Trillium: Queen of the Ferries
Rescued from the scrapyard, 105-year-old ship still carries passengers to the islands
Once Upon a City is a weekly series that looks back at significant events, or eras, in Toronto’s history, based on reporting and photography from the Star’s archives.
“Tell us, Admiral, can you really make a silk scow out of a ferry’s bottom?”
It was a valid question considering the would-be “scow” had been languishing in a lagoon off Toronto Islands for years. It was 1963 and Toronto Star columnist Gerry Barker was dubious about the Metro Works department’s plans to use the stripped steel hulls of aging ferries to carry sewage.
The answer, Mr. Barker, was no. The Trillium was destined for magnificence, not muck-hauling, though it would be another decade before her neglected, rotting hulk was towed away for a million-dollar makeover.
But just look at her now, 15-foot paddlewheels churning as she steams proudly across Toronto Harbour, taking day trippers to Centre Island on weekends and holidays. Decked out in nautical blue and white with brass accents, she is every bit Queen of the Ferries.
The Trillium, who just celebrated her 105th, is North America’s only side-wheel paddle steamer still in use and the oldest survivor in Toronto’s ferry fleet. But it was a colourful voyage through sometimes turbulent waters that brought her to the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal at the bottom of Bay St.
Her story begins in 1910 when “Hull Number 94” rolled out of Polson Iron Works’ shipyard at the foot of Sherbourne St. The family business, started in 1883, built more than 150 watercraft during 36 years on the city’s waterfront and in Owen Sound.
Christened “Trillium” by Phyllis Osler, the 8-year-old granddaughter of businessman and politician Edmund Boyd Osler, the $75,000 double-decked, double-ended ship was the 10th vessel for the Toronto Ferry Company, operated by Lawrence (Lol) Solman, a sports and entertainment entrepreneur.
Measuring 46 metres long and 14 metres wide with room for1,350 passengers, the coal-burning ferry could be “guided by the little finger,” the Star reported in a small item on her launch on June 18.
A contest to name her older sister, Bluebell, four years earlier, on the other hand, was splashed across the front page. But the Trillium grabbed the spotlight just weeks after her launch as thousands watched fire tear through the docks.
“Then one noticed the Trillium . . . steaming into the slip directly at the foot of Yonge St.,” the Star reported. “Upon the upper deck was Mr. Lol Solman, hose in hand, and hardly had a tie line been thrown out when Mr. Solman was directing a stream from the pumps of the Trillium upon the roof of the Niagara dock.”
Two years later, the ferry rushed to the rescue again to help a couple, “both nearly dead from exhaustion” after a gust of wind upset their sailboat.
But the Trillium’s newsmaking took a grim turn in the summer of 1916, when a young couple drowned after their canoe capsized in her swells as she approached Hanlan’s Point on Toronto Island.
The headlines were happier during a heat wave in July 1921, when thousands of babies from “crowded shacks” got a free ride in the bay, courtesy of Solman, the Star said. “The refreshing effect of the air on the water, the fanning of the little ones’ bodies by the breeze will bring back life to children.”
For years, Solman also issued free ferry tickets to poor mothers through the newspaper’s Fresh Air Fund, earning the Trillium the moniker of “floating palace” for moms and tots.
The ferry service transferred to the city in 1926 with the purchase of eight boats, other assets and half an acre on Hanlan’s Point for $337,500. Unhappy with the price, Solman complained that he was practically throwing in his island holdings as a present.
Ferry passengers in turn were disgruntled with the city when a group of Islanders going to work one day watched the Trillium pull out a minute early on its 8:30 a.m. run to the mainland.
Forced to wait 40 minutes for the next ferry, they called it “the rottenest trick they had ever seen,” the Star reported.
But for the most part, it was all smiles and sunshine for the ferry service carrying summertime crowds. The fleet welcomed several more boats that are still operating, including the William Inglis in 1935, Sam McBride in1939 and Thomas Rennie in 1951.
By the mid-1950s, the aging and now redundant sisters, Trillium and Bluebell, found themselves tied up near the island filtration plant awaiting conversion to scows.
Years went by until Star columnist Robert Thomas Allen, visiting the secluded spot in 1965, described the Trillium’s sorry state:
“It now rests tired and worn out amid the bulrushes of Lighthouse Pond, like the ghost of an old love barge, silent and peeling and sagging in the middle like a lot of the people who still remember the days when it was as ‘in’ as Beatle wigs.”
It took another eight years, and historian Mike Filey and Metro Parks commissioner Tommy Thompson making waves, for council to approve the Trillium’s $1-million restoration. (The Bluebell, alas, won no such reprieve.)
“It looks bad but it’s not really too bad,” Filey remarked when the Star carried the front-page news in 1973 that the Trillium could sail again. Her wood superstructure needed replacing and vandals had stripped her brass fittings, but the engine and paddlewheels were in good shape. Calling the boat “pure gold,” an editorial urged the city to give her a role in the waterfront’s recreational development.
With her transformation complete — some components were refurbished, others replaced — the grand lady of the lake returned to service June 18, 1976, exactly 66 years after her launch. Officiating at the ceremony was Phyllis Osler, the same little girl (now all grown up and married to become Mrs. Aiken) who swung the champagne bottle in 1910.