Toronto

Toronto, Ontario’s capital, is Canada’s biggest city. It sits on a harbour along Lake Ontario’s northwestern shore. With a 2021 census count of 2,794,356, it ranks as North America’s fourth most populous city, trailing only Mexico City, New York City, and Los Angeles. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) includes Toronto itself plus four surrounding regions—Peel, York, Durham, and Halton—totaling 6,712,341 people.

A slightly different definition, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), counts 7,106,379 residents. The city is a global hub for business, finance, arts, sports, and culture, widely seen as one of the world’s most multicultural and cosmopolitan places. Indigenous peoples have lived on this broad, sloping plateau—cut by rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest—for over 10,000 years. After the disputed Toronto Purchase, in which the Mississaugas ceded the area to the British Crown, the British founded the town of York in 1793, later making it the capital of Upper Canada.

During the War of 1812, the Battle of York left the town heavily damaged and under American occupation for two weeks. Renamed and incorporated as the City of Toronto in 1834, it became Ontario’s capital at Confederation in 1867. Through annexation and amalgamation, the city has expanded beyond its original borders to its current area of 631 km² as of 1998. Toronto’s population reflects its long-standing role as a top destination for immigrants.

Roughly half its residents were born outside Canada, and over 200 ethnic origins are represented. Though most Torontonians speak English as their first language, more than 160 languages are used across the city. Governance falls to Toronto City Council, a unicameral body elected every four years. It comprises 25 councillors, each representing a geographic ward, plus the mayor, who acts as council head and the municipal government’s chief executive.

As Canada’s largest financial centre, Toronto hosts the Toronto Stock Exchange, the de facto operational headquarters of the country’s five biggest banks, and the head offices of many major Canadian and multinational corporations. Its economy is highly diversified, with strengths in technology, design, financial services, life sciences, education, arts, fashion, aerospace, environmental innovation, food services, and tourism. The city is a major hub for music, theatre, film, television, and digital media production, housing the headquarters of Canada’s key national broadcasters and media outlets.

Its cultural institutions—including museums, galleries, festivals, public events, entertainment districts, national historic sites, and sports venues—draw over 26 million visitors annually. Etymology The name Toronto appears in various French and English spellings, such as Tarento, Tarontha, Taronto, Toranto, Torento, Toronto, and Toronton. The early spelling Taronto referred to “The Narrows,” a channel where Lake Simcoe drains into Lake Couchiching.

There, the Wendat planted tree saplings to corral fish at what is now the Mnjikaning Fish Weirs site in Orillia. The Mohawk called this narrows tkaronto, meaning “where there are trees standing in the water,” recorded as early as 1615 by Samuel de Champlain. The word toronto, meaning “plenty,” also appears in a 1632 French lexicon of the Wendat language, another Iroquoian tongue. French maps used Toronto for various locations, including Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe, and several rivers.

A portage route from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron through this point, the “Toronto Carrying-Place Trail,” popularized the name. History Early history Archaeological sites show human occupation in what would become Toronto dating back thousands of years. The Wendat, an Iroquoian-speaking agricultural people, lived and farmed the territory for centuries before European contact, until the Haudenosaunee—another Iroquoian-speaking agricultural group from south of Lake Ontario—invaded and massacred them between 1648 and 1650.

By the 1660s, the Haudenosaunee had established two villages within present-day Toronto: Ganatsekwyagon (Bead Hill) on the Rouge River and Teiaiagon on the Humber River. By 1701, the Mississaugas, an Anishinaabe-speaking hunter-gatherer people from Northern Ontario, displaced the Haudenosaunee, who abandoned the Toronto area at the end of the Beaver Wars, most returning to their homeland in what is now New York state. French traders built Fort Rouillé in 1750 (later the site of the Exhibition grounds) but abandoned it in 1759 during the Seven Years’ War.

The British defeated the French and their Indigenous allies, and the area became part of the British colony of Quebec in 1763. During the American Revolutionary War, British settlers arrived as United Empire Loyalists fled north of Lake Ontario. The Crown granted them land to compensate for losses in the Thirteen Colonies. The new province of Upper Canada needed a capital.

In 1787, British Lord Dorchester arranged the Toronto Purchase with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, securing over a quarter-million acres (1,000 km²) in the Toronto area.