NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE ISLAND AIRPORT

The island airport controversy has plagued Toronto politics for over seventy years. The reason can be summed up in one word, “location.” For many people the islands and the waterfront provide a special recreational and spiritual place where people can relax and connect with nature. A busy airport on the islands is completely incompatible with this vision.

Hanlan's Point baseball stadium. Babe Ruth hit his first home run here.

The Mississaugas of the New Credit, the First Nations group that lived along the north-west shore of Lake Ontario when people of European origin began settling here in the late 18th century, saw the Toronto island as a place of healing. Often they camped on its shores and fished in the bay and lake for salmon, pickerel, bass and whitefish. They never gave up their ownership to the island, and their land claim remains unresolved to this day.

When the British arrived in the 1790s to build the capital of Upper Canada, Lady Simcoe, the lieutenant governor’s wife, often went to the islands to ride horses and paddle a canoe in the shallow waters of the bay.

Through the first half of the nineteenth century Toronto Bay and the islands were the centre of social life for the inhabitants. In winter they skated and sailed their iceboats on the ice and in summer they swam, fished and sailed in the clear waters.

By the 1880s, cottages were built by members of the yacht clubs, but the islands were open to everyone. A park was built at Centre Island and the city’s largest amusement park was created at Hanlan’s Point. Soon there was a stadium for baseball games, lacrosse and long-distance running.

Ned Hanlan, Canada's best known athlete in the nineteenth century, was raised on Hanlan's Point.

When discussion began in the 1930s of creating a busy airport on the island people were shocked. Back in the days of the “barnstormers,” daredevil pilots flew off the island beaches thrilling the crowds, but those exploits were more like a circus performance or a ride on the amusement park’s midway, than an airport. But the proposal persisted. Hanlan’s Point water lots would be filled in and 215 acres of land would be created to make the runways and terminals.

This was a big project for those days and it was controversial from the start. Many opposed the airport because of its location on the island, and others felt that it would damage the peace and tranquility of the city because it would be close to the city centre. It was pointed out that the land just across the Western Gap, on the city side, was filled with factories and warehouses. The Maple Leaf Baseball Stadium was close by. None of those land uses, it was argued, was incompatible with a noisy, polluting airport.

After a long debate, city council voted to build the Toronto Island Airport. The city’s amusement park at Hanlan’s Point was demolished, cottages were removed, sand and silt was dredged from the floor of the harbour and dumped on the western edges of the city’s largest and most loved park, and the airport was built. It opened in 1938. The 215 acres occupied by the airport were zoned parkland at that time and still have that designation.

At the same time that the island airport was built, another airport was constructed in the small town of Malton just northwest of the Toronto city limits. It quickly became apparent that the Malton Airport had advantages that the island airport lacked. It had easy road access, the airport could be expanded onto adjacent vacant farmland, and there was room for factories and warehouses to be built. Soon Malton became Toronto’s most important airport. Today we know it as Pearson International Airport, the largest in the country.

As Malton Airport grew, the Toronto Island Airport languished. For a brief time during the Second World War, it was used for training by the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Even though there was strong support for the war effort, the noise from the aircraft was so loud, and protests from Toronto residents so insistent, that the Norwegians moved their training facility to Muskoka.

Hanlan's Point amusement park.

After the war the island airport became a centre for small aircraft, a flying school and some commercial flights. There were attempts to make the island a hub airport for commercial air passenger service to smaller centres in Ontario such as Goderich, London, Barrie and the Ottawa Valley, but in time all of these ventures languished and failed.

At the same time the neighbourhood along the western end of the waterfront, just across the Western Gap from the airport, began to change. The factories and warehouses closed and either moved out of the city or stopped production. Maple Leaf Stadium was demolished in the early 1960s. In their place housing developments, now called the Bathurst Quay neighbourhood, were built in the 1980s. Some of the buildings are co-ops, others Toronto community housing, and still others are condominiums. It is now a thriving mixed-income community that is a model of a successful urban neighbourhood.

When the airport was built several of the cottages were moved to Algonquin Island and are still in use today.

The airport was administered by the Toronto Harbour Commission, a city/federal body that was controlled by patronage-appointed commissioners. The city provided a subsidy for the airport. Periodically there were calls to close the airport because of costs and because it did not seem to serve any real purpose, but those efforts were resisted by the airport lobby.

In the early 1980s, opposition to commercial flights from the island airport was increasing because of pollution, noise, safety and concerns. Several different companies discussed plans to establish service from the island airport, and members of Toronto City Council and the public became alarmed that a busy airport would negatively affect the efforts to rejuvenate the waterfront.

These concerns finally resulted in 1983 in what is called the Tripartite Agreement, the regulations that continue to govern the operations of the island airport. The signatories of the Tripartite Agreement are the City of Toronto, the Toronto Harbour Commission (now the Toronto Port Authority) and the federal government. There are three key elements to the agreement.

What was once Toronto's favourite beach is now cut off by the Island Airport.

• No fixed link, specifically no bridge or tunnel to the island airport.
  
  
• No jets. All aircraft must be propeller driven.
  
  
• The aircraft must have STOL (short take-off and landing) capabilities. A STOL aircraft is defined as having the ability to take off and land at a 6-degree angle.

The STOL requirement meant that commercial airlines using the airport at that time would have to use Bombardier’s turboprop Dash 7s, a four-engine aircraft that had STOL capabilities, or Bombardier’s twin engine Dash 8.

After the Tripartite Agreement was signed commercial traffic began to pick up at the island. In 1984 City Express began STOL service to Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City and Newark, New Jersey. The island airport was the hub of its operations, where it serviced and repaired its aircraft. At its peak, City Express was flying about 400,000 passengers a year, but by the end of 1980s, the number of passengers decreased. The company went out of business in 1991.

In 1990 Air Ontario began services to London, Ottawa, Montreal and Newark. Air Ontario limped along for a number of years. In 2001 it merged with Air Canada and other regional airlines to become Air Canada Regional and then in 2002 it changed its name to Air Canada Jazz. By this time the company had stopped all service from the island airport, except four flights a day to Ottawa.

It appeared that the day of commercial airlines at the island airport was finished. There was virtually no customer demand, the airport was losing at least $3 million a year, neighbours complained about the noise and pollution from the airport, and there was concern that a busy airport was incompatible with a redeveloped waterfront. But, as it turned out, the pro-airport forces were simply reorganizing under the new banner of the Toronto Port Authority. The fight between the TPA and the people of Toronto would prove to be one of the decisive struggles of the city.