Billboards promoting the TTC have appeared across Toronto over the last few weeks. These ads are exceptionally simple for outdoor copy: the simple black background, the TTC logo front and centre,  make these advertisements more attractive than the typical outdoor display. But, unfortunately, I miss the point of these billboards, which have appeared before. Unlike most ad copy (with the notable exception of "teaser" ads), there's no "reason why" to the ad. It does not promote any of the TTC's inherent good qualities (environmental, economic or convenience) or represent any clever marketing campaign. All it indicates is that there is a website and a phone number if you were interested in learning more, if you actually recognized the logo (which to be fair, most of the ad's audience would recognize). Yet the words "the better way" merely allude to what the advertised product is. Growing up in the 1980s, I remember decent TV commercials promoting the TTC, and clever Burma-Shave-esque ads over the Allen Road almost taunting the drivers waiting to clear the lights at Eglinton Avenue.

UPDATE - January 12, 5PM At the special meeting today, transit Commissioners deferred any decision on the proposed cuts to bus service until its next regular meeting on February 2nd, 2011. As a result, the service reductions listed below will not take effect on March 27. Anyone interested in commenting on these changes should contact the Commission ahead of time in order to make a verbal and/or written deputation.  Details on how to do so are here. UPDATE - January 11, 4PM The Toronto Star reports that TTC Chair Karen Stintz has confirmed that there will be no fare increase. However, the service cuts are still on the table. The original post is below the fold.

West Hill and its neighbouring "lost" village, Highland Creek (featured two weeks ago) share a common early history. Both villages were located strategically along Kingston Road and adjacent to Highland Creek, a source of power for early mills. While suburban sprawl and the widening of Highway 2 (Kingston Road) removed much of the community's built heritage, there is much to be seen just steps away from the modern throughfare. Thanks partly to its size, West Hill still carries on as the name of the Kingston-Morningside neighbourhood, lending its name to a nearby plaza, a high school and other community institutions. West Hill (named as such as it was on the west side of the Highland Creek valley) was officially established as a post office in 1879, but developed into a large, yet unincorporated, village in the late 19th century separately from the older Highland Creek. It had its own hotels, post office and community structures. And in 1906, West Hill, like Highland Creek distant from mainline railways, was linked to Toronto by the Scarboro Division of the Toronto and York Radial Railway network, This gave the community the status of a minor transportation hub and encouraged further growth. But highway improvements, ubiquity of the private automobile and the replacement of slow stagecoaches with new gasoline buses changed everything. The TTC took over the old Scarboro radial in 1927 and replaced with its own Grey Coach buses east of Scarborough Post Office (Markham Road) in 1930 (and from there to Birchmount Avenue in 1936). The 86 Scarborough bus route, rerouted to connect with the Bloor-Danforth subway instead of the streetcar, still serves this area, the direct legacy of the old radial. But as the automobile took over, motels and tourist cabins began to dominate the eastern entrance to Toronto, just as on the west side, the (in)famous motel strip centered at the point where the Queen Elizabeth Way met Lake Shore Boulevard near the Humber River. These new roadside conveniences replaced the old village taverns that relied on the stagecoach and farm-to-market trade. Some of these old motels, with the neon signs and 1940s and 1950s roadside architecture, still survive amidst the later commercial sprawl serving the new subdivisions and rental towers in the area. While many of the old village buildings - the post office, the hotel and even the school - have disappeared, the construction of Highway 2A as far as Highland Creek just to the east saw a new 4-lane Kingston Road bypass the old, narrow and steep roadway to meet the new modern expressway and helped to preserve some of the old building stock. Today, over a dozen houses and two churches, and the old un-urbanized two-lane Kingston Road provide one of the strongest visual connections to Scarborough's rural past.

The Morrish General Store at Kingston Road and Meadowvale; now the home of the Scarborough Historical Society At the dawn of the 19th century, a road was needed to the east of York (now, of course, Toronto) for settlement and military purposes. Soon after the founding of York in 1793, under the auspices of John Graves Simcoe, roads to the north and west (Yonge Street and Dundas Street respectively) were quickly surveyed and cleared. But the newly-established seat of Newcastle District, the abandoned townsite now found at Presqu'ile Provincial Park near Brighton, required a road connecting it to the capital of Upper Canada. Eventually, such a road could be extended to Kingston and even Montreal. It was an American land speculator by the name of Asa Danforth Jr. who pitched a successful proposal in 1798 to the colonial government to build such a road. Within two years, his team completed it all the way from the Don River as far as modern-day Brighton (Presquile was soon abandoned as a townsite and Cobourg filled the regional role soon after). Danforth owned land titles in modern Northumberland County and had a vested interest in vying to build this road. Highland Creek, at the east end of Toronto, was one of several communities that made up the Township of Scarborough. Most of those villages, such as Agincourt and West Hill, grew up along transportation corridors such as early roads like Danforth and Kingston Roads and the later railways. This post is the story of both Kingston Road and one of the "lost villages" that established itself on it.

In northwest Brampton, at the junction of Bovaird Drive (formerly Highway 7), Creditview Road (3rd Line East), and the CN Halton Subdivision/GO Georgetown Line, is the small settlement of Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant (a bit of a misnomer, the immediate area is flat) was all but forgotten, but is now making an interesting comeback as an experiment in suburban greenfield transit-oriented development. Mount Pleasant was never more than a collection of houses, two churches, a motel and a service station. The railway stopped serving the town by mid-century (being close in-between the busy railway junctions at Brampton and Georgetown), and Highway 7 bypassed the hamlet on a new railway overpass in the 1960s, also severing Creditview Road. Suburban sprawl arrived around the turn of the century, and might have acted to eliminate the few traces of this small settlement. In fact, I recall when the first houses were built in the fields surrounding Mount Pleasant; on a rainy day, the clay being dug up for basements and streets appeared to be bleeding red from the top of the Highway 7 bridge. It appeared that Mount Pleasant was to finally endure the same fate as many other lost villages.

After a lengthy hiatus, I bring you the latest installment in my occasional series on the "lost villages" of the Greater Toronto Area. Mississauga, like many cities and towns in the GTA, contains several smaller communities that were consumed by Toronto's urban growth. Indeed,  several larger towns that became part of the City of Mississauga maintain a strong local identity, especially the former  towns of Streetsville and Port Credit.  Both communities continued as separate municipalities right up to 1974, when the City of Mississauga was formed, joining these small historic centres with the recently established Town of Mississauga (previously the  Township of Toronto). Despite urban sprawl, several smaller settlements that were part of  Toronto Township (and later the Town of Mississauga), continue to survive in the local consciousness. Malton, Erindale, Cooksville, Clarkson and Meadowvale stand out (and not quite coincidentally are also the names of GO train stations) , while others,  like Mount Charles (at Dixie and Derry) and Derry West (at Derry and Hurontario), have disappeared entirely in the last few decades. A few former unincorporated settlements were able to maintain their heritage, such as Meadowvale (profiled earlier this year). But little-known Barbertown has considerable historical interest. Barbertown was a small company-owned settlement on the west bank of the Credit River, just south of Streetsville. For over 150 years, it has been the site of a milling operation.

The City of Toronto has some of the strictest regulations in Ontario regarding the placement of those ubiquitous election signs that come with every election. For example, election signs can only be put up on October 4, 2010, three weeks before Election Day. In many suburban municipalities, such as Vaughan and Oakville, signs went up weeks ago. The only exception in Toronto is for campaign signs erected at campaign offices, which can be displayed starting in July. The City has very specific regulations regarding the placement of signs and their dimensions, especially on public property.

On Sunday, September 26, I attended the official opening and dedication of the new Robert Leek Memorial Park, a small, yet thoughtful public space tucked away between the Downsview neighbourhood and the Bombardier Aerospace plant. The park is named for Toronto Fire District Chief Robert (Bob) Leek, who died from a heart attack while assisting in the response to the August 10, 2008 Sunrise Propane Explosion, which occurred just a few blocks away. The other person to die directly as a result of this local tragedy, Sunrise employee Parminder Singh Saini, is also remembered by a plaque affixed to one of the landscaping rocks. Included in the design is a new playground, with equipment installed specifically for small children. As there was a deficit of such facilities for this specific age group in the area, it was incorporated in this formerly empty lawn. While swings, slides and climbing structures have already been erected, with an appealing design, other features yet to arrive are miniature fire engines mounted on springs. The path from the playground meets the more formal memorial, consisting of benches, an arbor, and patterned concrete. A wrought-iron fence to protect children from the roadway, solar-powered park lighting, and a sidewalk to connect the park to the residential neighbourhood to the south, are forthcoming.

Back in September of 2009, I reported on the new station vicinity maps that were appearing throughout the TTC subway system. These new maps were intended to replace older maps that were often decades out-of-date. Unfortunately, the TTC made an embarrassing mess of these new maps, with long-gone landmarks shown (such as Ed's Warehouse), some major destinations completely disappeared (SkyDome nowhere to be found on the St. Andrew map), and missing streets maps not-to-scale. The TTC was embarrassed into quickly removing all the offending new station area maps (though one can still find the first-generation maps hanging around in a few places -  at least one of which still shows the 77 Spadina bus). Now, nearly a year later, the TTC has come up with new editions of these neighbourhood maps and are now posting them at a station near you. Steve Munro has already commented on the new Christie Station map. I have now seen these new maps at College, Bay and St. Andrew Stations, so I will add my own voice.

At the Toronto Board of Trade yesterday, Metrolinx Chair Robert Pritchard officially announced the revised timetable for construction of the Transit City LRT lines and the York Region Viva bus-only median lanes. The premise of the speech to the Board of Trade and the accompanying Powerpoint presentation was that things were moving forward just fine, despite grumbling from the City of Toronto and other critics. The name of this revised plan is "Achieving 5 in 10" and the theme of Pritchard's presentation was "On Track" - each with an emphasis on the claim that all five promised projects would be completed by the end of 2020. At least now we can see an official, tangible plan for working within the budget and timetable the province has reduced the region to. The rationale is sound, even if they set progress back almost five years. But compared to the optimism of  just a few months ago, GTA transit improvements are left waiting on the siding. The new Metrolinx plan follows the recent provincial budget that severely reduced funding for Transit City and the "VivaNext" projects. Metrolinx was given the unwelcome task of revising the plans already in motion. Some of the slides in the Powerpoint presentation outline the justification for its decisions based on needs and costs. But as many Spacing readers already know, these claims aren't entirely true. Phase one of Transit City - Eglinton-Crosstown, Sheppard East, Finch West, and the Scarborough RT replacement - have been cut back; 20 kilometres have been removed from the three new LRT lines, and most individual routes will open years later than scheduled.