The story
Early history
ONTC traces its history to 1902 with the passage of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway Act, which received Royal Assent on March 17. The Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway Commission (TNORC) would oversee the construction and operation of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (T&NO). The sod was turned less than two months later by Ontario's Commissioner of Public Works, the Honourable Francis Robert Latchford, at Trout Lake on the outskirts of North Bay; North Bay also being the site of the "first spike" driven in construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) 20 years previous.
Building the 253 mile T&NO main line from North Bay to Cochrane was instrumental in opening this region of the province for development and settlement, with its construction being cited as the reason for the discovery of a massive silver deposit at Cobalt, as well as gold at Porcupine and Kirkland Lake.
Six years after construction started, the federal government's National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) main line from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Moncton, New Brunswick crossed the T&NO at Cochrane.
In subsequent years, the TNORC authorized extending the railway first into western Quebec's gold and copper fields at Rouyn-Noranda and, following World War I, in 1921, the TONRC began extending the T&NO northward from Cochrane to the shores of James Bay at Moosonee, where the T&NO "Last Spike" was driven by the Honourable Justice Francis Robert Latchford in 1932. The Commission also worked closely with sister provincial Crown agency, the Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission, in developing hydroelectric generating stations on rivers in the region, such as at Island Falls and Fraserdale.
New mandate
In 1937, the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway Act was amended, enabling the TNORC to operate buses, trucks, and aircraft in order to transport passengers and freight. By 1938 the Commission had acquired 11 buses. In 1945, the Commission acquired the Temagami and the Nipissing Navigation Companies.
The railway changed its name in 1946 to the present Ontario Northland Transportation Commission. The use of the word "transportation" instead of "railway" in the commission's new name reflected an expanded mandate for the organization. Enabling legislation in 1950 allowed the ONTC to acquire, construct, and operate boats, as well as hotels, tourist resorts, and restaurants.
In the early 1960s it purchased a trucking firm, Star Transfer.
In 1974 ONTC acquired Owen Sound Transportation Company and their ferry operations. It was spun off in 2002 as a separate operational enterprise agency.
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The railway is still operated today by the commission, which also operates other transport modes, including bus motor coach services along the Toronto-North Bay-Timmins-Hearst and Toronto-Sudbury-Timmins highway corridors. In 2016 Motor Coach started operating between Sudbury and Ottawa. In 2018, motor coach service was expanded between Manitoulin Island and Sudbury as well as a new Sudbury-Sault Ste. Marie-White River-Hearst route along Highway 17 (there is no service between White River and Hearst, according to the service map on 2023.10.08). It formerly operated a regional airline named NorOntair and a telecommunications company named Ontera.
Proposed divestment
On March 23, 2012, the Ontario Government announced that it would begin to wind down the ONTC, citing increased costs to the government and stagnant ridership. Passenger train service between Toronto and Cochrane (the Northlander) was terminated and replaced with additional bus service, and all assets of the corporation were to be sold off.
Plans to resume rail service
In May 2021, the provincial government announced plans for Ontario Northland and Metrolinx to write a business case to resume rail operations between Toronto and northeastern Ontario with a 13-stop route to begin service by the mid-2020s. The route would provide service from Toronto to Timmins or Cochrane and would be available between four and seven days a week, based on seasonal travel demands.
In December 2022, the Ontario Government announced a 139.5 million investment that marked a significant milestone in reinstating passenger service between Timmins and Toronto. The government news release mentioned that the three new train sets will be built by Siemens Mobility Limited and will meet the latest EPA Tier 4 diesel emission standards.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ontario Northland, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4