City of Toronto Archives
A view of the newly built Island airport at Hanlan's Point in 1939.
Eighty years later, at least one fight has finally been settled.
There’s still controversy over what kind of
planes can use Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport — though jetliners
appear to be a dead duck, at least for now — or even if an airport
should be allowed so close to the condos along Queens Quay.
But the pedestrian tunnel is a going concern
at last. It was being hotly debated even before the island airport, now
rated Canada’s ninth busiest, came into being Feb. 4, 1939.
That’s when millionaire philanthropist and
eccentric Harry Falconer McLean, of Montreal, landed in his private
plane. The first commercial flight, an American Airlines DC-3, arrived
Sept. 8 that year, carrying big-band leader Tommy Dorsey for a two-day
gig at the CNE.
An island airport was first proposed in 1929
but meant tearing down 54 cottages, shown here in this 1937 photo, as
well as Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park. On July 9, 1937, councilors
approved both the island site and Malton site (now Pearson
International).
The flight, if not Dorsey, got a mention in
the Toronto Daily Star four days later. Airline president C.R. Smith was
also on the plane “and said no other city on the continent had such
splendid airport facilities as Toronto …”
Originally known as Port George VI Island
Airport and then Toronto City Centre Airport, it was renamed Nov. 10,
2009, in honour of Canadian First World War fighter ace Billy Bishop.
An airport was first proposed in 1929 but
wasn’t given the go-ahead until six years later. It meant tearing down
54 cottages and Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park, noted for J.W. Gorman’s
diving horses. The Star Weekly reported that they jumped from a platform
12 metres above the water “without a whip and with the horses’ own
volition.”
Ottawa voted to spend $976,000 (about $17 million today) on a tunnel to the island.
An 1935 aerial view of the Toronto islands
looking northeast. The area which would soon become the airport is at
the upper left.
Fiery former mayor Sam McBride was very much
against this. But, after what the Star called a “long and acrimonious
session,” council approved the project by 15 votes to seven. Councillor
McBride told Mayor Jimmie Simpson, “You are no gentleman, you never were
and you never will be. You are just an ordinary, cheap blatherskite.”
He may have lost the vote but McBride, who has
an island ferry named after him, got his wish. William Lyon Mackenzie
King, who won the federal election in October 1935, cancelled the tunnel
two weeks after digging had begun.
But on July 9, 1937, councillors approved both
the island site and Malton airport (now Pearson International, though
it was originally meant only as a backup to the island).
Two days after Dorsey’s arrival, Canada joined
the war that Britain had declared on Germany on Sept. 3. The airport
was used for pilot training. Little Norway Park, at the foot of Bathurst
St., commemorates the Royal Norwegian Air Force personnel who lived in
barracks there between 1940 and 1943.
They included Sister Agnes, the “smiling
blonde Lutheran nurse who has come from Norway to be their ‘Florence
Nightingale,’” the Star reported.
A 48-passenger ferry was built to cross the
120-metre Western Gap channel. Hauled in each direction by cables
attached to the docks, it stayed in service until 1963. The diesel boat
that replaced it would institute the shortest scheduled ferry service in
the world.
By 1954, air traffic to and from the U.S. was
enough to justify a customs officer on duty weekdays during summer and
fall. And in October 1957, a scheduled freight and passenger service
began to St. Catharines, Brantford and Welland.
A runway extension and landing lights enabled night flying to begin in 1963.
The first mention of jetliners came in 1967
with a study to see if the island could accommodate big (and noisy)
planes such as the DC-8. But this would have meant building a whole new
airport.
Pilot trainees stride past P-36 trainers at
"Little Norway" training centre flying field at the Toronto Island
Airport in 1941, during the second world war.
In January 1975, the Star reported that
Otonabee Airways (which became City Express) had begun a $38
three-times-a-day “commuter service” to Montreal. Even with a stop en
route at Peterborough, the 19-seat Saunders ST-27 turboprop was only 17
minutes slower than an Air Canada Boeing 727 jet from Malton/Pearson,
taking into account the travel time from downtown.
After a great deal of toing and froing,
yes-ing and no-ing on whether STOL — short takeoff and landing —
airliners should be allowed, a City Express Dash 7 began flying between
Toronto and Ottawa in September 1984, making nine trips a day in each
direction. A service to Montreal was added the following year.
The island airport also boasted Canada’s first
female air traffic controller. Margaret Dunseith started in 1952,
becoming, the Star reported, “the best-known voice in aviation radio in
this country.”
She retired in 1980 and died two years later. In 1989, a new control tower was named in her honour.
Malton Airport’s new automatic parking lot
entrance photographed on May 2, 1957. Malton Airport, now Pearson
International, was originally meant to be a backup to the island
airport.
Porter Airlines is now Billy Bishop Airport’s
passenger-carrying mainstay. This reporter was on the inaugural flight
to Ottawa on Oct. 23, 2006. The 70-seat Bombardier Q400 that left at 7
a.m. was only half-full but passengers applauded both the takeoff and
landing.
About 30 anti-airport pickets gathered near
the ferry terminal on Bathurst St. They included Adam Vaughan, now a
Liberal MP but then a candidate for city council, who called the
demonstration “funny … How do you protest something that no one is going
to use?”
The 2.3 million passengers who currently pass
through the airport every year might not agree with that statement.
Fewer and fewer of those passengers also use the ferry; the pedestrian
tunnel opened on July 30, 2015.
Flash back to McBride, who predicted that it would be a “stone around the taxpayer’s neck which would drag him into the grave.”
A grave case of tunnel vision.
No comments:
Post a Comment