1921 Toronto Harbour Commission: Plan of Old Fort Showing Present Conditions and Location of Original Buildings

A heavy black line on this plan shows how Bathurst streetcars passed through Fort York between 1916 and 1931. Those who resisted this intrusion on behalf of Toronto's birthplace were successful until the middle of the Great War when the Grand Trunk Railway offered the City its bridge across the Humber, which was being replaced. This removed the impediment that Council had operated under since 1907, when the electors turned down debt-financing a new bridge. Bathurst Street could now be extended south of Front, across the rail corridor, and streetcar service extended to the CNE on a trestle built along the line of the north ramparts of the fort. This arrangement existed for a decade and a half until 1931 when the Park Blackwell meat packing plant at the east end of the fort was demolished, the Bathurst bridge rotated 22 degrees to stand in line with Bathurst Street, and the road extended to Lakeshore Blvd. Read the full story here.

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1921 Toronto Harbour Commission: Plan of Old Fort Showing Present Conditions and Location of Original Buildings

Plan of Old Fort Showing Present Conditions and Location of Original Buildings
Toronto Harbour Commission - Drawing No. 6973 Sept 13, 1921. Additions by dTAH, 2007
Image courtesy Toronto Harbour Commission Archives.

The following April 1916 photograph (taken before the above-mentioned streetcar line was installed, in August) shows the relationship between the ‘pre-Humber’ Bathurst Bridge, the Blackwell packing plant, the Railway lines, and the eastern end of the Fort. The path of the streetcar trestle would pass directly north of the plant.

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View of eastern end of Fort York towards the Bathurst Street Bridge, and the Matthews Blackwell packing plant, 1916

Site of Bridge, April 5, 1916
Image courtesy City of Toronto Archives, f1231_it1044.

This last graphic illustrates the work done to re-align the Bathurst St. Bridge in 1931. Click the image to view full-size.

Image: The Realignment of the Bathurst St. Bridge, March 3, 1931, Toronto Star

Engineering Ingenuity Triumphs in Swinging of Bathurst St. Bridge Structure
March 4, 1931, The Toronto Daily Star.

Read: A concise history (p5) of the century-old (and counting) bridge, formally renamed in 2007 as the Sir Isaac Brock Bridge.

Next map: 1958 Globe: Proposed alignment of Gardiner Expressway at Old Fort York
Back to: ‘Old’ Fort York