On September 16, 1901, Alderman Oliver made a motion in Council “that the City Engineer be requested to make a preliminary report as to the most feasible way and probable cost of connecting Bloor Street East with Danforth Avenue. It was not until 1909 that it began to receive serious consideration.
In the following article ypou can read about the city councils strange though process cocerning the viaduct
FORMAN IS RIGHT. (1911 newspaper article.)
The Assessment Commissioner has hold of a basic idea in town-planning when, discussing the proposed huge rampart of earth and concrete it is proposed to throw across the Don Valley to connect Bloor street and Danforth avenue he says:-
“I do not think there is any particular advantage to be gained by carrying the viaduct in a straight line. Why make land when we have it made? We can use the edge of the ravine just as well as we can erect a great heap of earth in its centre. The land damages would be much less, also the cost of extending Parliament street north to meet the viaduct.”
Series 372, Subseries 10, Item 878
Mr. Forman is right. Why make land when we have it made? The carrying of the road connecting Bloor street and Danforth avenue along the edge of Rosedale Ravine, partly on the south side, partly on the north, with a concrete viaduct across the Don at its narrowest part instead of at what is almost its widest, would make one of the most beautiful entrances to Toronto form the east imaginable. It would be cheaper and far more picturesque than Mr. Rust’s cross-country scheme. Surely the City Engineer has not been attending the Mawson lectures or he would have had something better to offer than a proposal to destroy the Rosedale Ravine. The whole question should be given over to the consideration of a small committee of experts. The people will not vote money for a structure that will be a perpetual eyesore, just to humor a whim for the extension of Bloor street on a mathematically straight line.
