Don River looking southeast across Queen Street
February 1899
City of Toronto Archives
Series 376, File 2, Item 59

With the warm winter we've been having in Toronto it's easy to forget that winter weather can bring our city to a grinding halt.

February 1899 was a very cold month in Toronto. The Don River froze up and on February 23, a large ice jam formed between the King and Gerrard Street bridges.

The water began to rise and quickly flooded the Canadian Pacific Railway line, forcing trains to re-route west through the Toronto Junction. Along the river, rising waters flooded the Don Brewery horse stables and set oil barrels afloat at the McColl Brothers works.

Later that same year, council awarded contracts to the Hamilton Bridge Company to replace two wooden composite bridges in the city with steel and iron ones; the Queen Street Bridge spanning the Don, and the Humber River Bridge at Lake Shore Road.

See past editions of this month in Toronto.

The City of Toronto Archives has partnered with the TSO to launch a 90th season exhibit featuring historical records of the orchestra, including many unique documents, photographs, prints and audio recordings. The free exhibit runs to May 2012.

See the exhibit poster.

For information contact us on (416) 397–5000, or visit the tso.ca/archives.

Check out the City's Flickr site.

We have posted historical images from the City of Toronto Archives' collection of over 1.2 million photographs and we'll be adding more every few weeks. Please leave us your comments, suggestions and ideas!

Effective January 3, 2012, Archives programming staff will also be responsible for educational programming at City Hall.

As a result, all tours, visits, group bookings and education programs at the Archives can only be booked on Wednesdays and Fridays. The booking times, 10:00-11:30 am and 1:00-2:30 pm remain the same.

Tours at City Hall may be booked on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:00-11:30 am and 1:00-2:30 pm.

If you have already registered for the New Year and have received a confirmation, your booking, at either site, will not change.

To accommodate this change we encourage you to book well in advance.

Educational programs at the Archives and City Hall will continue to be offered at no charge.

We ask for your patience and understanding as we transition into this new schedule.

Archival maps now available online After many years of only being available in the Archives' Research Hall, we have finally made our scanned map collection available online.

More maps and plans will be added soon.

If you missed out on Toronto's Visual Legacy: Official City Photography from 1856 to the Present the first time, now is your chance to purchase the soft back edition. This book contains nearly 200 archival images offering a visual overview of Toronto’s history, documenting attitudes and values expressed by City officials, from the 19th century to today.