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Caption: On a sunny Summer afternoon in 1967, we find TTC PCC 4773 (an A-14 class car acquired secondhand from Kansas City) working the St. Clair route, heading eastbound on St. Clair Avenue West after ducking under the 1932-built rail underpass for the CN Weston and CP MacTier Subdivisions just east of Keele Street. Billboards advertise Ontario Hydro and Goldcrest cigarettes to passing motorists and pedestrians in the area, while silver-painted CN ice refrigerator cars line the yard tracks above in CN's West Toronto Yard, some sporting a fresh coat of paint, others covered with a few year's worth of road grime.
The need for a well-stocked yard full of reefers is evident towering in the background: Swift's Premium Meats, one of the many meat processing facilities in the West Toronto / Junction area that would give Toronto the nickname "Hogtown". Swift's, Gunns, Canada Packers, Maple Leaf Meats, the Ontario Stockyards, and various other smaller players all populated this area in the past, with many rail spurs and sidings to serve their needs including inbound livestock from the west via stock cars, and outbound meat and meat products for distribution in ice and mechanical reefers.
Today after years of gentrification and redevelopment the processing plants and stockyards are gone (except for a few small meat processing operations here and there), replaced with big-box retail plazas, townhouses, and other commercial developments. And while the old PCC's are all retired, streetcars still roll on this part of St. Clair, now served by CLRV's and new Bombardier articulated cars on the Route 512.
Original photographer unknown/not listed, Ektachrome slide from the Dan Dell'Unto coll. with some colour correction/touch-ups.
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Once upon a time I was a chimney and I don’t even remember Goldcrest cigarettes. Must have been one heck of a flop. Really nice historical image.
12 minute cigarette? You can smoke one that fast?
Great image.
Very nice.. my old hood. And well before my time…unrecognizable now from this image. Thanks for this. Love the Hydro sign at the left..but we won’t get into politics.
PCC’s were the best streetcars Toronto ever had, bar none! I have nothing but good memories of riding on them.
Swift’s on the other hand I have no good memories! Eons ago I relieved the regular CPR siding checker on Saturdays and while I had no problem with all of the Packers (many times checking more than 150 cars on their 26 tracks!), when I had to check the 7 tracks in Swift’s the 2 in the chicken processing area would gag you with the stench. I used to take a deep breath, hold my breath, run alongside the tank cars and quickly write down their numbers and run back trying not to take another breath! GAG!
Interesting Ray. I had heard even recently when they were excavating the Bunge area to redevelop it a few years back, the excavating crew apparently dug up some large buried “tombs” of decaying animal remains on the site, that smelled something awful and required special clean-up.
Keele is just beyond the underpass? That intersection has been transformed since then.