Why It Took 100 Years to Get a New Mount Dennis Station

 

Sometimes Toronto moves fast—subways, condos, bike lanes popping up overnight. And sometimes… Toronto moves at the speed of a streetcar climbing a hill in 1925. Mount Dennis is one of those stories.

This week I was standing at the brand-new Mount Dennis Station, the Line 5 hub that finally opened its doors in 2025. Clean glass, bright red accents, Presto gates humming away—everything modern and polished. And then I saw an old post showing photos from 100 years ago, when Toronto opened the first Mount Dennis streetcar terminal back in 1925. Horses, wooden streetcars, crowds dressed in their Sunday best.

And it hit me:

It took a full century to get another new station here.

Only Toronto could pull that off.

1. The Neighbourhood That Waited… and Waited

Mount Dennis has always been a working-class, industrial, overlooked part of the city. It wasn’t Yorkville or Queen’s Quay. It didn’t get fancy subway proposals or political love. For decades the area relied on buses and whatever leftover transit plans survived budget cuts.

The 1925 streetcar line was big news back then—it connected a community that was growing fast. But then the world moved on. TTC routes changed. Cars took over. Streetcars vanished. By the 1970s and 80s, Mount Dennis was still waiting for real rapid transit.

2. Politics, Plans, and the Usual Toronto Delays

Torontonians joke about transit plans the way other cities joke about the weather.

Announce it… cancel it… re-announce it… rename it… delay it.

Line 5 was no different. For years it lived on PowerPoints. Maps. Pie-charts. Election promises. It took almost 15 years just to build the Crosstown itself—and that’s after decades of talking about it.

Mount Dennis, being the western terminus, got dragged through every delay in the book.

3. Because Toronto Never Builds the Same Way Twice

You know what we do? Dig, redesign, dig again, and argue.

The 1925 station was built in a world of simple tracks and simple plans.

The 2025 version?

A bus terminal

A GO station

An UP Express connection

A maintenance yard

A light-rail tunnel

Elevators, escalators, climate control, art walls

Accessibility standards

And, of course, politicians wanting to “cut the ribbon”

Add in a decade-long construction project and it’s no surprise this took 100 years.

4. The Community Finally Got Its Moment

So here we are—2025. Mount Dennis finally has the station it deserved.

A century apart, the photos tell the story:

1925: Streetcars, horses, muddy roads, and a sense of pride.

2025: Glass, steel, Presto gates, modern transit, and a whole new west-end hub.

Walking through those new automatic sliding doors today, I felt connected to the people in those black-and-white photos. They were excited for the future. And now, 100 years later, so are we.

Bob’s Take

Toronto may be slow, but it eventually gets there.

A hundred years between stations is a long wait—but Mount Dennis now has something worthy of the next century.

And as a street photographer, I’m lucky: I get to document both the old stories and the new beginnings.