Cruisin' Strip and old Trollies

Here are couple more photos taken on our cruising strip a few years before we were actually using it. These two photos were taken in July of 1941. Both photos were taken in a spot we all know as Victoriaville, in downtown Fort William(now Thunder Bay south). The city closed a major intersection and a major portion of two main streets in our downtown core to accommodate a shopping mall which turned out to be a huge misadventure on the part of our city planners!! The photo on the left is taken in front of what was Chapples department store(The Grain Exchange building which still exists inside the mall) and the right photo was taken a little east of the first photo. The whole area shown in these pictures was and still is completely enclosed by this shopping center(the corner of Victoria Ave and Syndicate Ave). The street cars shown here stopped running in both Fort William and Port Arthur in about 1949, and the Brill buses(Still trolley buses but ran on rubber tires) took over about the same time. The city had a tough time digging up all those tracks all over both cities but if they had a little foresight like Toronto did, we would still have the trolleys today. Click on this link to show the other photo and write-up about our cruisin' strip, or scroll way down to see it. http://hotrodsandjalopies.blogspot.com/2009/04/our-old-cruisin-strip.html also click on the photos to enlarge.