Toronto gas station with 65 years of history is about to be demolished

A Toronto gas station shuttered to make way for the new Ontario Line subway will soon be demolished, a teardown that will represent a symbolic milestone of change for an area planned and populated in the automobile's golden era.

Metrolinx has announced it will begin demolition of a vacant gas station at the southeast corner of Don Mills Road and Wynford Drive, marking the end of a chapter in the area's history that dates back to the mid-20th century.

The gas station at 843 Don Mills Road, which operated for decades as an Esso until its ultimate closure in 2024, is set to be demolished starting next week, followed by the removal of "hazardous materials" in a process that's expected to take several months.

The gas station was fenced off after its permanent closure in 2024. Google Street View.

The footprint of the gas station must be cleared to free up space for the construction of the Ontario Line's Science Centre station and the supporting elevated guideway that will carry trains in and out of the terminal.

Rendering of Science Centre Station on the Ontario Line. Image via Metrolinx.

Metrolinx will begin teardown of the gas station starting as early as April 1, 2025, with work expected to wrap in July 2025.

Affected work area for the demolition. Image via Metrolinx.

Details about the history of the current gas station are scant, though a deep dive through archival aerial photography confirms that a gas station first appeared at this location around 1959 or 1960 on what was previously farmland.

Sixty-five years ago, the gas station served what was then an emerging automotive culture in Toronto's burgeoning suburbs, built across Don Mills from the enormous IBM Campus home to hundreds of workers commuting primarily by car.

1960 aerial photo of a gas station at what is now the Wynford and Don Mills intersection. City of Toronto.

The original buildings from the gas bar of that era are long gone, but petroleum would continue to flow at this site until the land was acquired by Metrolinx and the gas station shut down last year.

With that enormous campus now being redeveloped into a massive mixed-use community built to rely on new transit investments like the Ontario Line and Eglinton Crosstown, it is somewhat symbolic that an area born in the automotive age is losing its first gas station to make way for rapid transit.

Like the automotive infrastructure that came generations before, the 15-stop, 15.6-kilometre Ontario Line is expected to serve as a springboard for new homes and businesses to be constructed in the area, and will connect locals with Exhibition Place via downtown in just 30 minutes.

The line's goal of reducing daily car trips in the city by 28,000 per day can be seen as something of a spiritual successor to the network of roads that came all those decades beforehand.