Toronto

I

Introduction

Toronto, capital city of the province of Ontario, Canada, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. Toronto has the largest metropolitan area in Canada and is the financial center of the country. The city is part of the Golden Horseshoe, a highly urbanized and industrialized region extending around the west end of Lake Ontario.

Toronto has a climate with strong seasonal variations, which are tempered somewhat by the presence of the lake. Summers are warm and humid, and the temperature is often below freezing in the winter. In July the mean temperature ranges from 18°C to 27°C (64°F to 80°F), in January from -8°C to -1°C (18°F to 30°F).

II

Toronto and Its Metropolitan Area

The City of Toronto covers 97 sq km (38 sq mi). Until 1998 it was composed of six communities: Toronto and the five boroughs, or cities, of North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, York, and East York. That year these six cities were consolidated into one large metropolis that encompassed the same area. The city and its surrounding area is called Toronto’s census metropolitan area (CMA). A CMA is a geographic area that contains the main labor market of an urbanized zone, that is, the area from which people commute to work within the zone, including downtown. Toronto’s CMA covers 5,868 sq km (2,266 sq mi). By comparison, the CMA of Montréal, Québec, is 4,024 sq km (1,554 sq mi), and that of Vancouver, British Columbia, is 2,821 sq km (1,089 sq mi).

Government buildings are prominent in the city. Queen’s Park, the site of the Ontario Parliament buildings, stands at the head of Toronto’s wide ceremonial street, University Avenue. Conspicuous in the downtown are the Metro Hall and the more spectacular City Hall with two curved towers that stands in Nathan Phillips Square. Ontario Power Generation operates from a striking, partly solar-heated tower. Other points of interest include Saint James Anglican Cathedral and Saint Michael’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, both downtown. The nearby Saint Lawrence Market is crowded on Saturday mornings.

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Commanding the whole region, the CN Tower near the central waterfront rises high over the city at 553 m (1,815 ft). It was the tallest freestanding structure in the world until it was surpassed by the Burj Dubai, a skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates, in 2007. Next to the CN Tower is Rogers Centre (formerly known as the SkyDome), the first domed stadium with a retractable roof. High-rise office buildings and hotels dominate the financial district. Across from the classical-style Union Station is the imposing Royal York Hotel, at one time the largest hotel in the British Commonwealth. An underground concourse, bordered by shops, runs beneath the tall buildings for nearly 2 km. On the route is Toronto Eaton Centre, a large mall with three levels of shops. Clusters of offices with shopping malls are found up the Yonge Street corridor and around suburban centers. Across Toronto Bay from the central waterfront are the Toronto Islands, containing a large park, with housing at the east end and an airport at the west end. The Don River enters the bay near downtown.

III

Toronto’s Population: A City of Immigrants

The population of the Toronto CMA was 5,406,300 in 2006. The population of the city proper stood at 2,503,281 in 2006, up from 635,395 in 1991. Toronto’s CMA is the most populous in Canada; Montréal, in the province of Québec, is second largest at 3,666,300 (2006 estimate).

After 1945, job opportunities in Toronto were so great that a large influx of European immigrants from many countries contributed to the city’s population growth. In some years of the 1950s Canada actually received more immigrants than the United States, even though the United States had ten times as many people. The largest share came to Toronto. In the 1960s and later, fewer immigrants came from Europe, where economies had become stronger. Instead, more immigrants arrived from the Caribbean islands and Asia.

After 1970 the population growth was primarily in the communities around the metropolitan area. Despite a faltering Canadian economy in the 1990s, immigrants continued to arrive in the Toronto CMA, most conspicuously from Hong Kong. People of Chinese origin accounted for over 9 percent of the city’s population at the 2001 census. Foreign-born residents constituted 44 percent of the population, the highest metropolitan percentage on the North American continent. The ethnic breakdown of metropolitan Toronto in the 2001 census included Canadian, 18.5 percent; English, 16.9 percent; Scottish, 11.1 percent; Irish, 10.5 percent; Chinese, 9.4 percent; Italian, 9.2 percent; East Indian, 7.4 percent; French, 4.7 percent; German, 4.7 percent; Portuguese, 3.7 percent; Polish, 3.6 percent; Jewish, 3.5 percent; Jamaican, 3.2 percent; and Filipino, 3.0 percent.

IV

Education and Culture in Toronto

Toronto is the cultural center of Ontario and of English-speaking Canada. Three public universities serve the region. The renowned University of Toronto (founded in 1827) has a central campus and two suburban campuses, one in the city of Mississauga and another to the east in Scarborough within the City of Toronto. Near the northern edge of the city is York University (1959), a large research and teaching institution. In the central area are Ryerson Polytechnic University (1948) and the Ontario College of Art (1876). Several community colleges operate on scattered campuses. High schools and elementary schools are placed throughout residential areas.

The Art Gallery of Ontario is located near the downtown. It has a large collection of sculptures by British artist Henry Moore and paintings by the Group of Seven, prominent Canadian artists from the 1920s. The Ontario Science Centre in North York, the region’s principal science museum, and the Royal Ontario Museum on Queen’s Park, one of North America’s finest institutions for art and archaeology, are popular with young people interested in the natural and artificial wonders of the world. Among other cultural facilities in Toronto are McLaughlin Planetarium; Massey Hall (1894), a concert hall; Roy Thomson Hall, home of the noted Toronto Symphony Orchestra; and Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, home of the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada.

Toronto’s major theaters include the Princess of Wales, the Royal Alexandra, and the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. Toronto also has many off-Broadway-type small theaters. Theatergoers from the Great Lakes region board buses to see productions in Toronto. The Toronto International Film Festival, held for two weeks every September, is one of the best-attended film festivals in the world and has become an important source for discovery of new films by motion-picture distribution companies.

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