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Second of a four-part series
Noisy demonstrations by taxi drivers protesting against a new form of transit are nothing new.
In 1861, drivers of horse-drawn cabs staged violent protests against Montreal’s first streetcars — hurling stones, smashing windows, tearing up streetcar rails, blocking tracks and attacking horses that pulled the trams.
Just like today’s cabbies opposing Uber, they feared the new means of transportation would make them obsolete.
It was just the start of 155 years of controversy over the best way to get across town.
Horse-drawn tramway on St. Denis St., around 1877.
Montreal’s transit history is a saga of wily monopolists, machine politicians and public-spirited reformers.
It’s the story of how steel rails transformed the city from a compact settlement in Old Montreal and its immediate environs to a far-reaching patchwork of streetcar suburbs like Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Outremont, Mile End, Villeray, Rosemont, Cartierville and Snowdon.
!["Suburban Montreal as seen from the routes of the Park and Island Railway Co. [microform]: a descriptive guide to the Outremont and Sault-au-Recollet lines of the road" by Chambers, Ernest J., 1862-1925 Published by the Park & Island Railway Co. (1895) From a copy of the original publication held by the Musée du Château Ramezay, Montréal CREDIT: University of Alberta Libraries - The CIHM Monograph Collection (https://archive.org/details/cihm_64302) **For a series on the 50 years of the Métro, in October 2016, by Montreal Gazette reporters: Jason Magder & Marian Scott**](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sVnHOgTTy4HV4A9emUEk1Z_YHPgMquDS9l109FSDUZNngREMNvu6OSAf9qhvJ1OrW3o7naJM--NV93KLM6gAC7LTLcilColHMkI4-YAa5NavKaCVeIdVE-znY0obrbPZwKuQ3oEu3BU1GyWlqTTmsNhHTfLL-7_9NLKNRm8SNGQLICfD0=s0-d)
“Suburban Montreal as seen from the routes of the Park and Island Railway Co.: a descriptive guide to the Outremont and Sault-au-Recollet lines of the road” by Chambers, Ernest J., 1862-1925. Published by the Park & Island Railway Co. (1895)
“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley/ Ding, ding, ding went the bell,” as Judy Garland sang in the 1944 movie Meet Me in St. Louis.
Today we tend to view streetcars through the rosy lens of nostalgia. We forget that Montrealers complained vociferously about them, and that the streetcar era was bookended by violent protest, from the cabbies’ protest in 1861 to the streetcar riot of 1955.
On Dec. 10 that year, a student demonstration against a fare increase escalated into an orgy of destruction that damaged 200 trams and buses and paralyzed downtown. It was “worse than the Forum riot” of March 17, 1955, when fans went on a rampage to protest the suspension of Montreal Canadiens superstar Maurice Richard, the Gazette reported.
Four years later, the city’s last streetcar headed for the scrapyard.
While the trams of yesteryear tug at our heartstrings, a trip back through transit history leads to an inescapable conclusion: Montrealers have never had it so good. The opening of the métro in 1966marked an enormous leap forward in the speed and comfort of urban transit.
“There is no other means of transportation that moves so many people as quickly and well,” said Benoît Clairoux, a historian at the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and author of Le Métro de Montréal: 35 ans déjà (Hurtubise, 2001).
“And in our climate, if you’re going to build a métro, you might as well build it underground,” he added.
In 1892, Montreal’s first electric trams came on line amid concerns about their ability to navigate winter roads.
* * *
Taking the tram was a casual affair when Montreal City Passenger Railway Company began horse car service on Notre Dame and Craig Sts. (now St-Antoine) in 1861.
If a passenger wanted to get off for a few minutes to run a quick errand, the driver would wait. Unscheduled stops were only banned in 1865.
In summer, customers rode in open cars with striped awnings on the sides. In winter, sleighs replaced cars, with straw on the floor and horse blankets for warmth.
Horse-drawn winter tramway on Ste-Catherine St., around 1877.
Complaints of overcrowding poured in from the start, with as many as 70 passengers packed into cars designed for 28.
The privately owned company “had dealt meanly, unjustly and graspingly with the citizens all along,” an alderman complained to city council in 1880.
Electrification of the tramway in 1892 speeded up service and doubled annual ridership in two years to 20 million trips.
The tramway company was controlled by financiers like Senator Louis-Joseph Forget, who also held a monopoly on the city’s gas and electrical utilities.
From left: Louis Joseph Forget (1893), Sir Herbert Samuel Holt (1929), and Mayor Raymond Préfontaine (before 1905).
Another associate in both ventures was Herbert Holt, a ruthless business magnate who was reportedly Canada’s richest man at his death in 1941. When the death of Sir Herbert, knighted in 1915, was announced at a Montreal Royals baseball game, the crowd broke out in cheers.
Reformers at city hall — a group dominated by English-speaking business leaders — accused the streetcar company of gouging the city. They charged populist politicians like Mayor Raymond Préfontaine with taking kickbacks from the company in return for favours.
A street and métro station on the Green Line are named after Préfontaine.
But efforts to root out vested interests and bring the tramway company under municipal control failed.
In 1911, the Montreal Tramways Company (MTC) bought out all its competitors, creating a monopoly on the island of Montreal.
As the populations of industrial neighbourhoods like St-Henri and Hochelaga boomed, the proportion of Montreal workers who took the streetcar daily rose from 11 per cent in 1892 to 63 per cent in 1911.
A tram leaves the station and heads toward Rachel St.
Streetcar lines fanned out across the island, to St-Laurent, Cartierville, Pointe-aux-Trembles and Lachine.
“Streetcar tracks were built through empty fields because the tramway owners were also in the business of selling land. Many districts of Montreal were developed in connection with the tramway,” Clairoux said.
Despite criticisms of the tramway monopoly, Clairoux said the MTC was well run. “You could say that the tramway company was for a long time a very good company in Montreal, a company that was at the forefront,” he said.
The Golden Chariot, of which the first was built in 1905, was a popular sightseeing car that took passengers on a loop around the three peaks of Mount Royal.
At its height in the early 1920s, the tramway network comprised 500 kilometres of track, carrying nearly 230 million passengers a year. In 1925, the MTC opened a huge terminus on Craig St. at St. Urbain. The monumental stone building was demolished in 1970.
Craig St. tramway terminus at what is now St-Antoine and St-Urbain Sts., circa 1932.
The first buses appeared on Bridge St. in 1919 but did not begin to rival tramways on major routes until the late 1930s.
During the Second World War, high ridership and rationing of gasoline and tires gave streetcars a new lease on life. Every available tram — even former sightseeing cars — was called into service. In 1947, ridership peaked at 398 million.
“But it was the swan song for the Montreal Tramways because for quite a while, the company had not invested (in streetcars) and they had very few new vehicles,” Clairoux said.
While Toronto had taken over its streetcar network in 1921, Montreal did not bring public transit under municipal control until 1951, after a provincial commission on urban transportation.
By the time the Montreal Transportation Commission took over the tramway company, its rolling stock was antiquated and worn out. Increasingly, trams were blamed for blocking traffic. From 1945 to 1951, car ownership on the island of Montreal doubled to 13.2 vehicles per 100 people. Rates in U.S. cities were twice as high.
1953: A streetcar heads south along St-Laurent Blvd. toward Craig St. (now St. Antoine St.)
“People felt the streetcars were in the way because they ran in the middle of the road, while buses kept to the side,” Clairoux said.
The newly formed MTC set about retiring streetcars and buying buses — a process that would take eight years.
It also called for construction of a subway.
“With the municipal takeover, they replaced streetcars with buses but they knew a métro was needed. It was clear because Montreal was a large city, with more than a million inhabitants,” Clairoux said.
Plans for a subway had been around since the early 20th century.
As far back as 1910, a promoter had proposed “a perfect subway” that would “revolutionize the transportation facilities of Montreal and the suburbs.”
But the project had repeatedly been put on hold.
Only with the election of Mayor Jean Drapeau and his right-hand man, Lucien Saulnier, in 1960 would the dream of a métro for Montreal finally be realized.
Timeline of public transit in Montreal
Nov. 27, 1861: The Montreal City Passenger Railway Company inaugurates horse-drawn tramway service on Notre Dame St. in Old Montreal.
1886: The company becomes the Montreal Street Railway Company (MSRC).
Montreal’s first streetcar, named the Rocket, went into service in 1892. The new electric trams quickly replaced horse-drawn trams.
September 21, 1892: The first electric tram — “the Rocket” — goes into service. Within two years, the whole network is electrically powered.
April 1910: The Montreal Street Railway Company proposes a subway project to pre-empt a proposal by a rival company, the Montreal Underground and Elevated Railway Company. Several other subway plans are tabled in the decades that follow but all remain on the drawing board.
A young passenger climbs his way aboard a streetcar in 1912.
1910: Annual ridership reaches 100 million.
1911: The company becomes the Montreal Tramways Company (MTC) and acquires all of the other transit companies on the Island of Montreal.
A 1914 Montreal Tramways Company map.
Nov. 22, 1919: Montreal’s first buses go into service on Bridge St. In 1925, the MTC creates a bus division and launches new routes — with 155 buses in circulation by 1931.
Early 1920s: Montreal’s tramway network comprises over 500 kilometres of track and carries nearly 230 million passengers a year.
Traffic jam in 1925 at Place d’Armes.
1947: MTC ridership peaks at 398,349,773. That number will not be matched until 2011.
June 16, 1951: The Montreal Transport Commission, a public body, acquires the assets of the privately owned Montreal Tramways Company.
1953: The new MTC proposes construction of a $117-million 12.5-km subway, but the project is not implemented.
Oct. 24, 1960: The election of Mayor Jean Drapeau and executive committee chairman Lucien Saulnier finally brings the 50-year dream of a subway for Montreal within reach.
Lucien Saulnier and Jean Drapeau present the métro project in October 1961.
Oct. 20, 1961: The city unveils a $150-million plan for a métro running from Atwater Ave. to Frontenac St. and from Crémazie Blvd. to Bonaventure station via Place d’Armes. It also proposes a north-south line from Old Montreal that would go through the railway tunnel under Mount Royal and branch off to Cartierville and Montreal North. The last line will later be eliminated.
April 1962: The city awards the first contracts. On May 23, construction starts on Berri St., south of Jarry St.
May 5, 1962: Montreal is awarded the 1967 World’s Fair. As a result, the line through Mount Royal is eliminated and a new line to Île-Ste-Hélène and Longueuil is added.
Métro cabs in construction in 1963.
1963: Canadian Vickers wins the contract to build 369 MR-63 métro cars. It delivers the first cars on Aug. 24, 1965. They are still running on the Green Line. The cost of the project increases to $213 million, mainly due to the addition of Line 4 (yellow).
Oct. 14, 1966: The métro’s first 20 stations open. A million passengers try out the métro on its first weekend.
Spring 1967: The initial 26-station network is completed in time for Expo 67. Passengers take over 130 million trips in its first year.
Oct. 14, 1971: Work starts on métro extensions. The Green Line is extended from Angrignon to Honoré-Beaugrand stations by 1978, while the Orange Line is extended to Côte Vertu station from 1980 to 1986. The much-delayed Blue Line is built between 1986 and 1988.
April 28, 2007: Passengers pack the trains as métro service to and from Laval officially opens to the public.
April 28, 2007: The métro is extended to Laval, at a cost of $745 million. Cartier, de la Concorde and Montmorency are the first universally accessible stations.
Feb. 7, 2016: The AZUR model, the first new trains ordered for the métro in more than three decades, makes its first run on the Orange Line. It will replace all the original MR-63 trains by 2018.
1 comment:
How I miss the Metro. Here in Toronto they used to call the TTC.....the Better Way. Sure. we're still fussing with extending lines a few stations, while Montreal just did it. Oh well.
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