[URBAN NOTE] "The End of Yonge Street"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's Sean Marshall takes issue with the oft-repeated claim that Yonge Street is the longest street in the world, extending nearly two thousand kilometres unto the Manitoba border.

In 1920, Yonge Street was added to the Ontario provincial highway systemas Highway 11, which extended from Downtown Toronto as far as the end of Simcoe County, at the Severn River north of Orillia, where an unnumbered highway continued through the unincorporated Districts of Muskoka, Parry Sound and Nipissing to North Bay. In 1937, Highway 11 assumed the Severn River-North Bay portion and the newly-completed North Bay-Hearst section.

During the Second World War, the section between Nipigon and Hearst was completed; it finally provided a complete provincial highway link between the Manitoba and Quebec borders and formed a crucial part of the Trans-Canada Highway until the more direct Highway 17 link from Sault Ste. Marie to Wawa was completed in the 1960s. Indeed, Highway 11 could still claim as the longest signed route within a sub-national entity but several national routes, such as US Interstates and US highways, are longer. In fact, the last reference to Yonge Street on Highway 11 north of Holland Landing is a short section of former Highway 11 in south Barrie.

[. . .]

Today, north of Newmarket, a modern 4-lane highway leaves the Yonge Street alignment west to Bradford. To continue on Yonge Street requires a right turn off the through Highway 11. But Yonge continues directly north as a two lane county road through the village of Holland Landing, before ending just north of Queensville Sideroad in the Holland Marsh. A short section picks up again off a dead-end section of Ravenshoe Road just west of Keswick, but by this point, it is merely a farm access lane and not even marked on many maps or on street signs.

Go, read the whole fascinating story.