The McKernan Line: Edmonton's Toonerville Trolley

Streetcar  #20 ar Whyte Ave and 104 Street, May 1946. Library and Archives Canada, 3524704

Note: The McKernan stub line operated from November 1913 until August 1947, between Whyte Ave & 104 Street, and 76th Ave & 116 Street. As the track deteriorated over time, the line became valued for its quirks as much as it was valued for the lifeline it provided residents. After its turning-Y was removed and the line could only accommodate double-ended cars (streetcars with driving equipment at both ends), Cars 1, 3, 10, and 20 each served as the “Toonerville Trolley".  Celebrated local historian Tony Cashman wrote the following article for the now-defunct publication The Edmontonian in 1965, and it is being shared here to commemorate the 77th year since streetcars trundled down the McKernan line.

There’s been excitement in Edmonton these past eighteen years, these years of boom and growth and spreading horizons. But there’s been some excitement missing too, because it’s been eighteen years since the Toonerville Trolley made its last wild scramble down 76th Avenue, past McKernan Lake, past Curry’s riding stables, and into the bush at 118th Street. (One night it went literally into the bush when the people in the house near the end of the line forgot to leave their porch light on—the signal for the motorman to slow down).

It’s been eighteen years and yet it only seems like yesterday that Bob Chambers, the literary Scot, was at the controls and would start away from Whyte Avenue and 104th Street just as a passenger was running up—and the passenger would put on a burst of speed, yank the trolley off and go around the far side of the car and hop on while Bob came down the other side to re-engage the trolley with the electric wire; the wire that gave the car energy for its bucketing, barrelling carrers into the wilds. 

In summer the car’s style of progress suggested a demented grasshopper. In winter it suggested a fox terrier which has suddenly come out on a skating rink while in hot pursuit of a car. And in winter it seems only yesterday that the Toonerville Trolley was running; although it’s been gone eighteen years.

It seems only yesterday that the kids would amuse themselves by setting thunderflashes on the tracks—which would be set off by the car running over them and blow with such a commotion that Bob would stop the car and get out and look under it to see what part of its interesting mechanism had fallen off.

The Toonerville Trolley had equipment that was not standard on cars of the sophisticated metropolitan lines. There was the sandbox for example. The sandbox had a handle to shoot sand onto the track if that slight rise west of 111th Street happened to be icy. The idea was that if Bob couldn’t get traction he could shoot the tracks full of sand and the car would surge ahead. But the kids had so much fun shooting sand that Bob would often be firing blanks when the car lost the violent momentum which gave it so much of its character. It was always violent, even at twelve miles an hour; the roadbed insured that.

But if Bob couldn’t drive the car up the incline it didn’t matter much. The Toonerville Trolley could be driven with equal ferocity from either end—unlike the cars on the more sophisticated metropolitan lines. Bob would just take his motorman’s crank to the other end and head back to Whyte Avenue and 104th Street. Where there’d be more sand and, more than likely, some young passengers bound for winter sport.

For all thirty-six years of its existence the Toonerville Trolley was the car of the skater, the skier, and the toboggan rider. In summer there was good reason for Bob Chambers and other motormen to bucket past McKernan’s Lake with all the momentum at their command. On certain hot days the fragrance off the lake was hardly up to the Standards of Miss Coco Chanel. But in winter when the lake froze and was cleared for skating the young sports breathed an essence that Coco Chanel could never hope to catch in a bottle.

As the years went on and the lake sank deeper and deeper into the mud and eventually dropped from sight, new winter sports opened up at the end of the line. The skiing was good along the rustic bends of Saskatchewan Drive. And there was a toboggan slide down the hill and across the river. And in 1936 the Toonerville Trolley gained a summer sport to take people to. That was the year Wallace Curry moved in from his farm at Vermilion and started the riding stables. Wallace lived in a house at 112th Street on the south side of 76th Avenue. The stables and the fifty horses were out behind, and out behind that there was all the open country the equestrians of Edmonton could ever hope to ride over.

Bob Chambers, the Scottish motorman, figured a man named Wallace Curry must be all right and they became close friends. So close that Bob took to using the telephone in the Curry house. Once or twice a week the Currys would hear the car coming to unscheduled stop, and then Bob would be pounding up the steps and asking for the use of the telephone. In return Bob would let Wallace ride free for a few blocks when Mr. Curry went west to check the standpipe from which the stables—and some residents of the area—drew their water.

It was an eminently fair arrangement and if the management of the transit system didn’t know it, it was still fair. However, one day when Wallace got on for his free ride Bob was feeling grumpy. He sometimes was. And after grumping for a block he said “Ya be’er pu' a tacket in the box.” Wallace did but the next time Bob came pounding up the steps to get at the phone he told him: “Ya be’er pu’ a nickel in the phone.”

A few years later, when the war was on, one of the boys on Bob’s run was leaving for overseas. It was one of the boys who had put thunderflashes on the track and shot off all the sand. When he got on the car to ride to the station, Bob called him up front. “Here,” he said, “here’s somethin’ tha’ll keep ya warrum on the train.” Bob’s present was a bottle. And it contained a product of Scotland which ranked in worth second only to the Scottish products of Robert Burns.

There weren’t such presentations on the sophisticated cars of the metropolitan lines.