In Rome people live among the ruins of past civilization everyday. An aqueduct here, a coliseum there; dig anywhere in Rome and something historic will appear. In Toronto we rarely experience this kind of drama but travellers along Dupont St. in recent weeks had a rare glimpse of some built-to-last Toronto ruins as the top layer of asphalt was stripped away, revealing long-buried streetcar tracks.

For a few blocks west of Bathurst St., the old tracks saw daylight again, along with the still-intact cobblestones that once surrounded the rails before concrete became the material of choice. All were battered and scraped, but there they were, seemingly so solid a streetcar could roll along at any time.

On post-industrial Dupont, once one of Toronto’s mighty manufacturing corridors, these old rails conjure up the line “Baby this town rips the bones from your back,” from Bruce Springsteen’s working class anthem Born to Run.

These are the bones of Toronto, and road construction is a civic autopsy that lets us peer in to see them. Yet the asphalt-eating machines can’t rip them out easily, nor can public policy. From the 1950s until the early 1970s, the TTC had a “streetcar abandonment policy,” removing tracks and replacing them with electric trolleys or diesel buses until the local activist group Streetcars for Toronto successfully fought to end it. Often the tracks were not removed but simply paved over and forgotten, yet they have continued to make their presence known ever since around the city.

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A decade ago I lived on Dupont St. by Spadina Rd. and stepped out of my house one day to find a crew digging up the road. Looking into the hole I saw a perfect cross-section of the rails, complete with wooden ties. The last time the streetcar ran along Dupont was 1963 and though I had known the history, it wasn’t until seeing those rails that I could really picture streetcars on Dupont. I’ve been unable to forget about those rails since, always there, under the pavement.

The Dupont streetcar ran from the Toronto Island ferry docks, up Bay St. to Davenport, where it jogged over to Dupont. It terminated at the Christie Loop, where the Loblaws store at Dupont and Christie St. is now. During the TTC’s abandonment period, streetcar routes along Coxwell St., Rogers Rd., Sherbourne St., Winchester St., and more than a dozen other places ceased operation.

Along some abandoned lines, like Church St., the paved-over tracks have started to poke through as it the pavement wears away and sinks, wrapping around the resilient rails. Between Bloor St. E. and Wellesley St. E., linear cracks and the faintest suggestion of a long bump in the Church asphalt mark where the rails are, and in a few places the steel itself is visible.

Seeing these rails at a time when we’re debating adding new lines to the TTC system seems strange; public policy and politics aren’t always conducive to taking the long view, even if the rails themselves last longer than many political careers. The loss of lines is frustrating, too: commuters who have to wait three trains to get on the overcrowded Yonge subway line might also wish the streetcars on Church and Bay were still there to relieve the load.

On Dupont though, the rails are again buried underneath a new layer of pavement, waiting for their next reveal.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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