Transit Over Time

  1. 1954

  2. 1963

  3. 1966

  4. 1968

  5. 1974

  6. 1978

  7. 1980

  8. 1985

  9. 1996

  10. 2002

  11. 2017

1954

G-Series Subway Car

G-Series

After discussion dating back to 1912 and five years of construction, Canada’s first subway line opened on March 30, 1954. The line (now a busy part of Line 1) extended from Toronto’s Union Station up to the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton with bright red subway cars built by the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company in England.

The Toronto Subway typeface was also designed in the years prior to the subway’s opening. Often misidentified as Gill Sans or Futura, Toronto Subway is a geometric sans-serif although the original designer is unknown and no documentation of the font has been kept. An overhauled version of the typeface called Bloor-Yonge was announced in 2013 to makeup for the gaps that the original had left with updated punctuation, missing numbers and other fixes.