{"id":19313,"date":"2011-04-21T14:00:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T18:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=19313"},"modified":"2013-01-21T14:37:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T19:37:53","slug":"keep-toronto-reading-401-the-kings-highway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/04\/21\/keep-toronto-reading-401-the-kings-highway\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep Toronto Reading: 401, the King’s Highway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once again Spacing is pleased to be a part of Toronto Public Library\u2019s\u00a0Keep Toronto Reading<\/a> program. This April the library hopes the whole city will join in reading Judy Fong Bates’s Midnight at the Dragon Cafe, the story of a young Chinese-Canadian growing up in small-town Ontario in the late 50s and early 60s.<\/em> Throughout the month, Spacing Toronto will present a series of posts exploring the book and its relationship to our city.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Chou family loves to visit Toronto; they are the only Asians in Irvine, Ontario, and feel at home along the busy streets of Chinatown, where they can visit relatives and speak their own language. In the early 1960s, Su-Jen\u2019s family begins to travel to and from Toronto more often.<\/p>\n

There are several reasons for the increased frequency of these trips. The dark secrecy that drives the plot of Midnight at the Dragon Caf\u00e9 is truly what drives the family an hour west: the arrival of Su-Jen\u2019s tense, angry older brother, her mother\u2019s misery, her father\u2019s increasing loneliness. Toronto is a means of escape.<\/p>\n

But the more literal reason the family begins to make the journey is interesting in its own right: in the early 1960s, the Highway 401 finally passed through Irvine:<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen the highway was being built, Mr. Swackhammer and Officer Grisham, the new policeman, had talked about it almost every day as they sat at the restaurant counter drinking coffee. They told me with great excitement they would be able to drive to Toronto in under an hour because they wouldn\u2019t have to pass through all the small towns. They said that the road would be like the big highways in the United States.\u201d (185)<\/em><\/p>\n

The Highway 401, also known as the King\u2019s Highway, the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, and the Highway of Heroes (between Trenton and the Don Valley Parkway), has a long, patchwork history. First suggested in 1938, the road that now stretches from Windsor to the Quebec border, fourteen lanes wide in places, was built in stints, sometimes forging new ground, but often replacing other smaller, and more winding routes.<\/p>\n

By \u201cpass through all those small towns,\u201d Bates means Highway 2, the predecessor of the 401, whose own predecessor was the 18th century roadways early settlers built on top of well-worn Aboriginal trails. Highway 2 finally lost its highway status, re-established as a local route, only in the last fifteen years.<\/p>\n

The Great Canadian Trivia Book<\/em> suggests that the building of the 401 was \u201cthe most important single development changing the social and economic pattern of Ontario.\u201d For store owners and delivery men, like Mr. Swackhammer and the Chou\u2019s friend Pock Mark, who delivers Chinese groceries from Toronto to all of the Chinese families of southwestern Ontario, the highway represented genuine economic transformation.<\/p>\n

But for others the 401 changed the landscape unfavourably: for instance, motel owners along Kingston Road in Scarborough, formerly part of Highway 2, saw their business completely disappear once Toronto was quick to get to. And for the Chou family, too, the easy journey to Toronto acts in two ways, as both a point of release, and a source of familial betrayal.<\/p>\n

Great historical photos of the 401 have been collected by Cameron Bevers here<\/a>.
\nHighway 401 photo by Lone Primate<\/a> used under Creative Commons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again Spacing is pleased to be a part of Toronto Public Library\u2019s\u00a0Keep Toronto Reading program. This April the library hopes the whole city will join in reading Judy Fong Bates’s Midnight at the Dragon Cafe, the story of a young Chinese-Canadian growing up in small-town Ontario in the late 50s and early 60s. ThroughoutContinue reading “Keep Toronto Reading: 401, the King’s Highway”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4065,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21759,9],"tags":[17463,2900,2348,17349,17462,17458,17457,17348,17345,370,17460,17461,1637,152,636,17464,3594,819,8083,89,11781,17465,17459,19,506,853],"class_list":["post-19313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-traffic","tag-cameron-bevers","tag-chinatown","tag-creative-commons","tag-dragon-cafe","tag-grisham","tag-highway-of-heroes","tag-highway-once","tag-irvine","tag-judy-fong-bates","tag-king","tag-kings-highway","tag-macdonald-cartier-freeway","tag-officer","tag-one-book","tag-ontario","tag-pock-mark","tag-policeman","tag-quebec","tag-reading","tag-scarborough","tag-southwestern-ontario","tag-swackhammer","tag-the-highway","tag-toronto","tag-united-states","tag-windsor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKeep Toronto Reading: 401, the King's Highway - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/04\/21\/keep-toronto-reading-401-the-kings-highway\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Keep Toronto Reading: 401, the King's Highway - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Once again Spacing is pleased to be a part of Toronto Public Library\u2019s\u00a0Keep Toronto Reading program. 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