Riding the Radials: Toronto’s Suburban Electric Streetcar Lines --- by Robert M, Stamp. In southern Ontario, everyone knows about the railways that linked cities large and small. Everyone knows about the system of highways that criss cross the province. Most people are aware of the St. Lawrence Seaway that links the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. Most of them, however, know nothing about that web of rails that focused on Toronto and linked the city to it’s hinterland like a spider web. Its importance was relatively short-lived before it was eased out of existence by the automobile. But while in its ascendency from late in the 1800’s to 1920, the network of radials transformed southern Ontario as it hadn’t been transformed since the clearing of the forests. Well illustrated with contemporary photographs.