Ontario Construction News staff writer
Libby and Corkie are set to carve out the first two Ontario Line subway tunnels. After a contest, the new tunnel boring machines (TBMs) have officially been named.
Launched in June, the naming contest attracted more than 900 submissions and over 1,000 votes cast.
Jason Paris submitted the winning names as a tribute to two of the communities the Ontario Line subway will serve: Liberty Village and Corktown. Libby and Corkie will work alongside each other to dig about six kilometres of twin tunnels beneath the city’s downtown core.
The TBMs arrived in Canada on June 9 at the Port of Oshawa after crossing the Atlantic Ocean travelling from Germany to Amsterdam and on to Canada. More than 40 people spent about four hours were carefully unpacking and transferring the equipment to a storage facility, where they are currently from being prepared for tunnelling.
Excavation is now complete at the tunnel launch shaft where Libby and Corkie will start their tunnelling journey in early 2026. Construction crews recently broke ground on the second tunnel launch shaft at Gerrard.
