Toronto

V

Recreation

On the central waterfront is Harbourfront, a redeveloped industrial region containing the Canadian Railway Museum and the Marine Museum, several restaurants, and pedestrian walkways along the water’s edge. Across the bay are the Toronto Islands, a favorite playground. Exhibition Park on the western lakeshore hosts the annual , one of the largest fairs in the world. Caribana is a major Caribbean music and costume festival held there every August. Adjoining the exhibition grounds is Ontario Place, an extensive entertainment park. Also in the vicinity is old Fort York, which still looks substantially as it did when it was rebuilt after American forces burned it in 1813 during the War of 1812. About 3 km (about 2 mi) northwest of City Hall, on the brow of Davenport hill, is Casa Loma, an imposing European-style castle that is now a museum. In the far northeast side of the City is the Toronto Zoo, a modern zoo covering many acres and with well-designed animal displays.

Originally known as the SkyDome, the Rogers Centre is a state-of-the-art stadium complex that opened in 1989. The stadium features a retractable roof that can open in 20 minutes to expose the playing field and most of the 50,000 seats to the open air. It is the home of the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League and the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball. The Blue Jays, winners of the 1992 and 1993 World Series, were the first non-U.S. team to win professional baseball's championship. In 1999 the Air Canada Centre opened as the home for the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association and the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League. The Hockey Hall of Fame is in downtown Toronto.

VI

Economy

Toronto’s economy has changed over the past several decades, with financial and business services becoming the largest sector. Included in this sector are banks, stock markets, insurance, advertising, marketing, accounting firms, and law firms. Toronto ranks third on the continent, behind New York City and Chicago, Illinois, in the number of major corporations that have their head offices there.

Toronto is the leading printing and publishing center of English-speaking Canada and also has more software production companies than other parts of Canada. One of the community colleges, Sheridan College in Oakville, has a well-known training program for animators. In distribution services, Toronto is the chief Canadian center for telecommunications, broadcasting, and air transport. Government and other public services, notably health and education, are major employers.

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Manufacturing, once a mainstay of the diverse economy, receded somewhat in the 1990s. Automobile parts and assembly at the same time became a stronger component of the manufacturing sector, and the Toronto region’s importance in this field is second only to that of Detroit. Cars and trucks are Canada’s most valuable export, and the auto manufacturer General Motors is the largest industrial employer. Another large employer is Northern Telecom, a major world producer of telecommunications equipment. De Havilland Aircraft produces commuter aircraft, and the area also has a number of aircraft parts producers. Construction, once a strong element in the Toronto economy, declined in the 1990s.

Manufacturing and other fields have been helped by relatively cheap electrical energy provided by Ontario Power Generation. Power for Toronto was originally generated in steam plants and later at Niagara Falls. Natural gas and oil pipelines connect the region to the sources of these resources in western Canada.

Within the city, the Toronto Transit Commission operates subways, buses, and streetcars. The streetcars are preserved on certain downtown routes as a link to the city’s past and are a distinctive feature of Toronto. Municipalities outside Toronto operate their own bus services that link to the Toronto system. The Government of Ontario (GO) system also deploys commuter trains and buses within the metropolitan area outside Toronto.

By air, Toronto is served by Lester B. Pearson International Airport, located to the west in Mississauga. It is the largest airport in Canada. Some short-takeoff-and-landing commercial commuter aircraft operate from the island airport downtown.

Although passenger rail traffic is far less than in the early years of the 20th century, VIA Rail transports passengers to Montréal and Ottawa several times a day. Daily trains run to New York City and Chicago and, on the Transcontinental line, to Vancouver, British Columbia. The Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways serve Toronto with freight facilities, including intermodal yards where truck trailers are loaded on rail cars for transport. The railways also haul automobiles from several plants in the area (at Oshawa, Oakville, Brampton, and Alliston) to Canadian and American markets. Toronto’s harbor receives modest traffic through the St. Lawrence Seaway.

VII

Government

The provincial government has power over the six municipalities. At crucial times it has exercised power to reshape local administration. Provincial legislation created the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, or Metro, on January 1, 1954. It included the municipality of Toronto and five surrounding suburban municipalities: the cities of North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, York, and East York. The second metropolitan regional government on the continent (New York City was the first in 1898), it became a model for other urban consolidations.

Metro had much greater powers than a county: It was responsible for police, sewage and waste disposal, public housing, major social services, a central library, and the financing of education. It also sold water to local municipalities, which then sold it to homes and businesses. Inside Metro, the Toronto Transit Commission operated the extensive public transit system, including subways. Local road maintenance, trash collection, maintenance of local parks and recreational areas, tax collection, and fire protection were the responsibilities of the local municipalities.

On January 1, 1998, the Ontario government legislated that all six municipalities within Metro would amalgamate into one City of Toronto. The new city is governed by a city council of more than 50 members, including the mayor. The former municipalities each have a community council composed of councilors within their boundaries, but these councils have very limited powers.

In the 1980s the provincial government defined another level of governmental coordination, called the Greater Toronto Area or GTA, which includes Toronto. At about 7,200 sq km (about 2,800 sq mi) and a population of more than 4.6 million, the GTA includes most of the Toronto CMA, the neighboring Oshawa CMA, and part of Hamilton CMA. Outside Metro, there were four regional governments containing 24 municipalities. A task force chartered by the province issued a report in 1996 called the Golden Report that recommended creating a strong GTA-wide governing body to deal with regional issues. The Toronto Area Services Board has responsibility for GO Transit, the commuter rail and bus service serving a wide area.

VIII

Quality-of-Life Issues

In Toronto, neighborhood residents have long banded together in residents associations. In the postwar era they have resisted the pressure—created by rapid growth—to redevelop the central city and build expressways. The residents elected politicians who were committed to preserving the old housing stock in the city. These politicians also started housing projects that mixed middle-class and low-income people. Streetcars remained on many streets.

Although high-rise office buildings shot up in the downtown, as did many apartment blocks in older residential areas, restrictions on marginal development have maintained high population densities in the inner city. Toronto’s strong public transit system has also helped inner-city residents of all income levels to continue living where they prefer. The quality of life in the inner city is thus higher than in most American cities.

IX

History

The Toronto Passage, as it was known, was described in 1615 by explorer Étienne Brûlé and was used as an overland shortcut between Lakes Ontario and Huron. The word Toronto is thought to be derived from the Huron term for place of meeting. Well known to French fur traders, the location became the site of a French garrison, Fort Rouillé, in the mid-18th century. The fort was burned in 1759 during the British conquest of Canada. The British government bought the land by Toronto Bay from the indigenous Mississauga people in 1787 and founded the town of York there in 1793 as the capital of the new province of Upper Canada (now Ontario). The first settlers were British officials and merchants.

Through the activities of these early settlers, the town emerged as a transportation hub and commercial center. In 1813, during the War of 1812, it was occupied briefly by U.S. troops. The settlement benefited from the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and from the arrival of railroads in the mid-19th century. In 1834 York was incorporated as a city and renamed Toronto.

Toronto’s first mayor, Scotsman William Lyon Mackenzie, rallied the group of settlers against the group of aristocrats, known as the Family Compact, which ruled the province in the early 19th century. When he failed to break its power by parliamentary methods, he tried to seize Toronto by force in the Rebellions of 1837. He attracted only a few hundred rebels to his side, and Canada’s only armed revolt led by English-speaking Canadians soon failed.

As the chief city in Ontario, Toronto grew to about 80,000 by 1880. Growth was the result of an expanding commercial agriculture and the harvesting of hardwood and softwood lumber used in the construction of cities and towns.

Between 1883 and 1889 and again between 1905 and 1912, when its population reached nearly 500,000, Toronto annexed parts of York Township and other incorporated places. By then it had nearly caught up to Montréal in population and economic importance for Canada. Rapid growth over the three decades or so after 1880 was the result of growth in manufacturing, much of it of high value, largely for the Canadian market. Farm implements were important. Around 1900, American branch plants, like those of the General Electric Company, contributed to the city’s growth. Rapid growth was also a consequence of mining in northern Ontario, much of it to supply American industry. Hydroelectricity from Niagara Falls began to supplant coal imported from Pennsylvania. Employment opportunities attracted young people from the countryside and many immigrants, most of whom, in that period, came from England and Scotland.

After 1913 metropolitan population growth slowed, but when World War II (1939-1945) began, Toronto became a major supplier of military goods. The creation of Metro was a consequence of rapid growth after 1940: By 1953 the population of the Metro area had reached 1.2 million. In the booming decade of the 1950s, under Chairman Frederick Gardiner, Metro directed development and planning in an orderly fashion. At the beginning Metro was composed of 13 municipalities, including the City of Toronto and neighboring towns, villages, and townships. In 1967 the 13 were combined into 6 municipalities.

In 1965 the Autopact agreement between the United States and Canada opened the way for Canadian auto plants to produce automobiles for sale in the United States as well as in Canada. A further major reason for growth was continued mining in northern Ontario and elsewhere to supply the military buildup of the Cold War, a period of hostility between the world’s Communist and non-Communist powers. Toronto partly financed the rapidly expanding oil and gas industry in Alberta and its neighboring provinces. From 1940 to 1975 Toronto had one of the most rapidly growing regional economies on the continent.

By 1971 Toronto’s regional population had reached 2.2 million people, and downtown Toronto had surpassed Montréal as the financial center of Canada. In fact, the large Montréal banks moved many of their key operations to Toronto during this time. By the late 20th century Toronto had more head offices of manufacturing, mining, and service companies than any other city in Canada. Its stock exchange far overshadowed others in Canada, and its market in mining stocks was the biggest on the continent.

Today Toronto is a cosmopolitan city with a diverse population and an international flavor. In the early 21st century more than 5 million people lived in the greater metropolitan area. The city remains a major financial and cultural center for Canada and attracts visitors from all over the world.