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One afternoon I was sitting in my local Tim Hortons reading the Sun (what else) and sipping on a hot chocolate, when all of a sudden several EMS paramedics and a number of firefighters rushed in. Together they began assisting an elderly gentleman in a nearby booth who was obviously in some distress. Within minutes they had him stabilized, on a stretcher, out the door, and on his way to the hospital. While I’ll never know the final outcome of this little drama, I hope I will receive the same quick and skilled response from the ladies and gentlemen of Toronto Fire Services and Toronto’s Emergency Medical Services if I’m ever faced with a similar crisis.

The event prompted me to look into the history of ambulance service in our city. Thanks to copious research that has been done by EMS historian Bruce Newton, the facts have been neatly presented on the department’s website (torontoems.ca/mainsite/about/history.html).

In the city’s earliest days, a form of ambulance service (and the term “service” is a bit of a stretch) was provided by local cab drivers and the odd Good Samaritan who would happen upon infectious, ill, or injured citizens and haul them off to the city’s only hospital. It wasn’t until the 1870s that the city fathers of the growing metropolis recognized their obligation to provide this necessary service. So they contracted a local undertaker to provide something a little more dependable.

Toronto Police Department horse-drawn ambulance, circa 1888.

Courtesy of Toronto EMS Archive.

A modern Toronto EMS multi-patient ambulance bus.

This ambulance was given to Toronto General Hospital by Sir John Eaton, circa 1912.

Courtesy of Damon Schreiber, Toronto EMS.

Over the next few years, and thanks to the generosity of department store magnate Sir John Eaton, the Toronto General Hospital began providing an ambulance service. So, too, did the police department, followed by the city’s Department of Health. Seeing this as a new source of income, many of the city’s undertaking establishments got into the ambulance business as well, and by the time the government stepped in and streamlined the activities, “customers” had their choice of twenty-seven different ambulance services. Anyone remember Kane, Ogden, or Hallowell ambulances racing along city streets?

Interestingly, two tragedies prompted government officials to at least consider taking some form of action. The first was the fire aboard the passenger ship SS Noronic, which destroyed the ship as it was moored at the foot of Yonge Street in the fall of 1949. The lack of proper communications, as well as far too few proper ambulances, resulted in many badly burned victims being transported to the downtown hospitals in regular taxi cabs.

Then, in November 1963, the city’s young mayor, Donald Summerville, suffered a serious heart attack while playing an exhibition hockey game in west Toronto. Because the closest ambulance was near Weston and the venue was outside its area of responsibility, and the next closest city ambulance took far too long get to the scene, the unfortunate mayor was beyond help by the time medical personnel arrived.

So finally, on February 12, 1975, all ambulance operations came under the jurisdiction of Metro Toronto’s newly organized Department of Ambulance Services. Today, this important and quite literally life-saving function is carried out by Toronto EMS.

February 14, 2010