TT Film - Three Days in Toronto (1959, 1960 and 1962)

[@nivagnoswal]

wonderful visuals of old Toronto...I was born in 1954, so this brings back deep memories for me...

[@StarHarvestOfficial]

Amazing video. My grandfather will be passing away soon and is fond of old Toronto footage. I can't thank you enough!

[@WayneB27]

Stumbled across this video today and happened to see my dad driving his blue and white 1957 Studebaker Champion on Eglington Avenue East where we used to live. Dad emigrated to Canada from the UK in the mid 1950's.

[@davebrittain9216]

Studebaker was the first car I drove around the farm by myself.

[@bobbykiriakidis9753]

Seriously? Is that possible? I thought that only happened on Seinfeld with George in the background of his Boss’s family picture.😂. Where (time) in the video is your Dad’s car?

[@drgustaf2450]

That’s a superb happy coincidence !!

[@Richard-yt3fs]

My grandfather worked for the ttc over 25 years remember he got a gold card to ride free, he drove the red Gloucester trains and I’d ride up front with him, then it was safe to have the doors open, he taught me the signals many nice memories

[@ryanmartin5944]

My grandfather also worked for the TTC. I have similar memories of him letting me ride up front with him, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and would happily ride with him for his entire shift. I also remember what a big deal it was when the transitioned to the silver air conditioned subway cars.

[@jaygatz4335]

Back when Toronto was civilized! High rises hadn't taken over and streetcars ruled. I often took the St. Clair car along Mt. Pleasant. The padded seats and incandescent lights made for a more comfortable experience.

[@donm8363]

Thank you. Amazing footage. I appreciate the old days of our beautiful city Toronto Ontario Canada.

[@7555mac]

1960 reminds me of when we bought the old George S. Henry farm house when i was 5 yrs old located in the Henry Farms at 17 Manorpark Road which you entered the subdivision on Sheppard Ave just west of Don Mills Road before the subdivision was started a year later.

[@andrewclarkson3401]

We are lucky Richard Glaze recorded these for posterity. And what a fantastic job the Transit Toronto team has done preserving these films! It would have been easy to let them sit in boxes and do nothing. I will be contributing to see more like this!

[@drgustaf2450]

Likewise ! Perhaps we can ask for music that is less bizarre 🧐

[@garyfrancis6193]

We are lucky somebody made these films and they survived.

[@MrPatrick1414]

Cool seeing the Volkswagen beetle among the typical 1950s cars

[@Rick-S-6063]

At 9:35 there appears to be a Vauxhall Cresta, which is another treat to see. Looks like a '58 Edsel on the right hand side at 10:36. There's a red and white '58 or first series '59 Vauxhall Victor at 14:58. I wish I had a dollar for every '58 and '59 Ford that appears in these videos!

[@suec9816]

the good old days. i remember them well. great video.

[@RC-Flight]

This is an amazing video with a real person doing the commenting!!!

[@brucesturton8521]

I throughly enjoyed this video from beginning to end. A fantastic glimpse of yesteryear. I just love the ttc buses and streetcars and the cars of the 50s and 60s.

[@henrivanbemmel]

I've never seen the Davisville yards look so clean!! I remember those red subway cars and how the lights would blink off and on at certain places on the track.

[@ClintScottFischer]

Same here! Remember in the late 80's when a red train would pull in, I thought: "Oh no, here we go". They were breaking down big time and you never knew what would happen on the ride!

[@janetcraft]

My late Father got his first job working for the TTC when he came to Toronto back in 1954 from Belgium. He showed me the subway systems and streetcars when I was young. I was so fascinated by it. I remember when Mom and Dad allowed me to go on my own, (with friends) to go downtown Toronto and my fare was, I do believe - 15 cents for Students. 25 cents for Adults. As I grew older, I found jobs in Toronto and my means of transportation - the subway and streetcars, of course :) Thank you guys for this video. It did bring me back to those days gone by.

[@RGC198]

Excellent video. Thanks for sharing. Toronto in some ways reminds me of here in Melbourne Australia, especially as both cities retained their tramway systems.

[@alexsmith-ob3lu]

Wow, that is amazing! Thank you for sharing such old footage! Folks are well dressed, cars are elegant, streetcars are practical and very little traffic!

[@davebinnie4257]

Toronto “The good” they called it. Very nice back then.

[@lifeofcris5713]

Thank you for this! So nice to see Toronto back then

[@Richard-yt3fs]

Thank you for the amazing video, I rode on 6167 and still have many memories of riding the train and street cars

[@KevinBoucock]

Born and raised in Niagara falls in 1961 ,thank you very much for the ride back into the past !!

[@romanwarrior1158]

I have family footage of Toronto from the early 50’s, the 60’s, the 70’s and the 80’s. My grandfather used to walk around with his video recorder every where he went.

[@bobbykiriakidis9753]

Share it dude. Convert and share on KZbin. I love that stuff

[@maydom04]

You mean film camera? Video recorders of that time were very large and bulky.

[@mmans8191]

Thanks very much for the great work!! Keep it up!! Cheers,

[@hiitsstillme]

Great film clips, and memories. Thank you!!

[@j.w.2391]

So pleased that someone had the foresight and the Camera technology to Record these images for Posterity, so Future generations can appreciate them and see how our city / nation has evolved. Now that Iphone cameras are so available, everyone has become a documentary filmmaker. I already feel a bit "old" because I recall when certain Toronto subway stations like Kipling and Kennedy and the St. Clair West line first opened and/or when certain bus routes werent in existence.

[@streetcarjay]

I've never seen TTC Streetcars cross railroad tracks. Thst rare footage is s real gem.

[@ghettoandroid]

Riding the TTC looks so chill and even fun back then. Nowadays, you're packed in like sardines, and on occasions have to deal with rowdy teens, and mentally ill people and risk getting stabbed.

[@transittoronto]

I still ride the system for fun (I call it taking a long walk with assistance). You have to pick your times. The system also had a reputation for packing them in back in my day (the eighties -- that's when they initially talked about a Downtown Relief Line to deal with the humungous crowds at Bloor-Yonge), and we had our fair share of rowdy drunks and teens in those days (wasn't nice to share a car with them). We tend to forget the distressing stuff in the past, while being confronted with it in the present. I think the fact is, there's been good and bad things about this city for as long as it has been a city.

[@monicapushkin3274]

This is absolutely amazing, thank you!! I know all of these places.

[@glenaetitmus2106]

OMG..! This certainly brought back memories as a six/seven years old when I spent 6 months in Toronto from summer 1962 to winter 1963. The mad dash of changing trams at Humber loop has remained particularly vivid aswell as high park and lakeshore west. Many thanks

[@evemarie1605]

Kudos to the Halton County Rail Museum for preserving these old streetcars but you cannot possibly get the feeling of riding a crowded old streetcar on a steamy sweaty mid-summer day in downtown Toronto by riding on a nice quite tree-shaded track on the old Guelph radial line:- when you're five years old with your mother and a big old "Witt" comes rumbling and clanking to your stop and swallows you up like a big old whale with a lot of hissing and wheezing and then trundles away to deposit you somewhere far away was both scary and exciting! 🙂

[@stryders25]

love this stuff thanks

[@fares-please]

Great job guys. Loved this video start to finish. Looking forward to more and more than happy to help contribute.

[@cwjonesII]

Excellent video! Informative and enjoyable.

[@gangstagrandma]

Thank you!

[@Celluloidwatcher]

Thank you for this great video capturing a different era in Canadian public transportation. Wonderful color film footage of the Toronto streetcar system. Love the look of the freeways back then. BTW, my family and I traveled to Toronto a few times, mainly to see the Canadian National Exhibition and to travel on some of the same freeways back in the late 60's and early 70's. It brings back wonderful memories.

[@andrewcharles459]

A lot of memories for me in those films. As a youngster there was many a summer day I would just spend a dime and "ride the rocket" to see where it would take me. They were just starting to phase out the red subway trains when I started my joyrides, but I got to ride them often enough. I especially enjoyed them for the frequent momentary blackouts they would experience. Then, a little older, I'd take the Bathurst car to Fort York for army cadets twice a week. I swear I can still smell the Molson brewery on Fleet Street to this day.

[@thebdceigal]

Long before my time but very cool to see what TO looked like while my parents were growing up.

[@freespirit6209]

Fabulous to see. Thank you!

[@pwilliams5724]

great vid. takes me back to Sunday afternoons using the TTC to go to the Gardens to see Marlie games. Anglesey 2A from Rathburn/Kipling to Jane/Bloor . streetcar from there to the start of the subway line at Keele subway. that was mid 60's. a bunch of us would go we weren't even teens. it was safe then

[@transittoronto]

It's still pretty safe today. I've been out and about in the late hours without trouble. I remember, fifty years ago, there were places in Toronto you weren't supposed to go if you wanted to be safe. Places like Regent Park, or Donvale. I think the dangers of those neighbourhoods were exaggerated then, and the safety concerns of today are exaggerated now. You should always walk with street sense, and be aware of what's around you, but that's always been the case. I love my city today as much as I did forty years ago.

[@mattikaki]

Hello from Finland. We were visiting Toronto in 1999 as I have family there. Grand mother and two uncles. Sadly she passed away just before her 100 year BD. These films are nice opportunity to see those days’ Toronto trafic. I had a rented car from New York so we didn’t use puclick transport at all. We were staying in my uncle’s penthouse in Mississauga and what I remember, it was HOT. Even the nights were hot and I woke up to find the aircon to turn it on as they switched it off for night. Canada and Toronto were really nice places to visit, especially if I compare it to the NYC. 😅

[@Hawker5796]

So that's what the Gilbert Loop looked like! (@6:37) Cool stuff

[@christopherwelch136]

Wow. No condos.

[@Censoredbyfscists]

No diversity.

[@rinocappadocia6980]

I See Earlscourt park in the background where when I was a kid skated at the outdoor rick. The Dairy Quuen was replaced with Dairy Freeze which is still there today. I'm 63 born and raised in TO. I still go to the Freeze when in Toronto.

[@KaraMarisa]

How lovely!

[@elliotsaunders7445]

Some notes on TTC street cars that some may find interesting. I was born in 1932. At the beginning of WWII we moved to Forest Hill Village and we lived one block east of Bathurst just below Eglinton. Busses served Bathurst Street South to St Clair. Just below St. Clair was a street car loop. You exited the bus there and boarded The Bathurst street car route. South on Bathurst to Adelaide and then east through and beyond downtown. Of course, you could get off the bus at St Clair and transfer to the St Clair east/west street car.The new modern one man cars appeared sometime around that time, memory fails my becoming more specific. Prior to that, all the street cars were manned by two. A motorman who stood in the front and drove. A conductor sat at midcar, just forward of the dual center doors and collected fares. Adult tickets were four for a quarter. I don't remember Kids fare. Paper transfers were available at all connections, these were punched to show time issued. Adult fair was determined by a narrow etching around (maybe about 5'+/- high) on a vertical chrome pole next to the conductor., if you were taller than the etching you paid adult fare. Later on the one man cars this pole was at the front just the right of the motorman. The TTC was probably the finest citywide mass transit on the continent. You could go anywhere in the city for a single fare. Service was excellent. I clearly remember the construction of the Yonge St subway, and rode it on opening day. But that's another story.

[@outdooraddventure]

I remember when they had the electric buses on Bay Street back in the 80s

[@brittgaming7391]

My mom and her family lived in Toronto for an while before moving to Burlington where she met my dad and she still has her family in Toronto to this day

[@vernpilder4616]

I remember the Peter Witt street cars the rear exit steps were only made from slats of wood which retracted when the doors closed

[@psychette8846]

Fun fact. Why don't trolleys have rear bumpers? Kids used to jump on the bumpers and dislodge the electrical power arm for entertainment.

[@1dilligaf]

What a great video a little before my time I was born in Scarbrough in 1960. What a great city to be a child in in the 60s and 70s too bad my grandchildren are never gonna know the freedoms we had.

[@Neville60001]

@#1 DILLIGAF, exactly what freedoms do you think that your grandchildren or any other child has 'lost'?🙄

[@evemarie1605]

​@@Neville60001 I think #1 DILLIGAF is referring to the more relaxed feeling of Toronto in that era vis-a-vis today:- it was a gritty industrial city but quite informal without thousands of immigrants pouring in every day without end and causing a huge amount of hectic congestion and giving the place an unpleasant "edginess". This was also before the era of subsidized university education so the city was not over-run with swarms of third-rate university graduates inflicting "wokist" attitudes on everyone and staying busy telling everyone else what not to do. You can still find that old relaxed social milieu in "unfashionable" small cities such as Peterborough, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, Thunder Bay etc. It was like riding the streetcars in the old days on a summer day with open windows:- the cars were fairly empty at the outer ends of their routes and felt relaxed but going through the center of the city they would often become packed "to the hilt" with a more strained social feeling and not so pleasant:- the best part of going "downtown" in that era was usually coming back but now it's like the whole of Toronto has become one big overcrowded and unpleasant "downtown":- who needs it? 😔

[@Porschedude8]

Well done! 👍👍

[@zevc3591]

Thanks for the video, it was very interesting!👍👍

[@billbishop2563]

Looks like a peaceful tranquil city...

[@ovey99]

great vids back in the day !!!not the same town now!!

[@user-tl4fi6oy8d]

Great video. The people making the negative comments about how Toronto is going down in flames or dying or whatever don't realize they make these comments because their own end is near; the city will be fine and will go on.

[@johngibson4834]

❤ Wow,, Absolutely Love This Video 🎥👀. 👈🤠🇨🇦

[@ClintScottFischer]

Great video, thanks for the upload!! It's a shame that a once respected system is now a shadow of its former self. Especially the subway system. Let someone who lived 100 years ago ride today, I'd give anything for their reaction.

[@andrewwalker7893]

Man, those streetcars used to move…of course there were way fewer cars on the road so they were able to hit the accelerator.

[@stevebalmer1672]

My Dad was a member of the UCRS. They also ran over night charters. Fun times.

[@seanh2390]

i wish i could go back in time :-(

[@cathymartinmcgoey3855]

Thankyou

[@rfiskillingussoftly6568]

Cool!

[@seanmackenzie8726]

We as a family, i was very young '64 to '67 living in an area Mostly Italian, some German could not have asked for any better as a Kid living near North York.!!!

[@patriciabowman31]

this time period is when we here in Montreal used to call Toronto ..... " Toronto the Good ". Toronto was "whole some". Beautiful and it was noticed. Now every city has gone dumpster diving. Not that it's a bad thing to dumpster dive but we need to heal our cities. Just saying.

[@Aces77777]

Look at the traffic during those days

[@brent6518]

Exquisite colours!.. thank you for posting!... As a person who spent over 25 years working at TTC Hillcrest, I wonder if there is any vintage films of the same?

[@thinker1056]

Cool😊

[@robmil2012]

Any video of Kingston road and highland creek street cars in Scarborough 😊

[@transittoronto]

Do a search on "Kingston Road" in this channel. Richard Glaze had a number of films of Kingston Road streetcars and some Kingston Road buses from the late 1960s and 1970s.

[@tdunph4250]

@ 09:25. Heading west, not east but all in all great video!

[@transittoronto]

Oops. Thank you for the correction!

[@genehill1214]

The Leafs are going to win the Cup!! It's 1962! My bit...I wired the front Terminal Boards, the Computers, as well as doing Check and Test, on the CLRV Streetcar Line, at Canada Car Thunder Bay! Proud? You bet! Canada Car also built the Hawker Hurricane, one of the better Fighter Airplanes of WW II. It was significant in the Battle of Britain.

[@genehill1214]

You understood!!

[@johnnycrash3270]

Ah 🤗 the good old days before social media

[@transittoronto]

Ironically, it's through social media that we were able to bring this material to you.

[@Neville60001]

Why couldn't the Mount Pleasant streetcar be kept all of these decades?

[@transittoronto]

Because it was the 70s, and although the TTC was committed to retaining its streetcars (abandoning its streetcar abandonment policy in 1972), the Metro Roads department was not. They basically vetoed the decision to keep the streetcars. You can read more about this here: transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4114.shtml

[@evemarie1605]

Hi, those old routes did not make economic sense anymore because the city has grown so hugely since they were inaugurated. This is a living working city in a state of constant evolution and it cannot be a big live-in museum where nothing changes:- progress marches on and we must march with it or else we stagnate and die. You might want to keep your old baby clothes in a drawer somewhere but you would look and feel very silly and uncomfortable trying to actually wear them and diapers all your life and cities are the same.

[@Neville60001]

@@evemarie1605, the city still needs lines like these to relieve the pressure on the bus routes and subway lines-in fact, the Mount Pleasant line could've been kept and turned into a light rail line that ran all of the way from St. Clair station to where Mount Pleasant ends in the northeast of the city. Getting rid of this line was short-sighted thinking on the city's and provience's parts.

[@eve-marie6751]

​@@Neville60001 Hi, tell you what:- let's do a big transit census of Toronto and find out how each household travels about and tabulate the results to see who goes where and how and use that to plan public transit scientifically instead of whimsically. However I was actually in my twenties at that time and the farebox told the tale quite clearly:- ridership on that route was declining while the streetcars and tracks were aging and they could not justify continuing this route as a streetcar route although they did convert it to a trolley coach route. The same issues killed the Rogers route at the same time which was also converted to trolley coaches. The old TTC (pre-1954) used to publish little yearbooks ("Wheels of Progress") which actually described how the original Mt Pleasant route triggered a real-estate boom along Mt Pleasant Rd but over 50+ years the affluent residents converted to private cars and stopped using the public transit. Today, due to the preference of young downtown workers to use public transit, you could actually justify running Mt Pleasant buses down Jarvis into downtown to provide a direct no-transfer ride but this type of logic filters into the TTC "mind" only very, very, very slowly so doing a transit census every 5 to 10 years would be a good idea for transit planning. I see others making similar calls to restore ancient streetcar routes such as Dovercourt-McCaul but that's not going to happen:- we can't live in the past.

[@eve-marie6751]

​ @transittoronto Ah yes, the era of Sam Cass, Toronto's very own version of Robert Moses, who objected to pedestrians, sidewalks, buses and streetcars, bicycles, and businesses on his so-called "traffic arterials":- he wanted to convert streets like Bloor and Dundas, etc into freeways without regard to the various functions those streets actually performed:- he was also known as "Cass the Ass (h*le) for very good reasons:- good riddance to him and all those of his ilk! 🙁

[@vertiian]

There's a shocking number of VW Beetles

[@drgustaf2450]

What’s with the 1980s Muzak in the first six minutes

[@transittoronto]

I am limited to the budget I have available, but this isn't eighties stuff. The first song is entitled "Blues from the 50s Style" and the second is "Disguised Tiger" by Bopper Beats. I know eighties music, and the style predates that. It might be a somewhat anachronistic 70s, however. But when you don't have much of a budget beyond what pays the cost of digitizing these reels, you take what you can get.

[@drgustaf2450]

@ it wasn’t meant as a critique. The provocation was meant to ask : why have (haphazard) music at all ? The strengths of your curatorial work are the thoughtful selections from all the ‘raw’ footage and the informative commentary, both on what we’re seeing and what was happening that made the footage possible (e.g. the charters). All that is superb on its own. There’s no need for music at all, as it distracts, especially since there’s so much subjectivity in selecting ‘soundtracks’. If, for whatever reason, including music is dear to you, there are all sorts of royalty-free music generators online …. This is meant to be constructive as I love the work you do and greatly appreciate it. 🫡

[@transittoronto]

@@drgustaf2450 Thank you for your comment. No offence taken. The music is a matter of choice. It just felt right to me. But I made sure to include the unedited raw footage of these films on this playlist as well, so we have that if people want to avoid the music.

[@eattherich9215]

I wonder if cars got side swiped as the back end of the tram swung out on a tight curve? A few cars getting swiped could have been the reason why a perfectly good transport system was junked. Streets are HORRIBLE now with six lanes of fast moving traffic and no regard for those not in a tin box on wheels.

[@wandajames6234]

Wasn't called the Queensway when I lived there in the 70s-- was always called the QE2 or QEW. The real Queensway is here in Ottawa.

[@transittoronto]

We’re not referring to the highway, but the arterial road north of it, connecting to Queen Street west of Roncesvalles and curving around Humber Bay. The Queen Streetcar was revised to follow it on centre-median right-of-way to when the Gardiner was constructed. Our Queensway continues west as an arterial into Mississauga, ending near Mavis Drive.

[@transittoronto]

Check out the bottom left quadrant of this map for corroboration: transittoronto.ca/archives/maps/ttc-system-map-1957-09-front.pdf

[@glen6945]

ooohhhhhhyes