There was a celebratory Mood in November 1960

By David Menary

Although it is almost impossible to envision an Ontario without Highway 401, there was a time, just 70 or so years ago, when farmland, and several mostly small communities, was all one could see along the Windsor to Toronto corridor. 

But by the late 1950s, that began to change. In the spring of 1959 work started on a section of the new 401 freeway from Highway 6 to Preston, and by early November in 1960, the work was all but finished.

The highway was deemed a necessity by politicians and planners given the growth of the province. At the time, Waterloo County's population was approximately 176,754. Ontario’s population in 1958 was roughly 5.5 million, while Canada’s population was 17,524,906, less than half of today’s (2022) population of 38,454,327. 

Given the fact that more than 60 per cent of Canadians lived in Ontario and Quebec, there was a clear need for a superhighway connecting one end of Ontario, which strategically touched the United States at Windsor, with Canada’s largest city, Montreal.

Toronto’s population in 1958 was approximately 1,581,000, while Montreal’s population was 1,870,000. Montreal, accordingly, was the first Canadian city to have a Major League Baseball franchise; the Montreal Expos opened at home on April 14, 1969 at Jarry Park Stadium. And, as was the case later for the Blue Jays, hours before the first-ever Expos game, team staff, including general manager Jim Fanning, were at the ballpark shovelling snow off the field.

Montreal was riding high after Expo 67, perhaps the world’s greatest global exposition, but things were about to change. As suburban growth in what became known as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) continued, and new City of Toronto boundaries were drawn, Toronto grew faster than Montreal; by the time of the 1976 census, Toronto had passed Montreal to become the largest city in Canada, and with each passing year the gap between the two cities grew wider.

As Toronto surpassed Montreal and ascended into the top ranks of North American cities, and given its long history of baseball—southern Ontario was a hotbed for the game—the city was duly awarded Canada’s second Major League franchise; the Toronto Blue Jays played their opening game at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium on a snowy spring day in 1977 against the Chicago White Sox. The Blue Jays won 9-5 and within a decade a Cambridge player, Rob Ducey, would be playing in the Blue Jays organization.

The list of dignitaries who braved the cold winds that afternoon for the opening of the 401 in Preston was notable for those who were not there. Both the Preston and Galt civic leaders were not invited, much to the chagrin of both communities, through the Reeve of Milton, Mrs. Mary Pettit, was there, as were MLAs John Wintermeyer and John Root. John Class, Minister of Highways, was also at the ceremony, though Raymond Myers, MPP, was not there due to illness—he had pneumonia. 

A day earlier, The Galt Reporter had run a headline saying that the Galt Mayor and Council would be at the ceremony, so when pictures of the event were printed in the November 18 edition of the paper, their absence was notable. Questions arose. 

Why were they snubbed? It turned out that when the two communities were asked to contribute $50 toward the ceremony, as had the city of Milton and others, only Galt and Preston councils demurred. Hence, they were not extended invitations, even though the ceremony was in their backyard.

Neither Preston or Galt appeared on the invitation. As the newspaper pointed out, Galt was the only city bordering on the new superhighway; moreover, the highway ran right through Preston.

The invitation read: “The Wardens and Members of the county Councils of Waterloo and Wellington and the Mayors and Members of the City council of Guelph, Kitchener and Waterloo, cordially invite you to a reception.”

Neither Guelph, Kitchener nor Waterloo were within five miles of the highway. And even though the highway ran directly through Preston, that community didn’t get its name on the invitation either. 

The mayors of Preston and Galt weren’t the only ones upset with the turn of events. Hundreds of cars and trucks had been impatiently waiting at barricades at each of the cloverleaves along the 26-mile section between Milton and Preston. Seconds after the official ceremony concluded, they sped onto the freeway. But just before they entered the highway, for the first and last time, a horse-drawn vehicle—a Conestoga covered wagon—was permitted to use the road that links Preston, Kitchener-Waterloo, Galt and Hespeler with Milton, symbolically representing the evolution of Ontario’s roadways in the previous half-century. The wagon and horses broke the red-white-and blue ribbon to open the highway.

After the ceremony, there was a reception at the Kress Hotel in Preston, a short distance away. And from that date on, development along Hespeler Road continued at a fast pace, providing easy access to the 401 for residents and businesses in the south part of Waterloo County.

The highway coursed through the countryside for its first decade or more, a reminder that a rural way of life was quickly changing. The new age of air traffic could be readily seen while driving on the highway; it only took one look into the sky. To the east, the Malton airport grew into Canada’s busiest airport. Even the local Waterloo Wellington Airport, which was almost as close to the highway as the Toronto airport, was moving with the times. In 1968 jet fuel was finally made available at the Waterloo airport with the installation of an underground storage system, and by 1969, the same year as the Moon landing, an air traffic control tower was built and operated by the Federal Government.

And within spitting distance of the 401 at Malton, the Avro Arrow, at the vanguard of a new age and a new decade when Canada was shooting for the stars, was a familiar sight to residents in the Toronto and Milton area; the Arrow had its first flight in March 1958 and became, for a brief shining moment, the crown jewel of Canada’s aviation industry.

Newspapers at that time carried daily stories of rockets and satellites being launched into space, fueling the imaginations of young and old alike; the space race began with Sputnik and culminated at the end of the decade, after the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, and Woodstock, with the Moon landing in July 1969. That summer the 5th Dimension released their anthem for the times called “The Age of Aquarius.” It signalled the end of a tumultuous decade of war and change; with cries for peace and love.

But another song, released in 1964 by Bob Dillon, called "The Times They Are a-Changin'", the title track of his 1964 album of the same name, became a veritable anthem of change that characterized the entire decade.

For millions of people, that song had ushered in, and epitomized, a new era. By then, the signs of change were everywhere, including Highway 401. And nearby, another symbol of those changing times was visible to drivers as they travelled down Hespeler Road, perhaps on their way to the Sunset Drive-In Theatre, and passed by the new Satellite Motel, with its rocketship boldly proclaiming just how dramatically the times were changing.