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Caption: September 1st 1921 to September 1st 2021 marks 100 years of the TTC serving the City of Toronto! Here we have a fine photo by Robert McMann taken in September 1967 showing part of the downtown Toronto core, with the then-"new" City Hall (opened 1963) and Nathan Phillips Square in the middle. Along the bottom of the image is Queen Street, with TTC PCC 4695 heading eastbound on the Queen route. Westbound, a TTC GM New Look (or "fishbowl") bus passes two coaches parked on the north side, followed by one of the TTC's 1950-series of Can-Car buses equipped with sight-seer windows cut into the roof. Across the middle of the image is Dundas Street, and to the left one can see a PCC between buildings heading east on Dundas at Elizabeth. On the far right, another PCC turns from northbound Bay to westbound Dundas, likely having come from City Hall Loop (Louisa-James-Albert-Bay) on the Dundas route. Two more GM fishbowls wait northbound and southbound on the 6 Bay route. Across the top of the image is College Street, and Queen's Park is just visible in the upper left, decked out in blue for Canada's Centennial 1867-1967 celebrations.
Robert D. McMann photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.
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An impressive image. Thanks for sharing it.
Very nice.
Dan, thanks for sharing and providing a very informative caption ! How easy to forget what the city looked like 54 years ago, and how the transit vehicle scene has changed !! In March 1967, I had completed my Bar Admission Course exams, having spent previous years at Osgoode Hall Law School (just to the left of the picture before its move to York University Keele campus) and so this scene was so familiar ! Bob McMann was a good friend, a fellow UCRS member, a fellow transit and railway enthusiast and an excellent photographer and is greatly missed. This picture is Bob at his best, always photographing some thing different, from some unusual location, and of course recording so much TTC history . Dan, there is so much TTC captured in this picture, and your information is so nicely detailed – Bob would love your caption. Very fitting that you have posted this picture on the occasion of the TTC’s 100th Anniversary. It is also amazing to me that streetcars continue to run on Queen and Dundas Sts., and the track is still in on Bay from Dundas to College . Again, thank you for posting, John
Hi John, thanks for the kind words! Like so many others, Bob was before my time, but he documented so much and left a great volume of work behind for others to look back on and enjoy.
One of the notable things about many of his photos is they often incorporated the changing urban environment, rather than just focusing on the vehicles themselves. One can pull up photos he’s taken in a location decades apart and note all the changes.