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City of Toronto
City of Toronto Life
http://www.nationalgeographic.com
Ottawa may be the nation’s capital, but Toronto is the epicenter of Canada’s financial
and commercial life, and, as far as Anglo-Canada is concerned, its cultural life, too.
Following its latest (1997) amalgamation with outlying municipalities, Toronto has
become North America’s fourth largest city, its dynamism proclaimed by its splendid
cluster of downtown skyscrapers, its aspirations indicated by the immensely tall CN
tower. Despite its great size, it’s a livable city, with clean and relatively safe
public spaces, cohesive neighborhoods, every imaginable kind of shopping and
entertainment opportunity, lakeside amenities, and other green spaces. Some of the
country’s finest museums and galleries are here, too, most notably the Art Gallery of
Ontario and the magnificent Royal Ontario Museum (207 Queens Quay West, +1 416 203 2500 or 800 363 1990).
Apart from the lakeside, there seem to be few natural features to compete with the dominance of man-made structures: To the north of downtown, the ancient shoreline of the prehistoric ancestor of Lake Ontario is marked by a ridge that makes a site for prestige houses, but otherwise Toronto is flat. However, threading through the built-up area is a network of wooded ravines carved out by streams, such as the Don, that flow south into the lake, an asset described as equivalent to Venice’s canals and San Francisco’s hills.
The first European to visit the site of present-day Toronto seems to have been the Frenchman Étienne Brulé who came here in 1615 along an old native trail from Lake Huron, later used by English and Dutch fur traders from New York. In the early 18th century, the French built a fort to interfere with this trade, but it was abandoned in 1759. In the late 18th century, British interest in the area was boosted by the arrival of Loyalists who settled along the shore of Lake Ontario; in 1794 the choice of a capital of newly created Upper Canada finally fell on Toronto, renamed York in honor of George III’s second son (the native name Toronto was reinstated in 1834, when it was incorporated as a city).
Well into the 19th century, growth was slow, and the little frontier settlement seems to have deserved the derisive epithet of “Muddy York.” But it was as if the inhabitants were aware of the place’s destiny; the sacking of the town by the Americans during the War of 1812 was soon made good, and the attempt by Kingston to usurp York’s capital city status was beaten off. For many years, a tightly knit group of mostly British merchants (collectively known as the Family Compact) dominated government and social life as well as commerce, and made quite sure that the bulk of Upper Canada’s trade passed through their hands.
When the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, Toronto no longer had to rely on Montreal as a port of entry but could use New York, the beginnings of an American tie which has remained important ever since. As Ontario developed throughout the 19th century, Toronto became the natural focus for its agricultural products, its industry, and its commerce. The violence and disorder of the Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 was seen as a disgraceful interruption of the city’s stately progress, based on virtue as much as effort. Muddy York metamorphosed into “Toronto the Good,” a sternly Protestant town of moral rectitude and the strictest Sunday observance.
Only in the mid-20th century was its utterly Anglo-Saxon ethos diluted, as immigrants arrived, first from northern, then from southern Europe, then from all around the world. Today’s Toronto has a population of striking diversity, visible over the city as a whole, and not just in the lively neighborhoods with their distinctive Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Indian, and Chinese communities.
No visit to Toronto is complete if just the center and the lakefront are explored. Among the inner suburbs, choose from Yorkville (once hippy, now just hip), Corso Italia on St. Clair Street, Chinatown between the University of Toronto and Spadina Avenue, or Kensington Market, the arrival point for many of the successive waves of migrants, once Jewish, then Portuguese, now predominantly Caribbean. The inner city is served by excellent public transportation (Visitor information, +1 416 393 4636), but to reach some of the many attractions in the outer suburbs or beyond, it may pay to rent a car.
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