Bay Street

Bay Street is a street in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the centre of Toronto's financial district and is often used by metonymy to refer to Canada's financial industry just as Wall Street is used in the United States and The City in the United Kingdom. This is a rather recent development (1970's), as this position used to be held by St. James Street, in Montreal. Within the legal profession, the term Bay Street is also used colloquially to refer to the large, full-service business law firms of Toronto, particularly the top-tier law firms known as the Seven Sisters. The name of the street originated in 1797 from the fact that it connected (then) Lot Street (now Queen Street West) to a bay in Toronto Harbour.

The intersection of Bay and King Street is often seen as the centre of Canadian banking and finance. Four of Canada's five major banks have office towers at the intersection: the Bank of Montreal at First Canadian Place, Scotiabank at Scotia Plaza, CIBC at Commerce Court, and Toronto-Dominion Bank at the Toronto Dominion Centre. Historically, this was known as the "MINT Corner" (Montreal, Imperial, Nova Scotia, Toronto-Dominion) but since 1962 the Imperial Bank has been part of CIBC and the Bank of Nova Scotia has rebranded itself so this nickname is no longer widely used.

Another prominent intersection is the one nearest Yorkville at Bay and Bloor, the centre of an upscale and expensive shopping district.

Bay Street stretches from Queens Quay (Toronto Harbour) in the south to Davenport Road in the north. The original section of Bay Street ran only as far north as Queen Street West. Sections north of Queen Street were renamed Bay Street as several other streets were consolidated and several gaps filled in to create a new thoroughfare in the 1920s. The largest of these streets, Terauley Street, ran from Queen Street West to Grenville Street. At these two points, there is a curve in Bay Street.

Condominium development on Bay north of the financial district boomed during the 1990s attracting many who work there to live downtown, thereby avoiding the daily commute. The intersection of Bay and Bloor is the location of the Toronto Transit Commission's Bay subway station. Bay Street is served by the 6 Bay bus, one of the few downtown bus routes. The street was originally served by streetcars, however the opening of the north-south Yonge Subway in 1954 caused a number of parallel streetcar routes to be replaced by buses, including Bay.

References

* Wise, Leonard and Gould, Allan, "Toronto Street Names" (Toronto: Firefly Books, 2000) - ISBN 1552093867

External links

* [http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=Bay+St+%26+Queens+Quay+W+Toronto,+ON&daddr=Bay+St+%4043.659670,+-79.385360+to:Davenport+Rd+%26+Bay+St+Toronto,+ON&sll=43.664891,-79.381199&sspn=0.026077,0.058365&ie=UTF8&z=13&om=1 Bay Street] at Google Maps