December 31st, 2009
Near Parliament - I miss The Peasant’s Larder - Happy New Year, Folks
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations …
December 29th, 2009
A jazzy scene.
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.
December 29th, 2009
The brutalist Chelmsford Apartment towers loom over an old village house.
This is the first in a series I plan to do over the next little while on the hidden villages and hamlets that have been engulfed by urban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area. This is going back to the beginning for me, as one of my first posts on Spacing Toronto was on the lost village of Ebenezer, now part of Brampton’s sprawl.
I chose Agincourt to launch this occasional series for two reasons: this is one area in which many, if not most, Spacing readers should have some familiarity with; and it is here that Transit City has its humble “groundbreaking” - namely the grade separation of the CN Uxbridge Subdivision and Sheppard Avenue East.
Unlike lesser known villages around like O’Sullivan’s Corners (Sheppard and Victoria Park), or Hough’s Corners (Eglinton and Birchmount), Agincourt as a geographical place name lives on, in the form of a GO Transit train stop; a mall at Kennedy and Sheppard, local schools, amongst other things. Indeed, today, many Torontonians would describe Agincourt’s boundaries as from the 401 to the south, Steeles to the north, Victoria Park to the west and McCowan or Markham Roads to the east (the City of Toronto’s neighbourhood definition for Agincourt isn’t clear either, splitting “Agincourt” into two neighbourhoods).
125 years ago, Agincourt was a bustling, yet unincorporated, rural village at the corner of what is today the intersection of Midland and Sheppard Avenues, assisted by the construction of the pioneering Toronto and Nipissing Railway in 1871 (which became part of the Midland Railway of Canada empire, the origin of the name Midland Avenue) and the Ontario and Quebec Railway, later the CP mainline to Montreal.
Knox United Church and cemetery, Agincourt. An old church and cemetery will often mark the location of a former village.
The suburban creep of Toronto didn’t catch up to Agincourt until the early 1960s, after the construction of Highway 401 and the wholesale bungalowization of Scarborough Township after the Second World War by Reeve Oliver Crockford. The train has stopped continuously in Agincourt, first hosting passenger trains to Coboconk and Lindsay, later CN, then VIA rail diesel coach commuter trains to Markham and Stouffville. GO Transit took over the service in 1982.
Today, Agincourt village still maintains much of its original building stock, though urbanization has blurred the old boundaries. This has had the effect so that Agincourt is a village lost in plain sight. Several churches from the village era remain in use today, though there have been some adaptations to the area’s changing demographics, including Mandarin and Cantonese language services. The local school, built in 1912, still welcomes students, and the old Victorian and Edwardian housing stock, while standing out from the ranch houses, high rises and townhouse complexes that surround the area, are plentiful on several local streets as well as Midland Avenue and even Sheppard.
December 27th, 2009
2009 has proven to be a busy year for transit in the Greater Toronto Area. In Toronto alone, 2009 saw construction begin on the Spadina Subway Extension to York University and Vaughan Corporate Centre; as well as the grade separation of Sheppard Avenue, the first Transit City-related project, and the GO Transit Stouffville Line in Agincourt. The TTC also finally purchased new streetcars for the legacy street railway system, put forward a plan to improve the bus network, and opened up most of the new St. Clair streetcar right-of-way.
At the regional level, GO Transit has continued to plod along with upgrading its rail infrastructure, including the West Toronto diamond (a major irritant to nearby residents and businesses), the Union Station rail corridor, while extending its reach beyond the GTA into Peterborough, Niagara and Kitchener-Waterloo. And Queen Street in Brampton is all torn up for its own rapid bus system, rebranded from Acceleride to Züm.
But one major project flew under the radar in the midst of all these other projects and plans. On November 20, the York University busway opened, the GTA’s first major bus-only road. The new route passes through a hydro field between Dufferin and Keele and also includes bus-only lanes on Dufferin Street and a second internal bus-only road into the central campus north of Murray Ross Parkway. The cost borne by the three levels of government, according to a York University news article, was $37.8 million.
Construction began in April 2008 after several years of planning. A TTC Commission report dated April 27, 2009 anticipated a September opening in time for the new academic year, but typical of TTC projects, the road opened over two months late.
December 26th, 2009
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing …
December 26th, 2009
Night vision.
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.
