BY DAVID WENCER, Torontoist
\nThe Christmas of 1936 was a black one for Toronto. On December 26, newspapers reported on the holiday slaughter: three people killed, at least six people injured by hit-and-run drivers, and more than one hundred separate traffic collisions. In the years that followed, politicians, police officials, and concerned citizens promoted annual December public safety campaigns in the hopes of making Toronto\u2019s streets safer over the holidays.
\nBooks dedicated to the history of the automobile in Canada often describe Canadians\u2019 \u201clove affair\u201d with the automobile in the early 20th century. Toronto newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s, however, reveal that the new vehicles were not universally embraced. Articles express widespread public anxiety about the growing number of traffic collisions on city streets and highways; many Toronto newspapers featured regular photo arrays of smashed vehicles in and around the city.
\nIn his 2008 book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Peter D. Norton notes that American cities were similarly preoccupied with traffic deaths at this time. \u201cEven in the United States there is little evidence in cities in the 1920s of a \u2018love affair\u2019 with the automobile,\u201d Norton writes. \u201cWith the sudden arrival of the automobile came a new kind of mass death. Most of the dead were city people. Most the car\u2019s urban victims were pedestrians, and most of the pedestrian victims were children and youths. Early observers rarely blamed the pedestrians who strolled into the roadway wherever they chose, or the parents who let their children play in the street. Instead, most city people blamed the automobile.\u201d
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BY DAVID WENCER, Torontoist The Christmas of 1936 was a black one for Toronto. On December 26, newspapers reported on the holiday slaughter: three people killed, at least six people injured by hit-and-run drivers, and more than one hundred separate traffic collisions. In the years that followed, politicians, police officials, and concerned citizens promoted annual … <\/p>\n