Situated on the slab of land
separating Lake Ontario and
Georgian Bay,
Toronto was
on one of the three early
portage routes to the northwest,
its name taken from the Huron
for "place of
meeting". The first
European to visit the district
was the French explorer Étienne
Brûlé in 1615, but it wasn't
until the middle of the
eighteenth century that the
French made a serious effort to
control the area with the
development of a simple
settlement and stockade,
Fort
Rouillé . The British
pushed the French from the
northern shore of Lake Ontario
in 1759, but then chose to
ignore the site for almost forty
years until the arrival of
hundreds of Loyalist settlers in
the aftermath of the American
Revolution.
In 1791 the British divided
their remaining American
territories into two, Upper and
Lower Canada, each with its own
legislative councils. The first
capital of Upper Canada was
Niagara-on-the-Lake, but this
was too near the American border
for comfort and the province's
new lieutenant-governor, John
Graves Simcoe , moved his
administration to the relative
safety of Toronto in 1793,
calling the new settlement York
. Simcoe had grand classical
visions of colonial settlement,
but even he was exasperated by
the conditions of frontier life
- "the city's site was
better calculated for a frog
pond ? than for the residence of
human beings". Soon
nicknamed "Muddy
York", the capital was
little more than a village when,
in 1812, the Americans attacked
and burnt the main buildings.
In the early nineteenth
century, effective economic and
political power lay in the hands
of an anglophilic oligarchy
christened the Family Compact
by the radical polemicists of
the day. Their most vociferous
opponent was a radical Scot, William
Lyon Mackenzie , who
promulgated his views both in
his newspaper, the Colonial
Advocate , and as a member
of the Legislative Assembly.
Mackenzie became the first mayor
of Toronto, as the town was
renamed in 1834, but the
radicals were defeated in the
elections two years later and a
frustrated Mackenzie drifted
towards the idea of armed
revolt. In 1837, he staged the Upper
Canadian insurrection , a
badly organized uprising of a
few hundred farmers, who marched
down Yonge Street, fought a
couple of half-hearted
skirmishes and then melted away.
Mackenzie fled across the border
and two of the other ringleaders
were executed, but the British
parliament, mindful of their
earlier experiences in New
England, moved to liberalize
Upper Canada's administration
instead of taking reprisals. In
1841, they granted Canada responsible
government , reuniting the
two provinces in a loose
confederation, pre-figuring the
final union of 1867 when Upper
Canada was redesignated Ontario.
Even Mackenzie was pardoned and
allowed to return, arguably
giving the lie to his portrayal
of the oligarchs as hard-faced
reactionaries; indeed, this same
privileged group had even pushed
progressive antislavery bills
through the legislature as early
as the 1830s.
By the end of the nineteenth
century Toronto had become a
major manufacturing centre
dominated by a conservative
mercantile elite who were
exceedingly loyal to British
interests and maintained a
strong Protestant tradition.
This elite was sustained by the
working-class Orange Lodges
, whose reactionary influence
was a key feature of municipal
politics - no wonder Charles
Dickens had been offended by the
city's "rabid Toryism".
That said, these same
Protestants were enthusiastic
about public education, just
like the Methodist-leaning
middle classes, who also
spearheaded social reform
movements, principally Suffrage
and Temperance. The trappings,
however, remained far from
alluring - well into the
twentieth century Sunday was
preserved as a "day of
rest" and Eaton's store
even drew its curtains to
prevent Sabbath window-shopping.
Indeed, for all its capital
status, the city was strikingly
provincial by comparison with
Montréal until the 1950s, when
the opening of the St
Lawrence Seaway in 1959 gave
the place a jolt and the first
wave of non-white immigrants
began to transform its
complexion. More recently,
Toronto was an indirect
beneficiary of the assertion of
francophone identity in Québec,
as many of Montréal's
anglophone-dominated financial
institutions and big businesses
transferred their operations
here. The boom that ensued
launched downtown property
values into the stratosphere -
but then came the crash of 1988,
which spread near panic amongst
developers. Since then, the
economy has been more sedate,
though many blame Governor
Harris and his conservative
cronies for the increase (and
increasingly obvious) degree of
poverty afflicting the city:
since 1980, the number of
Toronto families living below
the poverty line has quadrupled.
