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A strip of commercial buildings that stood on Queen Street West for more than a century was reduced to charred, ice-encrusted rubble in a matter of hours Wednesday, leaving a hole in Toronto's heart and questions about what sparked the massive fire.

The early-morning blaze, which required about 130 firefighters from six stations to bring under control, wrenched upper-storey apartment tenants from their beds and had destroyed or badly damaged at least 10 street-level businesses by midday, including a family-owned bicycle shop in operation since 1914.

Aided by bitter cold winds, the fire also snarled downtown traffic, disrupted public transit and drew a shroud of acrid smoke over the city core, rendering commuters breathless as they walked to work. The smoke even made its way into subway tunnels near Osgoode Station 11/2 kilometres to the east, prompting the Toronto Transit Commission to activate its fire ventilation system.

For Gary Duke, third-generation owner of Duke's Cycle and Radio Ltd., the fire knocked the wind out of a family tradition that reaches back 94 years at 625 Queen St. W., and even farther to his grandfather's original used-appliance store on Spadina Avenue.

Mr. Duke, 52, awakened to the news just after 5 a.m. when his older brother, Randall, called him from his apartment above the store.

"He said there was a fire and that he was evacuating," Mr. Duke said, as he stood at Queen and Bathurst Streets, upwind of the scene. By the time he drove in from his home in Etobicoke, "there was a big, big plume of smoke; it was black and it was towering," he said, and his brother was warming himself, with other now-homeless tenants, in a TTC bus.

"He was in the apartment that my dad was born in," Mr. Duke said, adding that he felt worse about his brother's loss of irreplaceable belongings than his own million-dollar inventory of bicycles, much of it newly acquired for the impending spring rush.

While no one was injured, other tenants confronted the same sense of loss after the flames, first reported in National Sound and Video at 615 Queen St. W. at 5:08 a.m., spread quickly to adjoining buildings, all of which sit within a heritage conservation district designated by the city last July. At about 7:30 a.m., the Duke's Cycle building, four doors to the west, collapsed in a flaming heap.

"In 10 minutes it moved two floors," said Cheryl Lone, who watched the fire from the roof of her Bathurst Street apartment building before she and her neighbours were evacuated at about 6 a.m. "It was pretty spectacular."

Just as quickly, rumours about the fire's cause began to swirl amid the smoke, as merchants and residents spoke of suspicious-looking traffic to and from certain apartments in recent months.

After a briefing from police, city Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) dismissed rampant rumours that a drug laboratory had exploded, but confirmed there have been numerous complaints about "questionable conduct," namely crack-cocaine trafficking and prostitution, in some units.

"That is a cause for concern because that kind of behaviour brings irresponsible action," Mr. Vaughan said. "We've been working very hard to get rid of it and bring it under control, but it's been an uphill battle."

Fire officials said it was far too early to speculate on the cause of the fire because the burning buildings were too unsafe for firefighters to enter.

"Our primary goal is always to fight it from inside, and if it's safe to do that, that's what we always do," Bob O'Hallarn, a district commander for Toronto Fire Services, said as water rained down from aerial ladders behind him. But yesterday, the buildings were engulfed by the time the first crews arrived, forcing them to attack it from outside.

"We just treat it as a potential crime scene until we rule that out," Mr. O'Hallarn said, "and it may not be; it may be accidental. We may not know for a long time how the fire started."

Equally unclear to Gary Duke, from the pile of debris that lay steaming before him, was how long it will take to rebuild his family's business, which he is determined to do.

"We haven't lost the business; it just burned down," said Mr. Duke, whose 83-year-old father, Henry, still owned the building, including four apartments above the store. "It's going to be the same people and the same atmosphere, and I'm not going to change much, other than it's going to be a cleaner, easier store to work in — if it's here, and if everything goes according to plan."

In 1914, Alexander Duke — an immigrant whose original Polish surname is not precisely known to his descendants — moved his appliance business from Spadina to Queen Street, and lived in one of the apartments upstairs, where Gary's father was born and raised.

Through the ensuing years, the inventory variously included motorcycles, furniture, hunting gear, camping equipment, sporting goods and stereos — which explains its eccentric name, Duke's Cycle and Radio — but Mr. Duke has gradually narrowed his stock to bicycles.

"My dad still works with me, three days a week," Mr. Duke said, "and my mom [Mary Duke] still works one day a week. She still does all the books by hand, and writes every cheque by hand, in beautiful penmanship."

He recalled being eight years old and riding the 501 Queen streetcar, alone, from the family's west-end home to the store, where his father put him to work dusting the merchandise. Wednesday, the same streetcar, along with ones on Bathurst and Spadina, had to be rerouted around the fire scene.

As he watched the ice thicken over the remains of his store, Mr. Duke said he is thankful he removed the best mementoes from the property in recent years, including a collection of newspaper advertisements he had clipped and pasted in an album — as instructed by his father — when he was a boy. "Ninety per cent of the stuff is out of there that you would not want to lose," he said. "So, there's stuff there, but it can all be replaced."

As for replacing the business, "I don't want to quit until it's 100 years old at least, so I'm going to give it a go, absolutely," he said. "I've got to do it."

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