Dundas Street - History

History

Dundas Street was developed in different time periods and in different sections. Dundas Street is named after its one-time destination, the town of Dundas.

The section of the street near Dundas Valley was surveyed by Augustus Jones and constructed by the Queen's Rangers as a colonial road at the direction of John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada. It connected the town of Dundas to settlements west, and also around Lake Ontario to Niagara-on-the-Lake (Newark). The town itself was named for Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, British Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1791 to 1801. In the early 19th century, when Toronto's oldest streets were first named, Dundas was an important settlement in its own right, rather than simply a suburb of Hamilton, as it has since become.

The road from the western end of Lake Ontario was constructed east to York in 1796. The road ended at the Humber River at Old Mill Road, following the path of today's Bloor Street within Etobicoke. An 1800 map shows Dundas connecting with the newly built Yonge Street, although the map does not show the route of this section within Toronto with any detail. An 1816 map of York shows a "Burlington Road", which was a westward extension of today's Queen Street.

The first section of the current route of Dundas Street constructed in Toronto was constructed during the War of 1812. It connected today's intersection of Queen Street and Ossington Avenue to Lambton Mills. It was constructed by the militia under the supervision of George Taylor Denison. The section of today's Ossington Avenue from Queen Street north to the intersection of Dundas Street was also known as Dundas. At the time, the district along Dundas was not cleared. Montgomery's Inn was built on Dundas Street in 1830 for travellers along this route and also became a centre of neighbourhood business. It stands today, operated as a museum by the City of Toronto.

From Ossington Avenue to the east, Dundas was pieced together from various streets. In the latter half of the 19th century, Arthur Street was connected from Ossington Avenue and Dundas Street to Bathurst Street along the current alignment of Dundas. St. Patrick Street, the portion of today's Dundas from Bathurst Street to College Avenue (now University Avenue) bisected the Grange estate in 1877. The section from College Avenue (now University Avenue) to Yonge Street was known as Agnes Street. East of Yonge, Wilton Street, with a portion called Wilton Crescent (George Street to Sherbourne Avenue), connected to River Street. A bridge was not built over the Don River until the 20th century. The various streets were connected by jogs in the 20th century to form the current road.

In the 20th century, for purposes of efficiency, Highway 5 was redirected just west of the former village of Waterdown, Ontario, and no longer passes through the town of Dundas, which was also located on the lower side of the Niagara Escarpment.