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The Ontario Township Survey System

pipolchap

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North South Major Roads Bend at Eglinton, Why?

If you look at the map of the city, I notice most major North-South roads in the former City of Toronto bend at Eglinton and head more North-Easterly.

This same phenomenon does not occur in Scarborough nor Etobicoke until Steeles.

Does anyone know the history behind this?
 
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I've long wondered about this one too...

The Toronto street grid starts with the north-south and east-west concession lines meeting perfectly perpendicularly, such as at Yonge and Bloor.

Yonge is the "first" street to lean east, doglegging slightly just north of St. Clair at Heath (here).

The other north-south streets continue further north, no longer parallel to Yonge, but begin to unevenly shift to go back parallel--Jane does it immediately south of Eglinton; Bathurst, Dufferin & Keele do it immediately north of Eglinton. Mt. Pleasant, however, remains perpendicular to the east-west concessions all the way to its terminus, slowly creeping closer and closer to Yonge as it moves north.

My best guess is that Yonge deviated at Heath on account of the localized geography there and the old time surveyors just adjusted the other road allowances as they moved north to remain parallel to the "prime meridian", but I'd be interested to see if someone has a more definitive answer.
 
what is the city of toronto today, was once a collection of independent cities, towns & villages which had their own street grids. as time went on, the rural spaces between these communities filled in and they did what they could to make the streets align. a segment of a road in one community was joined with a segment of another road in another community by extending one to the other.

wasn't eglinton west of the humber once called richview road? i wonder how many independent roads were joined together & renamed to make up eglinton ave?


look at this stretch of lawrence avenue:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou....701466,-79.512069&spn=0.007182,0.021973&z=16

it was once called eagle street which was a road in weston. did you notice the little deviation at jane street?
 
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I suspect it was because the grid for the Old City of Toronto was aligned to be parallel and perpendicular to the lake (depending on if the street ran N-S or E-W). The same thing happened with cities all along the Lake (Mississauga, Oakville, and Burlington all share a relatively straight shoreline, and the roads run either parallel or perpendicular to it). However, once they got further north, it was being carved out as farmland, so they switched to using either True North or Magnetic North to determine the road alignment. If you want a textbook example of this, look at the Midwestern Plains in the US. The lines all run directly N-S, and the concessions all run directly E-W, all in a 1 mile x 1 mile grid (to create four 1/4 sq mile farm plots).

There are however some roads that did not follow this grid, most notably Dundas St, Weston Rd, and Kingston Rd. These were all formerly major links between Toronto and other cities, and were established as roads before the area was surveyed for farm development.
 
^^^Not quite. "Lot Street" (now Queen Street) was indeed surveyed on on the basis of working with the lakeshore in Toronto, but every east-west concession line in then-York County was surveyed to be perfectly parallel to it and this is true all the way up to Lake Simcoe (the physical roads did indeed jog and deviate a bit based on physical geography). Lot Street and the eastern York-Durham county line are perfectly perpendicular (not sure which one came first) by design. So the intersection, say, of 16th Avenue and York-Durham line, though still very rural today, ought to be more or less angled exactly the same way as Yonge and Bloor, that is, four right angles.

What's weird is that north of Lawrence, pretty much every intersection of a N-S and E-W road in York County isn't perfectly perpendicular, and this has to do with Yonge's doglegging north of St. Clair. Seeing how it would have been preferable in virgin countryside for lots to be perfectly rectangular, it's a bit of a mystery to me why they didn't tilt Yonge back at some point as they surveyed north.
 
^^^Not quite. "Lot Street" (now Queen Street) was indeed surveyed on on the basis of working with the lakeshore in Toronto, but every east-west concession line in then-York County was surveyed to be perfectly parallel to it and this is true all the way up to Lake Simcoe (the physical roads did indeed jog and deviate a bit based on physical geography). Lot Street and the eastern York-Durham county line are perfectly perpendicular (not sure which one came first) by design. So the intersection, say, of 16th Avenue and York-Durham line, though still very rural today, ought to be more or less angled exactly the same way as Yonge and Bloor, that is, four right angles.

What's weird is that north of Lawrence, pretty much every intersection of a N-S and E-W road in York County isn't perfectly perpendicular, and this has to do with Yonge's doglegging north of St. Clair. Seeing how it would have been preferable in virgin countryside for lots to be perfectly rectangular, it's a bit of a mystery to me why they didn't tilt Yonge back at some point as they surveyed north.

That may be true for the E-W streets, and you're right, they do stay completely parallel the entire way up, without a jog. But every N-S street west of the Don Valley rotates the same degree to the Northeast after St. Clair, and I have to figure that has something to do with re-angling to either True or Magnetic North. You survey the N-S street, using True/Magentic North as your guide to make sure your lines are staying parallel, and then every 2km along that route, you mark off where the E-W street will go.

Think of it this way, you start at the intersection of Yonge and St. Clair. You start walking north, using the compass as your guide. You keep going until you've paced out 2km, and you mark off where the cross-street will go. You continue north, still using the compass, and then mark off at the next 2km. And etc, etc etc. The concessions will still remain parallel to the base line, which would explain why the E-W streets do not have the same diversion to the Northeast.
 
Yonge Street was surveyed before the concession system (and the related roads) came into effect. Yonge was very straight except for that jog north of St. Clair, but the other north-south streets in York Township (everything in modern Toronto between the Humber River and Victoria Park Road) were laid to be flush with Yonge.

It is correct that Lot Street was the original Base Line for York County, but it only worked to a point, Humber Bay and the north-eastern angle of Lake Ontario in Scarborough cut Queen off from being a perfect straight line. Eglinton Avenue became a second Base Line (and was used for that purpose in Toronto Township and Trafalgar Township too.) Hence the jogs at Eglinton for Dufferin (and more pronounced for Keele), as Eglinton became the next base line to measure the streets from Yonge - at the Base Line, the correction to the street became necessary.

On the east-west streets, they were fit to run properly later on as Etobicoke and Scarborough Townships used different systems. Connecting Eglinton and Lawrence across with each other were big early Metro projects, they had to cross the Don as well as bend to make the connection. Parkwoods Village Drive does it for York Mills/Ellesmere, Sheppard and Finch also curve, as does Eglinton West to meet the Richview Side Road in Etobicoke. Finch took up until the 1990s to fix, and disconnections for Lawrence/Dixon, Wilson/Rexdale and Sheppard remain to this day.

In Toronto Township (now Mississauga) note how the concession lines jump at Eglinton. A different survey system was used south of Eglinton/Lower Base Line than north of it, a rarity for a single township. South of Eglinton, Erindale Station, Mavis and Cawthra were concession lines, north of Eglinton, Creditview/Terry Fox/McLaughlin/Kennedy/Tomken. Hurontario, a pre-concession road like Yonge, is continuous and Erin Mills/Southdown/5th Line and Dixie fit both systems' spacing.
 
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This reminds me of the grid in St Catharines whereby the streets all meet at 65 and 115 degrees while the rest of the Niagara Region's grid is 90 degrees. Basically St Catharines aligned itself with the Lake while the rest of the region was aligned in the typical ns-ew. So in this case, whenever the lots were drawn, Toronto seemed to use the lake as it's basis, while the communities north of the city were drawn with something else that was slightly off as the guide. If you look at the grid, this phenomenon goes far beyond the city's borders.
 
Correct. That was Grantham Township - while neighbouring Stanford Township (Niagara Falls) Niagara Township (NOTL) and Louth and Clinton Townships (now mostly the Town of Lincoln) had a different system. Only old Highway 8 (an old aboriginal trail) and the QEW are through between them. As Lincoln has both systems within it, they opted to name the sideroads quickly rather than have two incompatible number systems.

Waterloo Township (now City of Waterloo/City of Kitchener) is unique as it had no concession system at all. It's an interesting enough system, but a bit tough to navigate, even with the addition of the Conestoga Parkway and the fact that King Street is pretty straight and continuous. (Though it goes from King Street East to King Street West to King Street South to King Street North.)
 
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Kitchener and Waterloo have just about the most confusing street systems in Ontario. As you point out, there is no consensus on north vs south, and there seems to be no major street that runs in a straight line for more than a mile or so, which is unusual in Ontario. If you don't know the area, driving anywhere around there without a map is quite challenging!
 
One of those useful things for stuff like this is the historical atlas collection at McGill: http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/Countyatlas/SearchMapframes.php

Here's a historical map of York township. http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/Countyatlas/images/maps/townshipmaps/yor-m-york-n.jpg It is huge, be warned.

The first three concessions (labelled "Concession I from the Bay, Con II from the Bay, Con III from the Bay) were surveyed off Lot street and are parallel to it. Only the first concession east of Yonge was surveyed parallel to Queen Street, the second and third follow the pattern further north. Further north the concessions are surveyed parallel to Yonge, which is not exactly perpendicular to Queen, itself angling off just north of St Clair. Meanwhile, the east-west streets continue to be parallel to Queen. East of Yonge, the Don Valley disguises the realignment; south it's the downtown grid, north it's the York Twp grid.

The concession blocks are thus not quite square. If you're really interested, this pattern continues a long way - the same nonsquare grid that originated at King and Sherbourne, the centre of the original village of York, peters out in Georgian Bay about 20km east of Owen Sound, almost 160 km away. Even up there the grid is not quite square, being 500m longer on one diagonal than the other.

Queen itself, and most of the downtown grid, appears to be a relatively arbitrary alignment based on being relatively parallel to the lake shore in the original town of York. I'm not quite sure what happened exactly, but I believe the original Yonge street was surveyed parallel to the original town of York's streets, until it hit the end of surveyed territory. It then angled off slightly to take the most direct path towards the mouth of the Holland River, despite the marsh.

Another interesting fact: Especially as you head north, you start noticing concessions don't quite intersect their crossroads at the same point. This is because they physically used a length of chain to survey the original lots. As you can imagine, this was not the most accurate method. Additionally, in certain locations you see the concession lines meandering back and forth a bit. Compare, for example, to the Prairies where not only was the geography much easier to survey, but technology had improved in the intervening century such that the curvature of the earth became the biggest source of survey error.
 
Kitchener and Waterloo have just about the most confusing street systems in Ontario. As you point out, there is no consensus on north vs south, and there seems to be no major street that runs in a straight line for more than a mile or so, which is unusual in Ontario. If you don't know the area, driving anywhere around there without a map is quite challenging!
And Weber/King intersect 3 times lol
 
And Weber/King intersect 3 times lol
Not for a few years. Twice in Waterloo and in Kitchener Weber now turns into King, without intersecting. Most of the old King Street that used to intersect Weber was removed why they widened Highway 8.

On the other hand, they are creating new tricks, with a second intersection of University and Bridge
 
To be honest, I find non-grid plans far more interesting. I think they tell you a lot more about the history of a place than most typical grids.

Also, what's interesting about St Catharines is that the downtown deviates entirely from the rest of the city's grid, sometimes making it a very confusing place to drive particularly before they changed some of the one-ways to two-ways. The intersection where Geneva, St Paul, Queenston and Niagara all meet thereby creating a 5-point intersection (and even more if you consider that there are a number of side streets within 30metres of this intersection) has always stood out to me as unique. I haven't come across many similar examples in ontario but I'd imagine there's something similar in K-W. I just haven't been there in a long time.
 
Queen itself, and most of the downtown grid, appears to be a relatively arbitrary alignment based on being relatively parallel to the lake shore in the original town of York. I'm not quite sure what happened exactly, but I believe the original Yonge street was surveyed parallel to the original town of York's streets, until it hit the end of surveyed territory. It then angled off slightly to take the most direct path towards the mouth of the Holland River, despite the marsh.


This is the best explanation I've heard for Yonge Street's bend by far. Do you know this for a fact? Yonge meets Lake Simcoe exactly at the mouth of the Holland River, which I doubt just happened by coincidence!

As for Queen, it is indeed meant to be parallel to the lake shore, but it's location is hardly arbitrary. Queen Street and Fort York were constructed at the same time in 1793, and Queen simply defines the line parallel to the lake shore that is also perfectly tangential to the circle defining Fort York's 1000 yard firing range. In layman's terms, Queen is parallel to the historic shoreline of Lake Ontario, and is exactly 1000 yards north of it at Fort York. This was a logical location as anything south of Queen would have been within cannon range of an enemy ship on Lake Ontario in the event that Fort York was taken over.
 
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