Trains race through Toronto at speeds up to 30 or 40 miles per hour “to the imminent peril of life and limb,” complains The Growler, August 12, 1864. If a cabman or a farmer be caught driving at a dangerous pace through our streets, he is instantly and properly taken up, and punished by the Police Magistrate; but, strange to say, we have [railway] engines driving along the esplanade, sometimes at the rate of 30 or 40 miles an hour, and not one sentence do we hear about it. Now, from morning to night, the esplanade is used as a busy and common thoroughfare, and it is not right that trains should be driven along at such a rate, to the imminent peril of life and limb.

Unfamiliar Canadian history stories 053