St. George Subway Station

St. George Subway Station

 The St. George subway station is part of both the Yonge-University-Spadina Line and the Bloor-Danforth line of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).  The Yonge-University line was opened in 1963, followed by the Bloor-Danforth line in 1966 and finally by the Spadina line in 1979.  St. George has four parallel tracks, two above two.

St. George subway is extremely busy, ranking 2^nd of the 69 stations as far as pedestrian traffic goes totaling a quarter of a million people a day.  It’s situated right in the heart of the vibrant and colourful Toronto neighbourhood called “The Annex”, populated primarily with young people from the University of the Toronto campus, called St. George Campus.

University of Toronto

Sir Sandford Fleming

The University of Toronto, originally named ‘Kings College’ was founded in 1827.  At that time it was the first institution of Upper Canada that offered advanced learning. It changed its name to the University of Toronto in 1850, once the Church of England no longer had control over and today it all 12 colleges are collectively known as the ‘Toronto School’. 

The U of T Pub Crawl

Each of the 12 colleges under the U of T umbrella all have their own history and purpose.  Publicly owned and funded, the University of Toronto has long had a history of innovations in literature, communication theory (psychology, sociology and anthropology) science (insulin and stem cell research) and the first practical electron microscope was discovered at the U of T in 1938 by Eli Burton.  Two independent researchers (Louise Webster and Paul Murdin) both working at the University of Toronto announced the discovery of the first black hole using measurements from the the Doppler shift which showed a mass that was three times the mass of the sun.

The University of Toronto had employed and educated Sir Sanford Fleming who was known as the Inventor of standard time.  He did this after missing a train in 1876 in Ireland.  He realized this happened because the schedule printed was in p.m. time instead of a.m.,  hence the birth of the 24 hour clock.  He linked this proposal to suggest that standard times zones could be used all over the world and in 1929 all major countries of the world accept time zones.  Today the University of Toronto, has the Sir Sandford Fleming building on its location.

Sir Sandford Fleming Building

Off campus within close proximity there is a pumped up nightlife, excellent local shopping, and many great places to eat and shop.  It’s just after midnight and University students are just coming out of the Duke of York pub.  They do the pub crawl along Bloor Street on a Friday night into the Bar Mercurio, Regal Beagle, the Fox and Fiddle and the Pauper’s Pub and settle at the Brunswick House for some good music. The street is alive again the next day with restaurants serving organic foods to sushi and coffee houses like Starbucks and Timmy’s are everywhere. 

St. George subway, in the heart of the Annex takes you within the reach of Uptown, Downtown and Midtown, making it among the city’s most desirable place to live.