“Do not go gentle into that good night,” wrote Dylan Thomas. “Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage rage against the dying of the light.”

As their days are rapidly diminishing, Toronto’s older streetcars evoke Thomas’s poem as the shake, rattle and spark while rolling down city streets. A most familiar sight since they first appeared here in 1977, by the end of the year they will all be replaced by the new “Flexity” vehicles, so ride them while you can.

Perhaps the only grace in Bombardier’s delivery delay of the new streetcars is we’ve had these strange old beasts on our streets a bit longer than anticipated. Rebuilt numerous times and held together by the resourcefulness of TTC mechanics, engineers and even a blacksmith who created replacement parts that are no longer available off the shelf, they are unlike any streetcar or tram found in cities today, unique to Toronto, save for a few exceptions.

Called CLRVs (Canadian Light Rail Vehicles), they were conceived in the mid-1970s when the TTC decided not to abandon its streetcar network and needed to replace its aging fleet that was more than 30 years old (history repeats in Toronto). A decade later, the longer, “bendy” ALRV (Articulated Light Rail Vehicle) version arrived.

First prototyped by a Swiss company, they were subsequently built by the Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC), a government of Ontario effort to jump-start mass transit manufacturing in the province.

Though they might seem retro now, the CLRVs express a 1970s design esthetic, an evolution of the sleek 1950s stainless steel, space-age look to a boxier, plastic-looking one. Think of the NASA Space Shuttle, or even 1970s sci-fi TV shows such as Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica, if you’re old enough. Echoes of this look can be seen in the Scarborough Rapid Transit trains, also built by the UTDC in the early 1980s.

CLRVs are really street ships: built heavy as tanks, they make their presence known as they sail through the city, shaking the roadway and sidewalks. My bed is about 50 metres from one line and I can feel the rumble throughout the night, soft and gentle by the time it gets to me, as if the city is rocking me to sleep. They still carry relics from an earlier age too, such as the “linens” or route roll signs in front rather than the electronic signs found on buses and new streetcars. To use a baseball analogy, they’re like the manual scoreboard at Boston’s Fenway Park, a museum in everyday use.

When the new, lighter Flexity streetcars first made an appearance on city streets it was a strange, almost foreign feeling, as if some European trams got lost and ended up in Toronto. Unlike the high-riding CLRVs, they’re accessible and open the streetcar network up to more people.

Though CLRVs aren’t going gently into the night: they’re going to go out feted thanks to a project called A Streetcar Named Toronto that will celebrate the CLRV “before its curtain call” by putting a “public art streetcar” into service this September. The project is currently soliciting proposals from artists to turn the interior and exterior of a CLRV into an art experience.

“I remember walking through Stanley Park towards King St. in August 2017 and seeing a streetcar with advertising going by and thinking, why don’t we have one covered in art?” That’s how Mark Fiorillo describes the moment he came up with the idea. Fiorillo is the founder of CityFund, a new charity that wants to create projects that get people involved in the city. “I realized how well the concept fit with the retirement of the CLRVs, and how we could do something really interesting around creativity and commemoration.”

Fiorillo grew up in Toronto and, being just a little older than the first CLRVs, says they’ve been a constant in his life, taking him to his first job at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1993. He now listens to the sound of streetcar wheels “day and night” from his condo near the Charlotte St. loop.

“We are really hoping to get submissions that speak about history, emotion, the passage of time and about the celebration of life,” he says, adding they don’t want to just decorate a streetcar, but rather capture what they’ve meant to Toronto. “Since this is going to be an in-service vehicle, we have to prioritize functionality. I think the submissions that get considered will find a skilful way to integrate art without encumbering riders.”

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Fiorillo says the TTC has been fantastic and supportive of the project. “They got the concept right away and saw the opportunity to do something really special for the city,” he says.

The artist call for A Streetcar Named Toronto can be found at ourstreetcar.ca and submissions are being accepted until June 28. CityFund is currently fundraising and taking donations at www.cityfund.ca.