Line 1: The Yonge-University Subway

Line 1 opened on March 30, 1954, running along Yonge Street from Union Station to Eglinton Avenue, and became the first subway line built anywhere in Canada. The project followed a 1946 municipal plebiscite in which Toronto voters approved borrowing to fund construction, a rare instance of a major transit project being put directly to a public vote and passing, at a time when the city's streetcars were increasingly overwhelmed by postwar population growth along the Yonge corridor.

Extending west, then further

The line was extended west and south along University Avenue in 1963, forming the "U" shape that gave the Yonge-University line its name, and has been extended multiple times since into North York and beyond. Alongside the later Bloor-Danforth line, Line 1 remains the busiest and most heavily used subway line in the TTC network, still following largely the same downtown routing it opened with in 1954.

Sources

• Toronto Transit Commission — TTC history
• Wikipedia — Line 1 Yonge–University

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