Toronto Suburban Railway 8

Another mystery is solved, at least to the degree it's likely to be solved. A while back I posted this piece asking for information on the car shown above, Interprovincial Railway 8, preserved at the Canadian Railway Museum. The other day I stumbled upon this photo which looked a whole lot like car 8 and it occurred to me that it might be worth sending an e-mail to Gord McOuat, general Canadian traction expert, asking about the car. Gord didn't disappoint and sent me the car's entire ownership history so far as is known.

The kicker is that it never ran on the Interprovincial Railway! Well that's embarrassing. It turns out that tidbit came from a book published back in the 1990s and was erroneous; instead the car is more properly known as Toronto Suburban Railway 8. It was indeed built in 1895 and ran for two successive street railway companies in Peterborough, Ontario before going to Toronto. When exactly that happened isn't clear; apparently open cars were banned in Toronto around 1915 so it would have been before that. It went to Gillies Brothers, a large lumber mill in Braeside, Ontario at some point around 1920 or so (the photo linked above shows it still on TSR in 1920 but obviously out-of-service) and remained there until donated to CRM for preservation in 1957 (though it was kept on the Montreal streetcar system for a few years). It most likely went to CRM along with the rest of MT's historic collection in 1963. Many thanks to Gord for this helpful information!