lines carrying electricity to light downtown47 ber or early December, after a rain. By the streets. Two cyclists brave the damp 1894, King and Yonge Street, like every chill and two policemen maintain order. A The central nervous system was being in• major intersection in urban Canada, had private cab moves east along King, per• undated with other flashes of information. become a busy train station where haps to fashionable Jarvis or Sher- Large signs—we might call them bill• passengers awaited the next trolley. bourne. A few people appear to be boards—shout out messages from the Rush hour in the early 1890s was a relat• walking home. Most, however, are travell• sides of buildings, one advertising car• ively new phenomenon, encouraged, per• ing by trolley. They appear to have ac• pets, others announcing retail business• haps even created, by the trolley. By cepted the changes in schedules and es, their size and position designed to selling workmen's tickets at about three the new paper transfer system, which ac• attract the attention of passengers cents each—the regular rate was a nick• cording to the Globe in January 1894 moving at a faster clip. Inside the trolley, el—to be used for a couple of hours was working admirably. Behind the the commercial world was contributing to during the morning and late afternoon, crowd, on the right, is a solitary man play• the information explosion. Beginning in the trolley company encouraged rush- ing a penny whistle, a reminder that King early October 1893, retailers and hour travel, since everyone, not only Street East was one of several areas manufacturers could buy advertising workpeople, could use the low-priced providing rooms to workers who helped 4ft space In 1893, the trolley was en• tickets. The focal point of the piece is not to build trolley tracks and overhead couraging the development of a con• any one individual but rather, as the title wires. No one is paying attention to his sumer society whose members would indicates, lights and streets, the electric music, which contributes to the growing eventually include all passengers, from lights of retail businesses, street lamps level of urban noise whose creation is no millionaires to street musicians, in one and trolleys, in particular the light of a trol• longer the prerogative of emperors, kings 45 amorphous consuming middle class. ley near the centre of the canvas, and capitalists. together with its reflection on the rain- The street car was altering the look of the slicked cobblestones and asphalt. Newsboys, hustling to sell newspapers, city in other ways. During the 1890s ar• also contribute to the cacaphony at King chitects and street planners began to The view is to the east along King Street, and Yonge by shouting out headlines to think more grandly. In November 1893, in 1894 the financial heart of Toronto, increase sales in a very competitive plans for a grand boulevard joining and to a great extent, of Canada. Lo• market. Trolley stops, especially the Queen's Park and old Union Station were cated on King Street were the Toronto busiest of the city, were good places to announced49 As its contribution to this Stock Exchange and headquarters of sell papers. The five Toronto evening early example of the "city beautiful" banks, insurance companies, mines and newspapers were showering prospective movement in Toronto, the Toronto Rail• real estate development across the passengers with news to glance at en way Company wanted to build a trolley country, and street railways in Toronto route home. Stephen Kern points out in line up College Avenue, now University and Winnipeg. Yonge Street, which inter• The Culture of Time and Space that Avenue, in order to sweep passengers sects King Street in the painting, was the during this period, the telephone and from the transportation centre of the city main retailing street of the city, home to telegraph were introducing an "economy to the legislative heart of the province. Al-

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though the plans were postponed, the and all other senses had grown indif• familiar and acceptable, the trolley connection between street car and ferent to messages, movement, artificial helped to make the city expendable. grand vistas is appropriate, for the faster light, business reports, orders and method of transportation demanded appeals. Most faces are veiled in Paradoxically, the trolley may even have grander statements not only from adver• shadow, significant in a piece of art made expendable the idea of the com• tisers but also from city planners. It is whose theme is lights, the sole exception pact city, which for reasons of profit, trol• more than coincidental that in September being the artist's son who is tipping his ley companies wished to perpetuate. In 1894, to celebrate the near-completion of hat to an acquaintance whose daughter 1894, Toronto was one of the most com• the electrification of Toronto's transit sys• is more interested in the trolley to her left. pact cities in North America,54 making it tem, the Toronto Railway Company pub• in density more European and less lished a souvenir booklet called "Toronto These are trolley people, already at American. Like the European systems' as Seen From the Street Cars," a title home in a world more regimented, effi• graduated rates for tickets,55 the Toronto which implies that the streetcar had af• cient and punctual than the old world of Railway Company's double-fare system fected the way people viewed the urban horse trams, whose departure is no within the greater Toronto area ensured landscape. longer lamented.52 What Archibald urban compactness during the life its Lampman and the Toronto journalist, the tenure, from 1891 to 1921. In the trolley world of punctuality and Winnipeg poet and the elderly woman on speed, time is of the essence. Two Bloor Street decried and resisted, the Nevertheless the urge for expansion was clocks appear on the Bell-Smith canvas, characters in "Lights" accept as part of developing as early as 1894, when the the mechanical clock of St James daily life, no longer remarkable. They system was newly electrified and city Cathedral, eclipsed by the splendid new have already crossed the threshold of council discussed the question of extend• electric clock that in September 1893 the 20th century, and with a change of ing the transportation system.56 If the was exhibited by the J.E. Ellis Jewellery clothing, would not look out of place company could transport passengers so Co. Ltd.,50 and that in Bell-Smith's oil today at King and Yonge, Granville and rapidly and cheaply to the edge of the gives the time—three minutes to five—as Robson, or Ste Catherine and McGill. city as defined in 1891, why not do so it presides over the busy intersection through newly-annexed even though thin• 57 from the second-floor of the Ellis build• IV ly-populated areas? In 1893, about 200 ing. Whereas the hands of previous houses were being erected in the Annex, clocks hesitated before moving to the Familiarity with and indifference to speed north of Bloor between Avenue Road and next unit, the new clock at King and and change makes acceptable the crea• Bathurst even though there were empty Yonge kept on moving in silence, tive-destructive habits of cities. The city's houses in the core,58 an indication that effortlessly and magically. For the eye ac• original purpose, Lewis Mumford middle-income Torontonians were customed to measuring time in sixty dis• reminds us, was human continuity, but anxious to move north into inner suburbs, tinct units, the electric clock, initially at the modern age, he points out, makes (and that suburban land speculators least, must have been as disconcerting the city consumable and expendable.53 were just as anxious that they do so59). as the trolley.51 During the 1890s, the prominent ar• Torontonians' apparent desire to spread, chitect E.J. Lennox had offices which which made TRC's tight-fisted, anti-ex• The imposition of public, external time by can be seen in "Lights of a City Street" pansionist policy unpopular even in the the trolley, the clocks and the policeman on the third floor of the Ellis block, above 1890s,60 was postponed by the two-fare has caused people to retreat more and the electric clock. Lennox played an system, and from 1921 to the end of more into their own private, internal important role in recreating Toronto. World War Two by the Toronto Transpora- worlds, where sounds become silent. A During the 1890s, to make room for his tion (later Transit) Commission's adopt• remarkable lack of communication char• new city hall, which made the kind of ing a version of its predecessor's policy acterizes these people, on the street and grand architectural statement ap• of serving only densely populated areas in the trolley, even those who know each preciated by trolley riders, older build• with streetcars. With the coming of other, for instance the couple on the left. ings were destroyed. By making change Metropolitan Government in 1954, which There is little eye contact, as if the eye shifted power from the municipality of

223 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XIX, No. 3 (February 1991) The Trolley Takes Command

Toronto to suburban municipalities, a Bliss, A Canadian Millionaire, The Life and Times Columbia Electric Railway" in Business History one-fare zone covering a vast area finally of Sir Joseph Flavelle, Bart., 1858-1939 (Toronto, Review, 47(1974): 239-59; Roy, "The Fine Arts of 1978); Duncan McDowall, The Light, Brazilian Lobbying and Persuading: The Case of B.C. removed all constraints and the Los An- Traction, Light and Power Company Limited, Electric Railway, 1897-1917" in Canadian Busi• gelization of outer Toronto began in 1899-1945 (Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1988); and ness History: Selected Studies, ed. Davis S. Mac- earnest. The old system of electric trol• C.A.S. Hall, "Electrical Utilities in Ontario under millan (Toronto, 1971): 239-54; John C. Weaver, Private Ownership 1890-1914," Ph.D. thesis, "Tomorrow's Metropolis' Revisited: A Critical As• leys had created the desire for expan• University of Toronto, 1968. sessment of Urban Reform in Canada, 1890- sion as early as the 1890s; the new 1920" in The Canadian City, Essays in Urban system of busses radiating through thinly- 3. Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment, History, ed. Gilbert A. Stelter and A.F.J. Artibise, 1986; Michael Doucet, "Politics, Space and Trol• populated suburbs satisfied it, but by (Toronto, 1976): 393-418; Weaver, "The Meaning leys: Mass Transit in Early Twentieth-Century of Municipal Reform: Toronto, 1895" in Ontario doing so, encouraged a new mode of Canada," in Shaping the Urban Landscape: History (June, 1974), 89-100; Paul Rutherford, traveller, the wasteful suburban Aspects of the Canadian City-Building Process, "Tomorrow's Metropolis: The Urban Reform automobilist. ed. G.A. Stelter and A.F.J. Artibise (Ottawa, Movement in Canada, 1880-1920" in The 1982); Paul-Andre Linteau, "Urban Mass Transit," Canadian City, Essays in Urban History, ed. Gil• in Building Canada, ed. N.R. Ball (Toronto, 1988); bert A. Stelter and A.F.J. Artibise (Toronto, 1966): Thus the trolley, with its messages of and Donald F. Davis, "Competition's Moment: 368-392. speed, punctuality and consumerism, The Jitney-Bus and Corporate Capitalism in the Canadian City, 1914-1929" in Urban History played the important role of creating the 8. H. John Selwood, "Urban Development and the Review XVIII, 2(Oct 1989): 103-122. Streetcar: The Case of Winnipeg, 1881-1913" in initial stages of our modern world charac• Urban History Review, 3-77(Feb 1978): 34-41. terized by a familiarity with and accep• 4. Armstrong and Nelles, "The Rise of Civic tance of transience, renewal, destruction, Populism in Toronto, 1870-1920," in Forging A 9. James V. Salmon, Rails to (Toronto, Consensus: Historical Essays on Toronto, ed. Vic• n.d.); Ted Wickson, "The Radial Railways on isolation, and urban hustle and bustle. tor L. Russell (Toronto 1984): 192-237; and J.F. North Yonge Street," in Upper Canada Railway As such, the trolley was the harbinger of Due, The Intercity Electric Railway Industry in Society Newsletter, 326(March/April 1973): 44- more sophisticated electric-powered Canada (Toronto, 1966). 58; and Due, Intercity Electric Railway Industry, 1966. media such as moving film, television, 5. Armstrong and Nelles, "The Rise of Civic video machines and computers which Populism in Toronto, 1870-1920," 1984; and 10. Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment, have made the twentieth century an in• Frances Frisken, "A triumph for public owner• 1986; Michael Piva, The Condition of the Working ship," in Victor L. Russell, ed., Forging a Consen• Class in Toronto—1900-1921 (Ottawa, 1979); stantaneous world in which "space and sus, Historical Essays on Toronto (Toronto, Gregory Kealey, Toronto Workers Respond to In• time interpenetrate each other totally in a 1984): 238-271. dustrial Capitalism (Toronto, 1980); and Kealey space-time world," to use a Mc- and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of what might 6. I.M. Biss, "Overhead Costs, Time Problems, and Luhanism.61 be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900 Prices," in Essays in Political Economy in Honour (Cambridge, 1982). of E.J. Urwick, ed. H.A. Innis (Toronto, 1938): 11- Acknowledgements 26; and I.M. Spry, "Overhead Costs, Rigidities of 11. L.H. Pursley, Street Railways of Toronto, 1861- Productive Capacity and the Price System," in 1921, , special volume no. 25 (Los An• Culture, Communications and Dependency ed. geles, 1958); Pursley, The TTC Story (Los The author wishes to thank Jennifer Brown, Angela W.H. Melody, L. Salter and P. Heyer (Norwood, Angeles, 1961); Mike Filey, Not A One-Horse Davis, Brian Osborne, Ron Rees, John Weaver and N.J.,1981): 155-166. Town, 125 Years of Toronto and Its Streetcars the UHR reader for suggesting improvements and (Toronto, 1986); H.W. Blake, The Era of Street overlooked sources; also David Thomson for permis• 7. Armstrong and Nelles, "Street Railway Strategies Cars in Winnipeg, 1881-1955 (Winnipeg, 1971); sion to photograph Lights of a City Street, part of the in Three Canadian Cities: Montreal, Toronto and and John E. Baker, Winnipeg's Electric Transit Simpson's-Thomson collection, Toronto. Vancouver," in Power and Place: Canadian (Toronto, 1982). Urban Development in the North American Con• Notes text, ed. G.A. Stelter and A.F.J.Artibise (Van• 12. S.B. Warner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs (Cambridge, couver, 1986): 187-218; Donald Davis, "Mass Mass., 1962) and Warner, The Private City Transit and Private Ownership: An Alternative (Philadelphia, 1981); C.W. Cheape, Moving the 1. Sharon P. Meen, "Holy Day or Holiday? The Perspective on the Case of Toronto" in Urban His• Masses (Cambridge, Mass., 1980); David Ward, Giddy Trolley and the Canadian Sunday" in tory Review, 3-78 (Feb 1979): 60-98; Michael Cities and Immigrants, A Geography of Change Urban History Review IX, 1(June 1980): 49-63; Doucet, "Mass Transit and the Failure of Private in Nineteenth Century America (New York, Lon• and Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles, The Ownership: The Case of Toronto in the Early don, Toronto, 1971); John P. McKay, Tramways Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company Twentieth Century," in Urban History Review, 3- and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport (Toronto, 1977). 77(Feb 1978): 3-32; Patricia Roy, "The British in Europe (Princeton, 1976); G.R. Taylor, "The Columbia Electric Railway Company, 1897-1928: Beginnings of Mass Transit in Urban America" in 2. Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment: The A British Company in British Columbia," Ph.D. J.F. Richardson, ed., The American City: Histori• Organization and Regulation of Canadian thesis, UBC, 1970; Roy, "Direct Management cal Studies (Waltham, 1972): 125-157; and Utilities, 1830-1930 (Philadelphia, 1986); Michael From Abroad: The Formative Years of the British George M. Smerk, "The Streetcar: Shaper of

224 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XIX, No. 3 (February 1991) The Trolley Takes Command

American Cities," in Traffic Quarterly, 21 (October Experience," in The Structurist, 10(1970): 21. 50. Globe, 12 September 1893. 1967): 569-584. Philip Marchand's excellent biography of Mc• Luhan—Marshall McLuhan, the Medium and the 51. Strangely enough, although he deals with the 13. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Messenger (Toronto, 1989)—provides welcome role of clocks in creating the linear, visual world, Extensions of Man (Toronto, 1965): 26. explanation of many of McLuhan's more esoteric McLuhan does not appear to have considered concepts. the effects of the change from mechanical to 14. In North America, the term tram or horse tram electrical clocks. See Understanding Media, referred to horse-drawn vehicles. Trolley, trolley 30. McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, 22. 145-156. car and street car were synonymous, all powered by electricity. Technically, the "trolley" was the 31. Globe, 7 October 1893; and 2 November 1893. 52. McLuhan might have argued that these people pole which connected the trolley car to the over• are still in the print mode, which isolated people, head wires, the source of power. The first 32. National Archives, Ottawa, A.J. Hills Papers, and that their children and grandchildren would automobiles were usually referred to as motor MG31, E12, vol 7, "Biographical Notes." be united in the global village created later by cars or motors. During the 1890s and up to the radio and television. It seems probable, how• 33. World, 22 March 1893. The newspaper gives the Great War, the term "car" usually referred to the ever, that a century later, we live in millions of in• new distance between stops and the number of street car and not to the automobile. dividual worlds, and that the inwardness of most stops, old and new, thus making it possible to of the characters in "Lights" is the beginning of 15. For several years, the Industrial Exhibition had calculate the old distance between stops. twentieth-century fragmentation. featured an electric trolley on a mile of track, 34. Globe, 6 May 1893. used only for exhibition purposes. 53. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (Har- mondsworth, 1961): 620. 35. Globe, 6 May 1893. 16. Globe, 8 September 1893. 54. Globe, 7 Feb 1894. Paving magazine, quoted by 36. Globe, 3 July 1893. (McLuhan's assumption that 17. Globe, 4 July 1894; and 7 December 1894. the Globe, claimed that Toronto was one of the everyone accustomed to the world of print sub• most compact of North American cities. Only mits peacefully to timetables and scheduling 18. David Ward, Cities and Immigrants, 1971, 125. New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Buffalo and may be open to question. Jersey City had less street car mileage per 1000 19. Globe, 3 July 1893. 37. McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, 23. population. Toronto had less mileage in propor• 20. Manitoba Morning Free Press, 15 May 1894. tion to population than 24 our of 30 [North] 38. J.M.S. Careless, Toronto to 1918, An Illustrated American cities over 100,000. Toronto's popula• 21. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr, ed, The Railroads, The History (Toronto, 1984): 203; Globe, 17 Novem• tion is listed at 190,000 and its mileage was Nation's First Big Business (New York, Chicago ber 1893; Toronto World, 11 October 1893; and listed as 80, and it may well have been as low as and Burlington, 1965): 8. Monetary Times, 21 January 1898. 70, whereas Minneapolis with 164,000 population had 114 miles of street cars. 22. Globe, 2 December 1893. 39. Globe, 5 May 1893. 55. David Ward, Cities and Immigrants, New York, 23. John R. Stilgoe, Metropolitan Corridor, Railroads 40. Globe, 10 October 1896; 4 September 1897; and London, Toronto, 1971,139. and the American Scene (New Haven, London, 23 September 1897. 1983): 8. 56. Globe, 7 February 1894. 417. Globe, 8 January 1894. 24. Globe, 2 October 1893. 57. Doucet, "Mass Transit and the Failure of Private 42. Monetary Times, 15 March 1895, 1195. Ownership," 1978, 3: "The greater speed of the 25. Globe, 12 September 1894. trolley increased the opportunities for ... 43. Globe, 4 September 1897. residential development 26. Francis D. Klingender, Art and the Industrial 44. Roger Boulet, Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith (1846- Revolution (London, 1972): 129, citing Black- 58. Globe, 8 September 1893. woods Magazine, November, 1830. 1923), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Victoria, 1977): 24. 59. Weaver, " 'Tomorrow's Metropolis' Revisited." 27. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto, 1966): 22- 45. See Grant D. McCracken, "A big noise in the 60. Donald Davis, "Mass Transit and Private Owner• 23; and McLuhan, Understanding Media, 32 and city," in The Globe and Mail, 13 July 1990, A14. ship: An Alternative Perspective on the Case of 149. Toronto," in Urban History Review, 3- 46. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 78(February 1979): 81 : "Beyond [the TRC's] own 1880-1918 (Cambridge, Mass., 1983): 155. 28. Edmund Carpenter, Oh, What a Blow That Phan• stockholders, few shared the company's objec• tom Gave Me! (Toronto, 1973): 38. tives [of serving only densely-populated areas]."; 47. C.S. Clarke, Of Toronto The Good (Montreal, 86 and 89: City politicians "believed they owed 29. Jonathan Miller, McLuhan (London, 1971): 9; 1898) and Coles reprint (Toronto, 1970): 81. their middle-class constituents [ie. their electors] Gerald E. Steam, McLuhan: Hot and Cool (New a suburban life-style." York, 1967): 144; and Edmund Carpenter, "Art 48. World, 9 October 1893. and the Declassification and Reclassification of 49. World, 17 November 1893. 61. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 148.

225 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XIX, No. 3 (February 1991)