Toronto Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of North America

with my faithful Appleton's guide.

Published in the late 19th century,

it will lead me to all that is magnificent, charming...

..confusing, invigorating

and wholesome in the United States and Canada.

As I journey through this vast continent,

I'll encounter revolutionaries and feminists, pilgrims and witches,

and ride some of the oldest and most breathtaking railroads

in the world.

TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENTS IN FRENCH

My rail journey in eastern Canada

is concluding in the country's largest city, Toronto,

which was thought to mean "meeting place"

in the indigenous Huron language.

From there, I'll investigate who's undermining the railway tracks.

I'll received a royal welcome, jolt the financial markets into life,

take a walk on the wild side, and be swept away by a song about a leaf.

I'm nearing the end of a 1,000-mile North American railway adventure.

I began on the New England coast

before turning north towards the Canadian border.

From French-speaking Montreal,

I struck out towards the Canadian capital, Ottawa.

Then followed the route of the 19th-century grand trunk railway

along the shores of Lake Ontario towards Toronto.

There, I'll enjoy the epitome of luxury.

We do indeed save one very, very special thing

for those very special VIP guests.

Share in the success of Canada's financial capital.

APPLAUSE, CHEERING

And live life on the edge.

Whoa!

I'm leaning out of the tower

and everything is just down there below me.

Aargh!

As I approach the final stop on this stimulating journey,

I'm full of anticipation.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be arriving into Toronto,

your next station, our final destination,

in approximately five minutes.

My guidebook is enthusiastic.

"Toronto - the Queen's city, as we Canadians fondly call her -

"slopes very gently from the lake's edge

"back to the wooded line of Davenport Hills.

"All through her temperate summers,

"her streets are deliciously shadowed.

"During the mild winters, sunlight streams through the naked branches.

"No other city on the Lakes, with the exception of Chicago,

"has fairer prospects for the future."

A prediction that has surely stood the test of time.

As Victorian Canada emerged into the 20th century, Toronto was booming.

According to Appleton's,

"between the city limits is gathered a population of about 200,000,

"which is increasing at a rate with which few other cities

"on the continent can compare."

The engine that drove this explosive growth was the railways.

What better place to begin my Toronto tour

than in Canada's busiest station?

Toronto, Canada's largest metropolis,

has a station to match its greatness.

And carved into the walls are the destinations that it serves.

Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, London...

London?!

Ah, London, Ontario!

Toronto got its first railway in 1853,

and the lines serving the city soon multiplied.

By the time of my guidebook,

120 passenger trains arrived here each day.

The Union Station known to Appleton's readers struggle to cope.

The solution was this beautiful Beaux-Arts building.

In the Great Hall,

Brad Keast is explaining how it's kept pace with the times.

Brad, it is a gorgeous station, Union Station.

-When was it built?

-Construction started in 1914,

so it was built throughout World War I,

which is fascinating because it just speaks to the ambition

and importance of the building.

So, what services did this station offer in its heyday?

Early days in the golden age of train travel,

this was the main hub for long-haul passenger rail within Canada.

You could even hop on a train and go down into the United States as well.

This was where a lot of people came and landed

for the first time in Canada.

From Europe, they would take a ship, they would land in Halifax,

get on a train, travel to Toronto,

and then step out into Toronto

as the first foray into their new country.

From the mid-20th century,

long-distance rail travel began to decline.

But the station has undergone a renaissance,

thanks to a commuter boom.

How busy is the station now?

Today, there's about 750,000 people a day coming through the station.

We're already busier than Toronto's International Airport.

You would never guess from street level, but, underfoot,

a mammoth engineering project is underway.

Excavations will carve out 165,000 square feet of space,

for new concourses and shops.

It's a very impressive project.

Where am I right now?

Right now, you're in an area called the dig down.

This is a whole area that's been created underneath

the existing head house, and under the tracks.

And you've managed to keep the trains running during this period?

Yes, the station's been 100% operational the entire time.

It's an elaborate system of temporary steel columns.

They brace each of the concrete columns that need to be replaced.

There's 447 of these columns that need to be done in total.

And they run right directly under the tracks.

A vast amount of engineering.

Obviously hugely expensive, too.

-Why are you doing it?

-It's a necessity.

Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area is growing so rapidly.

A lot more people are coming on the regional commuter rail.

We need to accommodate triple the traffic in the next 20 years.

In the 19th and 20th centuries,

the railway stimulated Toronto's economy,

attracting to the city manufacturing, trade and immigrants.

The rail boom transformed the urban landscape.

For decades, a vast area between Union Station and Lake Ontario

was known as the Railway Lands, a jumble of tracks,

train sheds and marshalling yards.

But in the 1960s,

the city began to reclaim some of its prime real estate.

The CN Tower was built by Canadian National Railways

on former railway land.

When it was completed in 1976, and for 30 years thereafter,

it was the tallest freestanding structure in the world,

at 553 metres.

Now, you can go up 356 metres and dangle off the edge.

And you can probably see what's coming.

So, what is my feeling as I look up at it?

Queasy.

This iconic tower was built

to support the city's telecommunications.

But now its main revenue comes from tourism.

And for the ultimate CN Tower experience, you need safety gear.

-All right, and you're good to go.

-Thank you.

I love nothing more than a city panorama,

but I'm about to get an extreme perspective on Toronto.

Come check it out, Michael!

All right! You've got to give it a good push, there, Michael,

right up to the top. You're all right.

Oh, I hate going towards the edge!

Whoa!

You're now standing 356 metres above the ground.

That's 1,168 feet, or 116 building storeys.

Oh...

I'm leaning out, and I just don't believe I'm doing this.

I'm leaning out of the tower

and everything is just down there below me.

Aargh!

-OK...

-Just keep going there.

You're doing great, you're almost there.

-I'm getting to the edge.

-Couple more steps, you're almost there.

You're going to feel it under your heels in just a second.

Now get your heels right over, perfect.

-Am I on the edge?

-You're on the edge.

Stop right there, you're good. Widen out your feet just a bit there.

So now you're going to push, OK?

So push your knees right back, push against the side of the tower.

You got it! Push your knees up, push your hips back.

-Don't pull on that rope there.

-No, no.

Lock your knees in.

Push, push, push. There we go.

-I'm leaning out over Toronto!

-You're doing it, looking good!

I'm leaning out over Toronto!

-Can you get a hand off there?

-What's that?

Can you get a hand off that rope there?

-One hand off!

-Awesome, give me a high five.

Get both hands off there. There we go.

-Oh!

-Nice! All right!

When I first came out here, I was absolutely terrified.

But within a few minutes, you just learn to lean back.

And enjoy it.

With my two feet happily back on the ground,

I'm hitting downtown Toronto,

armed with my Appleton's.

I've grown used to the poetic flights of this Canadian edition,

and I can shelter under its antiquity to be provocative.

Appleton's suggests that Yonge Street

may be the longest street in the world.

And remarks that the women of Toronto

"are held up to the world's admiration as they display

"the most attractive types of Canadian beauty."

Now, a modern guidebook would reject any reference to gender as sexism

and any reference to appearance as lookism, but I use one from 1899.

It might also seem risky to rely on a guidebook over 100 years old

to find lodgings.

But Appleton's assures me that Toronto's hotels are "of the best".

And the palatial Royal York,

built by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company,

seems to live up to that judgment.

Jacqueline Tyler is here to greet me.

Hi, Michael. Nice to meet you.

Jacqueline, what a lovely hotel.

-When was it built?

-It was built and opened June 11th, 1929.

It took approximately three years to complete.

And give me an idea of the scale of the hotel in those days?

What did people think of it then?

It was grand and opulent.

The feeling still remains the same today.

They would walk off the train and look up off Front Street

and be in awe.

The Royal York was one of a network of luxury hotels

known as the Castles of the North.

They were built to capitalise on the tourist appeal of the highly scenic

transcontinental railway, completed in 1885.

The hotel were modelled on European chateaux,

and have always catered to a discerning clientele.

Now, you receive, don't you, the Royal Family,

when they visit Toronto?

We have been proud to be the choice hotel for the Royal Family for many

years. And many prime ministers, presidents, monarchs, VIPs,

celebrities and everyday guests, too.

Thank you.

With over 1,000 rooms, the 28-storey Royal York

was once the largest hotel in the British Empire.

Her Majesty the Queen has been here on several occasions.

So I'm hoping for a royal welcome.

Now, all of this can be served happily for any of our guests upon request.

However, we do indeed save one

very, very special thing for those very special VIP guests.

A new day.

And my Toronto tour is back on track.

The electric streetcar was first demonstrated in North America

here in Toronto in 1883, running on this very route.

And there's no rule that says it can't run underground.

With 11 lines and 51 miles of track,

Toronto's streetcar is today North America's biggest light-rail system.

And a great way to get to know the city.

I'm not used to a streetcar that is sometimes above ground

and sometimes underground. Is that typical of Toronto?

I'm actually not from Toronto, I'm from Germany.

-You're from Germany?!

-Yeah, from Germany.

So, what kind of stuff are you doing while you're here?

I'm actually working here and my family is visiting right now.

For three weeks.

Did you find the Canadians quite welcoming?

-Yes, very, very.

-Really?

-Quite warm?

-Quite warm.

-Yeah, much more than the Germans, I feel.

-Really?

-Yeah.

HE LAUGHS

This streetcar system was fully electrified in the 1890s.

Powered by the pioneering Toronto Electric Light Company.

Its co-founder was local stockbroker Henry Pellatt,

whose savvy investments in hydroelectric power

and the Canadian Pacific Railway

eventually made him one of the richest men in Canada.

Fortunes could be made in this thrusting city.

Toronto opened its stock exchange in 1852.

And Appleton's captures the bullish sentiment of the age.

"The city may fairly claim to be the intellectual centre of the Dominion,

"looking back from wonderful achievement

"to a future of bright possibilities.

"Instinct with the sanguine spirit of the young Canadian people."

Today, the Toronto stock exchange is among the ten largest in the world.

And I've a very important appointment to keep.

APPLAUSE

Five, four, three, two, one...

CHEERING

In 1977,

the Toronto stock exchange was the world's first

to introduce computer-assisted trading.

20 years later, all trades were fully automated.

But Donnie Moss remembers the noisy free-for-all of the trading pit

the readers of my Appleton's would have recognised.

Donnie, how far back do you and the Toronto financial markets go?

I started trading in 1954.

In the early days, when you first came to the floors,

was it open outcry going on?

It always has been.

Open outcry right until 1997.

Give me a trade, yell out a trade?

I want to buy 5,000 Bell Telephone.

I would go to the post where Bell Telephone was listed,

I would say, "Show me 5,000 Bell and a half!"

-Very good!

-And then I'd be swamped!

By the time of my guidebook,

canny traders had devised tricks to combat the hubbub.

Let me give you an introduction into some of the hand signals.

We traded fractions, and they were signified by...

an eighth, quarter, three-eighths,

a half, five-eighths, three-quarters,

seven-eighths, even dollar.

Sell, buy. Now, to speed up the process,

a lot of the traders introduced hand signals for some of the stocks.

For example, Bell Telephone was signalled like this.

Bell. Consolidated Mining and Smelting,

touch of the nose, "smell-ters".

We had a phone clerk sitting in a booth on the side of the floor.

And suddenly he's got an order to buy 5,000 Bell.

He's going to give me Bell and a half, 5,000, buy.

Donnie, I also in my past came from a very noisy environment

where people were screaming at each other all the time.

-Don't you miss it like hell?

-On, like hell. I do.

It was a camaraderie that we had down there.

It was a club. It was a family.

In the early days,

railway bonds represented a big proportion

of the stock exchange's transactions.

And 19th-century technology,

including the telephone and the telegraph,

changed the way that the traders worked.

But by the 1960s,

a low-tech innovation ushered in a colourful era for the Toronto pit,

as John Manor remembers.

John, I'm quite interested in coloured jackets.

-Tell me about these?

-The jackets were mainly worn for visibility.

Everybody with a certain company

would wear a similar coloured jacket.

All the traders for the Royal Bank would wear a blue blazer.

This one here is for Green Line investors.

And this one here was Nesbitt Thompson.

And now, John, now we're coming to a serious jacket!

They were with a brokerage firm called McLeod, Young and Wear.

When they got these jackets,

the entire staff was marched onto the trading floor with a pipe band!

-Excellent!

-It was an exciting place.

Everybody wanted to come to work every day.

You don't see that much any more.

We'd yell and scream at each other

and, you know, not be terribly upset.

John, you know,

I sometimes find I stand out in a crowd wearing these clothes.

I should have been around in those days!

-I would just have blended right in!

-Oh, you certainly would have!

You're dressed like a floor trader from the old days, for sure,

without a doubt!

My time in Toronto is almost at an end.

I'm following Appleton's tip

to end my wanderings among the picnic grounds

of High Park on the Humber.

Today, it's famous for its Maple Leaf Circle.

I'm here to discover the patriotic song

that stirred Canada as a newborn nation.

Musicology Professor Robin Elliott will tell me about the man

who wrote it, Alexander Muir.

Alexander Muir, The Maple Leaf Forever, tell me the story?

Alexander Muir was an immigrant from Scotland,

he came when he was only three years old.

He was an ardent Loyalist, strong Protestant beliefs.

And very proud of his British heritage

and of the loyalty to the British Crown.

And his expression of that patriotism, as he envisaged it,

was this song, The Maple Leaf Forever.

Which, in the words, you know, it's

"the thistle, shamrock, rose entwine."

The thistle being Scotland, the rose England,

and the shamrock being Ireland.

So, the three, uh, peoples of the British Isles

were united in Canada,

so long as they were loyal to the Crown, of course.

It's said that a fallen maple leaf lodged on a friend's coat sleeve

first prompted Muir to pick up his pen.

How did the song come about?

The Maple Leaf Forever was written as a poem initially,

without any music.

He entered it in a contest in Montreal in 1867.

And then he cast around for suitable music to set his poem to

and, not finding any, he wrote the music himself.

Having in his ear, I think, Scottish folk songs.

Some people have noticed a similarity

to My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose.

And so it has a kind of lilting quality of a folk song to it,

which is one of the reasons it has been so popular.

In 1867, British patriots like Muir

were contemplating significant independence

from the motherland.

In that year, three British North American colonies united

to form the new Dominion of Canada.

Canadian identity was up for grabs.

And Muir's song soon became an unofficial national anthem.

What are the lyrics of the song about?

The lyrics celebrate all things British in the foundation of Canada,

starting with the very first words

about Wolfe the dauntless hero arriving here

and defeating a French general, Montcalm, which established

British superiority over the French in North America.

And they go on to celebrate the English,

Irish and Scottish strains of the Canadian identity with great passion

and certitude that this is the right way for Canada to be.

But completely omitting both the French and indigenous peoples,

as well as any other settlers in this part of the world.

Consequently, how is the song viewed today?

It still gets an airing, but with completely new lyrics now.

The new lyrics celebrate the national splendours of Canada

- the mountains, the waters -

and of course the multicultural nature of the nation,

as it is in the 21st century, rather than as it was in the 19th century.

Well, quite a contrast, then.

Yes.

MUSIC: The Maple Leaf Forever by Alexander Muir

Canada's vision of itself has greatly evolved.

Still, the song forms an important part of Canadian history.

"We have moulded this confederation out of the once scattered

"and half-antagonistic provinces of British North America,"

wrote Appleton's in 1899.

In fact, Canada still nurses a bad conscience about its First Nations.

And the large French minority may not feel comfortable

pledging allegiance to a British monarch.

Those strong European ties give this nation

a distinctive character, and even in the American-looking cities,

there's a touch of London and Paris.

The country therefore understands the outside world.

And the new Canada is multiracial.

Those are attractive qualities,

and they add to the warmth of the welcome

given to the foreign visitor.

Something that I have been lucky to experience.

My journey, which began on the glorious New England coast,

and brought me across the international boundary

to Canada's commercial capital, is now complete.

Next time, I'm back on the railroads of the United States

for a brand-new adventure

that will carry me all the way to the West Coast.

Beginning in the Silver State of Nevada.

It was at one time known as the richest place on Earth.

My Appleton's will guide me across the stunning Sierra Nevada mountains

to the beaches of California...

..via some of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders in the world.

One of the tallest mountains in Yosemite, El Capitan.

People come from all over the world to enjoy these trees.

To see them from the train, Phil, is special.

Oh, it really is. I never tire of the view.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS