The Terminal That Toronto Never Built: The Lost Second Aeroquay

There is something fascinating about looking at an old airport photograph.

At first glance, it is simply a picture of a woman, Mrs. M. Kwan, examining a model of Toronto’s brand-new international airport. But look closely at the model and at the original Toronto Star caption, and there is a fascinating piece of Toronto aviation history hiding in plain sight.

The caption reads:

“Mrs. M. Kwan studies model of Toronto’s new international airport which goes into operation Jan 12; Circular building at left is second aeroquay planned to augment one now nearing completion when volume of traffic warrants it.”

The photograph captured a vision of the future that would never actually be built.

Welcome to the Aeroquay

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Toronto’s Malton Airport was undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history.

The jet age had arrived. Propeller aircraft such as the Viscount and Vanguard were being joined by Boeing 707s, Douglas DC-8s and other new jetliners capable of carrying passengers farther and faster than ever before.

The federal government decided that Toronto needed a completely new terminal.

Architect John B. Parkin and his associates came up with something revolutionary for its time: the Aeroquay.

Instead of building a conventional long rectangular terminal, Parkin’s design put a large square central building in the middle, with a circular passenger concourse surrounding it. Aircraft could park around the perimeter, theoretically minimizing the distance passengers had to walk between the terminal and their aircraft.

Above the central building was a massive multi-level parking structure.

It was futuristic, functional and unmistakably 1960s.

Aeroquay One opened on February 28, 1964, officially opened by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. It had 23 gates and was designed to handle approximately 3.5 million passengers a year.

At the time, it looked as though Toronto had built an airport for the future.

But aviation was changing much faster than anyone expected.

The plan was bigger than one Aeroquay

The fascinating part of the original design was that Aeroquay One was never intended to stand alone.

The overall development concept allowed for additional Aeroquays. Architectural documentation from the period describes expansion by duplication rather than simply adding onto the original structure. One architectural source describes space being allocated for three additional Aeroquays.

That explains the second circular terminal visible in the model shown in the Toronto Star photograph.

The idea was simple:

Build one Aeroquay.

Let passenger traffic grow.

When the first terminal became crowded, build another identical or similar circular Aeroquay beside it.

And, if necessary, build more.

It was a very 1950s/early-1960s way of thinking about airport expansion.

But then came the Boeing 747.

The Jumbo Jet changed everything

When the Aeroquay was being designed, aircraft were considerably smaller than the wide-body jets that would soon dominate international aviation.

The Boeing 747 changed that equation dramatically.

Suddenly, airlines weren’t simply carrying more aircraft movements. They were carrying enormous numbers of passengers on individual flights.

The Aeroquay’s circular design had been brilliantly conceived for the aircraft and passenger volumes of its era. But the arrival of the wide-bodies created new problems.

Larger aircraft required more apron space.

They had larger wingspans.

They carried dramatically more passengers.

Boarding and unloading those passengers placed enormous demands on gates, baggage systems, customs and immigration facilities.

And the circular Aeroquay concept was not particularly well suited to simply being scaled up for these new aircraft.

The Canadian Transportation Agency’s historical account notes that the original development plan envisioned four Aeroquays, but that this plan was set aside with the introduction of larger aircraft such as the 747.

By 1968, the dream was over

This is where the story behind the Toronto Star photograph becomes particularly interesting.

In July 1968, the federal government announced that it would not build the second Aeroquay.

Instead, it chose to construct an interim terminal capable of handling the new generation of wide-body aircraft.

In other words, the government looked at the original plan and essentially said:

“The future isn’t going to look like we thought it would.”

Rather than spending enormous sums duplicating a terminal design that was already becoming obsolete, the government moved toward something completely different.

That decision ultimately produced Terminal 2.

Terminal 2 was the answer

The replacement concept was a long, linear terminal rather than another circular Aeroquay.

Terminal 2 opened in 1972.

Its design was much better suited to the changing realities of commercial aviation. The Canadian Centre for Architecture records that the three-storey terminal ultimately had 31 gates and was specifically developed because Aeroquay One could no longer accommodate the growing passenger volumes and the wingspans of larger aircraft.

The irony is that Terminal 2 was designed by the same architectural firm associated with Aeroquay One.

John B. Parkin Associates had gone from creating one of the most futuristic airport terminals in North America to designing a very different kind of terminal for a very different aviation world.

Aeroquay One became a victim of its own success

There is another remarkable chapter to the story.

Aeroquay One had originally been designed for approximately 3.5 million passengers annually.

But instead of being replaced quickly, it continued serving Toronto for decades.

When it finally closed in 2004, the old Aeroquay was handling almost 9 million passengers a year—more than twice its original intended capacity.

Think about that for a moment.

A terminal that was designed in the 1950s for the airline industry of the early jet age survived into the era of Airbus A340s, Boeing 747s, 777s and modern security requirements.

It was an architectural survivor.

What happened to the original Aeroquay?

The old circular terminal eventually became increasingly difficult to adapt to modern airport operations.

The very features that made it revolutionary in 1964 became limitations decades later.

The circular arrangement was excellent for keeping passengers close to aircraft, but modern airports needed much larger gate areas, greater flexibility for different aircraft types, expanded security and customs facilities, and enormous baggage-handling systems.

Eventually the decision was made to replace it.

A new Terminal 1 opened in 2004, and the original Aeroquay—by then one of the most recognizable buildings in Canadian aviation history—was demolished.

Terminal 2 followed it into history when it was demolished in 2008.

A photograph of a future that never happened

And that brings us back to the Toronto Star photograph.

Mrs. M. Kwan was not simply looking at a model of a new airport.

She was looking at a model of Toronto’s proposed aviation future.

In that miniature airport was Aeroquay One—the revolutionary circular terminal that would soon become a reality.

And beside it was something else:

A second circular terminal that would never be built.

At the time the photograph was taken, there was no reason to believe that the second Aeroquay would eventually disappear from Toronto’s plans.

The caption confidently described it as a future expansion, to be constructed “when volume of traffic warrants it.”

But aviation had other ideas.

The jet age became the wide-body age.

The 707 and DC-8 gave way to the 747.

Passenger volumes exploded.

Aircraft became larger.

Airport security and passenger processing changed.

And the beautiful circular concept that had seemed so perfectly suited to the future suddenly belonged to the past.

The lesson of the missing terminal

There is something wonderfully nostalgic about old airport plans.

They remind us that the future rarely turns out exactly as architects, engineers and government planners imagine it.

In the late 1950s, Toronto believed it could plan its airport expansion almost like adding pieces to a puzzle:

Aeroquay One.

Then Aeroquay Two.

Then perhaps Three.

And eventually Four.

Instead, Toronto got Terminal 2, then Terminal 3, and eventually an entirely new Terminal 1.

Today, Pearson operates with two modern terminals based largely on a linear concept.

That little circular building in the old Toronto Star photograph therefore represents something much more than a proposed terminal.

It represents a road not taken.

Had the aviation world remained dominated by smaller jetliners, Toronto might today have had a collection of enormous circular Aeroquays standing across the airport.

Instead, the arrival of the jumbo jet changed the plan.

The second Aeroquay disappeared from the blueprints.

And today, the only place you can see it is in photographs, architectural drawings—and models like the one Mrs. M. Kwan was studying all those years ago.

Sometimes the most interesting buildings at an airport are the ones that were never built.