[URBAN NOTE] "The Canadian stop on the London Underground"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Torontos' Adam Bunch has a lovely photo essay looking at the neighbourhood around London's Canada Water Station.

The subway station is pretty new: it opened in 1999. But this exact spot has been a transportation hub for centuries. For about 300 years, it was home to the Surrey Docks: some of the busiest docks in London. As the British Empire boomed, ships from all over the world came here to unload their cargo. The first docks were built on this spot in the 1600s, long before the British ruled Canada and founded the city of Toronto. It all started with whalers — at what they called Greenland Dock. Then, there was timber from Scandinavia and the Baltics — so they built Russia Dock and Norway Dock and Finland Quay and Swedish Quay.

But by the end of the 1800s, trade with Canada was booming too. We were sending a huge number of goods across the Atlantic into the heart of London — including, for a while, enormous old white pines from the Rouge Valley. They were needed as masts for British ships. So, in the 1870s, they built Canada Dock. There was a Quebec Pond, too.