Unassuming building once served as a bus terminal

December 2021

All older towns and cities have buildings that have changed uses over the years, sometimes multiple times, particularly in the older parts of town.

An unassuming, two-story building on Collier Street in Barrie, Ontario, one that currently houses a dental clinic and a bistro, looks like any other retail/residential building common to any older city’s downtown core. However, from 1942 until 1956, this was the Gray Coach Lines bus terminal. Gray Coach Lines was an inter-city bus service, originally founded by the Toronto Transportation Commission in 1927.

Prior to moving to the Collier Street location, Gray Coach operated a ticket office out of the Clarkson Hotel on Dunlop Street East, now The Artisan Boutique.

Facilities at the new Collier Street terminal included a waiting room, ticket/agent office and a lunch counter.

By 1956, the increasing traffic volume on Collier Street was making it inconvenient to operate buses from this location. As a result, Gray Coach bought a former organ factory on the east side of Maple Avenue, south of Dunlop Street West, and moved their operations to this “new” transit terminal. It remained in service until in 1991, when the current two-storey Barrie Bus Terminal was opened directly across from it, on the west side of Maple Avenue.

The old bus terminal was demolished and a condominium building now occupies the property.

As with everything, change is inevitable. The substantial growth of the City of Barrie over the past three decades, has made it necessary to once again, re-located the bus station. A new transit hub, the Allandale Transit Mobility Hub, is scheduled to open in late 2022, next to the restored former Allandale Grand Trunk Railway station. The mobility hub will operate as an inter-regional transit hub, which will include the existing GO Transit rail corridor, providing transit connections between Simcoe County, Muskoka, and the Greater Toronto Area.

Future plans for the current Barrie Transit Terminal include converting it into a permanent indoor location for the Barrie Farmer’s Market. A small transit depot, the Downtown Mini-Hub, will remain at the Maple Street station.

The upper floor is already leased to the Small Business Centre of Barrie, Simcoe County & Orillia and the Sandbox Centre, which “…connects people and their ideas to business resources through collaboration and sharing of knowledge to support.”