Trudeau Toronto TTC

Justin Trudeau arrives in Toronto to open new subway line

Canadian Prime Minister and international heartthrob Justin Trudeau was on hand Friday morning to help celebrate the opening of Toronto's long-awaited York Spadina Subway Extension.

Service on the new 8.6 km extension of Line 1 won't actually begin until this weekend, but I assume it's not too easy to get the busy Prime Minister, Ontario's Premiere and the mayor of Canada's largest city all together on a Sunday morning.

Instead, Trudeau, Kathleen Wynne, Toronto mayor John Tory and other dignitaries participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony for the extension this morning.

At least four people cut the ribbon at once, leaving every cutter with a little chunk to hold awkwardly. This might seem like an excessive amount of scissors, but the synchronized ribbon cutting also nicely symbolized how much collaboration the subway extension required.

After cutting the ribbon at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, Trudeau, Wynne, Tory, TTC chair Josh Colle and the gang were able to ride the line to York University station – one of six new, state-of-the art transit stops built as part of the project.

A press conference was held following the inaugural ride, in which Trudeau called the completion of this massive project "great news for students, commuters and families."

He said that the extension will translate into "a faster commute, less time in traffic and more money in people's pockets as they trade their cars for a subway ticket."

The Prime Minister also tried on a York U scarf.

The Toronto York-Spadina Extension opens to the public this Sunday, Dec. 17 at 8 a.m.

It will be the first new subway to open in Toronto since the Sheppard Line in 2002, and the largest expansion to our subway system in nearly 40 years.

Lead photo by

Kathleen Wynne


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