The U-Boat at Toronto’s Edge (1919)

As you stand along the modern waterfront near Harbour 60 Steakhouse, it is difficult to imagine that this area was once the very edge of the water. In 1919, a surrendered German U-boat was guided into Toronto’s harbor, traveling down the St. Lawrence under American control-a strange and striking sight so soon after the end of World War I. It passed by what was then the Toronto Harbour Commission building, with Union Station still rising in the background. At the time, much of what you see today did not yet exist. The shoreline sat much closer inland, and the waters of Lake Ontario reached right up to these buildings. Over the following decades, the land around Queens Quay was gradually filled in-first in the 1920s, slowed by the Great Depression, then expanded further in the 1950s, and finally extended outward through projects completed as late as the 1970s. Today, the harbor is pushed far from where that submarine once floated, replaced by roads, towers, and parks. What was once open water is now solid ground. The image of a wartime U-boat drifting past this shoreline serves as a reminder of how dramatically the city has reshaped its edge-turning lake into land, and history into something almost impossible to picture without looking back.