Timeline of Toronto

The lake and the first people. As the glaciers retreat, the shoreline of glacial Lake Iroquois forms the escarpment that still runs across the middle of Toronto. People follow the ice north.

Wendat villages. Substantial longhouse settlements are established across the region, including at what is now the Toronto area. Later, the Haudenosaunee and then the Mississaugas hold the territory.

The French trading post. Magasin Royal is established near the mouth of the Humber, on the Carrying Place portage route to the upper Great Lakes.

Fort Rouillé. The French build a fortified post on what is now the Exhibition grounds. They burn it themselves in 1759 as the British advance.

The Toronto Purchase. The Crown acquires land from the Mississaugas in a transaction with a blank deed and unclear boundaries. It is disputed for 223 years and settled in 2010 for $145 million.

Simcoe founds York. John Graves Simcoe establishes the capital of Upper Canada here and builds a garrison at Fort York. The town is small, remote and famously waterlogged.

The Battle of York. An American force takes the town and burns the parliament buildings. The retreating British blow the grand magazine, killing dozens. Britain cites the burning when it burns Washington in 1814.

The first newspaper war. William Lyon Mackenzie founds the Colonial Advocate. Three years later a Tory mob throws his printing press into the harbour, and the damages he wins make him a political force.

The City of Toronto. York is incorporated as a city and renamed. Mackenzie becomes its first mayor.

The Upper Canada Rebellion. Mackenzie leads an armed march down Yonge Street against the colonial oligarchy. It fails within days and he flees to the United States.

The Great Fire. Much of the market district burns, including the cathedral. St Lawrence Hall is built on the site the following year.

The Underground Railroad. Toronto is a terminus for people escaping slavery in the United States. The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada meets at St Lawrence Hall; Frederick Douglass speaks there.

Confederation. Toronto becomes the capital of the new province of Ontario.

Toronto the Good. Mayor William Howland’s reform administration entrenches strict Sunday observance and temperance. The nickname sticks for eighty years.

The Chinese head tax. Canada imposes a levy on Chinese immigrants alone, rising to $500 by 1903. Full exclusion follows in 1923 and is not repealed until 1947.

Massey Hall opens. Hart Massey’s memorial to his son opens with Handel’s Messiah, and the acoustic makes it one of the great concert rooms of North America.

The Queen’s Park legislature. Ontario’s parliament building opens in Richardsonian Romanesque, on the site of a former asylum.

Old City Hall. E. J. Lennox’s courthouse and city hall opens after a decade. Refused permission to sign it, he carves his own face into the gargoyles.

The Great Fire of 1904. Fourteen hectares of the downtown commercial district burn in a single night. Nobody dies; the building codes are tightened afterwards.

The Prince Edward Viaduct. The bridge across the Don Valley opens with a lower deck for a subway that will not arrive for 48 years — an insistence of the engineer Roland Harris that saves an enormous sum later.

The Christie Pits riot. A swastika banner displayed at a baseball game triggers six hours of street fighting between Jewish and Anglo youths. It is the largest riot in the city’s history.

Japanese Canadian internment. Canada interns its Japanese-Canadian citizens and confiscates their property. Many resettle in Toronto after the war; redress comes in 1988.

The subway, and Hurricane Hazel. Canada’s first subway opens under Yonge Street in March. In October, Hurricane Hazel kills 81 people, and building in the floodplains is banned — which is why Toronto still has its ravines.

Caribana, and the points system. The Caribbean community stages a carnival as a centennial gift to Canada. The same year, Canada replaces racial immigration criteria with a points system.

Official multiculturalism. Canada becomes the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as official policy.

The Spadina Expressway is stopped. After a campaign including Jane Jacobs, who had moved to Toronto from New York, the province cancels an expressway that would have been driven through the city centre.

The Islands fight begins. Metro Toronto moves to clear the last island homes. Residents resist for two decades and secure 99-year leases in 1993.

The CN Tower. Built to solve a television reception problem, it is the tallest freestanding structure in the world for 32 years.

SkyDome. The first stadium with a fully retractable roof opens beside the tower. It is renamed Rogers Centre in 2005.

Amalgamation. The province merges Toronto with five surrounding municipalities against a referendum in which 76 per cent voted no. The city’s motto becomes Diversity Our Strength.

SARS. Toronto is the centre of the outbreak outside Asia; 44 people die and the WHO issues a travel advisory that costs the city a great deal.

The Crystal and the AGO. Libeskind’s extension to the ROM opens, followed a year later by Gehry’s transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario in the neighbourhood he grew up in.

The Toronto Purchase is settled. Canada pays the Mississaugas of the Credit $145 million to resolve a land claim dating from 1787.

Truth and Reconciliation. The Commission reports on the residential school system, which removed Indigenous children from their families for over a century.

Line 3 closes. The Scarborough RT is retired after 38 years, replaced by buses pending a subway extension. The Eglinton Crosstown remains unopened after more than a decade of construction.