It was a chilly spring evening 105 years ago and the atmosphere was electric as dignitaries and 30,000 Torontonians waited for the big moment.

As the clock atop Old City Hall struck 9 p.m., all eyes turned to the guest of honour: Niagara Falls. Well, maybe not the original gusher but an equally wet if smaller imitation.

With the push of a button and a great whoosh, a torrent cascaded onto the cheering crowd from the huge picture of the falls hung over the main entrance. The Toronto Hydro-Electric System was born.

The ceremonial start of the flow of electricity on May 2, 1911 capped three years of building the infrastructure to distribute power harnessed by the province, including a 13,000-volt main line, transmission towers and electrical sub-stations.

“There has been no development in modern years which more closely touches the comfort and prosperity of the people of any town or city,” declared Mayor George Reginald Geary.

If the flow from the mini falls dampened onlookers, it had no such effect on enthusiasm.

“There arose a mighty cheer,” the Toronto Daily Star reported. “Niagara power had officially arrived at five minutes after nine o’clock.”

The display of light bulbs strung across City Hall’s façade was “so intense and beautiful that the human sea could not repress murmurs of appreciation and delight,” noted a reporter, adding an afterthought about the soaking.

“Many a spring hat suffered diminished glory before some nameless hero thought to turn Niagara off.”

Electricity, in fact, had arrived in Toronto in the late 1880s, supplied by a handful of private firms, including the Toronto Electric Light Company founded by inventor John Joseph Wright.

Blogto.com credits him with becoming the first person to generate and sell electricity commercially in the city when downtown streets and homes were lit by gas lamp.

TELCO was awarded contracts for outdoor lighting and powering streetcars until the municipal system became the sole distributor of power in the early 1920s.

But if civic officials were eager to electrify, householders took a dim view of the new technology, thanks to finances and unfamiliarity. The rich and enlightened, on the other hand, were quickly turned on.

Financier Henry Pellatt, for one, had invested in the hydro-electric industry and reportedly installed 5,000 electric lights and an elevator in his new home of Casa Loma, completed in 1914.

Slow to warm up to kitchen appliances, housewives preferred gas stoves and old-fashioned ice boxes, which sparked a surge of marketing campaigns.

A glossy booklet targeting “small families that keep no servant” offered such temptations as toasters, vacuum cleaners, cereal cookers and even an electric vibrator for “my lady’s boudoir” – to be “applied at one’s own convenience.” The device was intended for facial treatments.

Irons were hot in 1914, totaling 5,600 sales in showrooms that promoted the latest products. Eaton’s helped the cause by telling newspaper readers its $2.50 Westinghouse model “saves a great deal of hard work and discomfort.”

Outside the home, things were humming along as streetcars, which had already replaced horses with overhead power lines, were joined in the early 1920s by trackless trolley buses.

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But another spectacle attracted oglers in August, 1925: Toronto’s first traffic lights, installed at Yonge and Bloor. The big event drew a large crowd “expectantly waiting for something to happen” according to the Star, but no mishaps occurred and watching the lights change colour was as exciting as it got.

Night life took on new life with the illumination of baseball games and other sporting events as well as amusement areas such as Hanlan’s Point and the CNE’s Midway, all aglow in neon. When Maple Leaf Gardens opened in 1932, the ice was lit by more than one hundred 1,000-watt bulbs.

The following year, Toronto Hydro opened its new head office on Carlton St., a 1933 Art Deco limestone mid-rise described as the very “model of modernity.”

Residents embraced electricity in growing numbers with the post-war baby boom sparking a 75-per-cent increase in kilowatt-hour consumption between 1945 and 1955. By now there were enough Hydro employees to form their clubs for curling, baseball, hockey, bowling, golf and photography.

For consumers, the ’60s became the decade of living electrically with most households boasting TVs, stereos, and numerous appliances. But Toronto Hydro was not without its failures, which hit close to home in January, 1968 when a storm paralyzed the city, causing an octogenarian in distress to summon police.

“Oh, do come in,” she said, greeting an officer in her nightdress. With no power, she complained, her beef stew wouldn’t cook.

But the mother of all outages occurred in August, 2003 when the biggest power blackout in North American history, triggered by malfunctions south of the border, affected 50 million customers in the northeastern U.S. and much of Ontario.

During the days-long calamity, Torontonians coped by helping each other, pinch-hitting as traffic cops and partying by candlelight.

“That is the magic of Toronto, yes? People who won’t give you the time of day when everything is normal are the first to stop and ask how they can help when something goes wrong,” taxi driver Amir Khan told a reporter.

As looming storms threaten power supplies this year, it’s worth recalling columnist Joey Slinger’s suggestion some 13 years ago: “Maybe we should declare one or two days a year electricity-free, and let the quiet seep into us, become a tranquilizer for our souls.”

Like Niagara, just go with the flow.