<P> A horse - drawn streetcar line was completed on Yonge Street in Toronto in September 1861 and operated by the Toronto Street Railway . The line went from Scollard Street to King Street . Streetcar service would be electrified in Toronto by 1892 . </P> <P> Confederation and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway further diminished the importance of Yonge Street, as the new Dominion of Canada heralded the construction of east - west trade routes spanning the continent . By the 1870s, Dr. Scadding, historian of Toronto of Old, declared that Penetanguishene did not have the importance to need an approach such as the "extension of the Yonge Street Road". </P> <P> By 1919, a number of roads led from Barrie to Orillia, but not one primary route . In that year, Premier Ernest C. Drury created the Ontario Department of Public Highways, with Frank Campbell Biggs, as minister . Drury left the choice of route (Middle Crossroad) for the eventual Highway 11 to Biggs, thus avoiding a conflict of interest over a heated debate, as Drury lived on the farm on which he had grown up, on the Penetanguishene Road, a kilometre north of the present Crown Hill interchange . </P> <P> In the 1920s, looking to support the rapidly developing mining and agricultural communities in northern Ontario, the government of Ontario sought to connect these communities to the south by commissioning a highway between North Bay and Cochrane . After construction crews pushed through the dense Temagami forest, the road was officially opened on July 2, 1927, and named the Ferguson Highway after the Hon . G. Howard Ferguson, the premier of Ontario (Drury's Successor) and longtime supporter of northern development . The Ferguson Highway, built north from Severn Bridge also replaced several sections of the original Muskoka Road and was incorporated into Highway 11 in the 1930s . The northern stretch of Highway 11 became part of the Trans Canada Highway and, by 1965, Highway 11 extended from the foot of Yonge Street on the shores of Lake Ontario to Rainy River, on the border between Ontario and Minnesota . </P>

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