Power knocked out in Toronto’s downtown core after transmission station fire

TORONTO — A power outage in Toronto’s downtown core knocked out power to hospitals, a university and part of the financial district as utility crews scrambled to assess the damage.

A Toronto Hydro outage map shows hundreds of customers in the downtown core are without power.

Hydro One, the provincial utility, says it was assessing the damage after a small fire at a transmission station near Dundas Street and Bay Street.

No major impacts were immediately reported at two Toronto hospitals who say they lost power.

The Hospital for Sick Children says it briefly lost power but it’s since been restored, while the Toronto General Hospital website says there are no widespread patient care impacts as it deals with the outage.

Staff and students at Toronto Metropolitan University’s downtown campus were told to evacuate due to the power failure, with fire detection and sprinkler systems inside the buildings potentially knocked off-line.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2026.

The Canadian Press