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Happy Canada Day everyone! My apologies for not being around much in the last two weeks but life and work have been intruding of late. One of the 'Fathers of Confederation' - there were no 'Mothers', it was 1867 after all - and Canada's very first Prime Minister was a man named Sir John A. MacDonald. To be brief, Mr. MacDonald was no George Washington, should one compare founding fathers - again, no mothers, it was 1776 after all. Unlike General Washington, Sir John A. told some whoppers when it came to falsehoods. Pre-confederation, MacDonald sometimes kept the US Army out of colonial Canada through shear guile. Well, there was that Civil War they were fighting but that is oft glossed over in Canadian history books. These days, we would call John MacDonald a functional alcoholic. He would often campaign using his notorious drunkenness as a populist asset. The joke was that he had a private whiskey pipeline installed to his seat in the House of Commons. Which rather sharply brings us to the matter of old distilleries. Car 4421, one of Toronto's new 'Flexity Outlook' streetcars, waits in the Distillery District to begin its westbound trip along the new Cherry Line - Route 514. On the 19th of June 2016, the TTC opened its first new streetcar service in sixteen (16) years. The Cherry Line runs for 7km - mostly in mixed traffic - beginning in Parkdale at the Dufferin Gates Loop of the CNE. Northbound, the line follows Dufferin Street for a short stretch until King Street. There streetcars curve east onto King and travel through the core of Downtown Toronto - the Financial District. East of downtown the line curves again, south to new track and ROW on Sumach Street and then Cherry Street in the re-developing Distillery District. The route terminates at the new Cherry Street Loop across from the old Gooderham and Worts distillery complex - makers of (I'm sure) fine whiskey since 1837. No doubt Canada's first Prime Minister would agree. The name 'Cherry Line' is obviously misleading. Most of Route 514 runs on King Street with less than a tenth of the revenue trackage actually on Cherry Street. Indeed, it is no secret that new the line's primary purpose is to complement and provide additional streetcars to King Street along the heaviest traveled parts of the longer King Line - Route 504. The Cherry Line's route number (514) was also chosen to complement that of the King Line. But the TTC and the City were eager to promote the new streetcar service into the Distillery District along Cherry Street. As a result 'Cherry' became the service name. Which is fine as there are lots of examples of misnamed transit services in Toronto. Consider the long defunct Harbord (streetcar) Line. Barely on Harbord and only a 'line' if one were drunker than Sir John A. MacDonald on Dominion Day. Happy Canada Day everyone! ASIDE: I do like the new 'Flexity' streetcars. The TTC is slowly deploying them across the system - thank you Bombardier. But their pixel board destination signs still leave something to be desired. Beyond being low resolution and monochromatic - we're sixteen (16) years into the 21st Century guys! - they definitely do not look good in photographs. That is unless one uses a long exposure on a tripod. But that would blur everything else that manages to move in the scene, aka transit riders. I do miss rollsigns. NOTES: TTC - Toronto Transit Commission LFLRV - Low Floor Light Rail Vehicle ('Flexity') CNE - Canadian National Exhibition ROW - Right Of Way Bombardier - What Canadians think of when we say 'trial and error'.

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