🇨🇦 Canada · Ontario and the Great Lakes region
Toronto is Canada's great metropolis: a vertical, dynamic and astonishingly diverse city, looking out on the vast Lake Ontario and crowned by the silhouette of the CN Tower, for decades the tallest free-standing structure in the world. But what defines Toronto is not only its skyline of glass towers, it is its people: it is one of the most multicultural cities on the planet, a mosaic of neighbourhoods where cultures from every corner of the earth live side by side and mix. Walking its streets means passing, within a few blocks, from a bustling Chinatown to a Little Italy of trattorias, from a hippie, colourful Kensington Market to an elegant Yorkville.
It is a city for walking, eating and looking. It has first-rate museums such as the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, historic markets like the St. Lawrence, the charming, pedestrian Distillery District with its Victorian cobbled streets, and a renewed waterfront from where the ferries leave for the Toronto Islands, that green refuge with beaches and perfect views of the skyline. And it is, of course, a city crazy about sport: hockey is almost a religion, and the Hockey Hall of Fame is here.
This guide covers the essentials of Toronto with a practical, warm eye: how to go up the CN Tower, which neighbourhoods to walk, where to eat in its multicultural food scene, how to get around on public transport and how to use it as a base for Niagara Falls. Toronto does not sell itself with a single postcard: you discover it neighbourhood by neighbourhood, and it almost always surprises you.
Toronto's history begins long before the Europeans: the area was inhabited for millennia by Indigenous peoples, and the name 'Toronto' comes from a word with Iroquoian/Mohawk roots linked to 'where there are trees in the water', referring to the Lake Simcoe area. The region was an important crossing point between the Great Lakes, the so-called Toronto Carrying-Place Trail. In the 18th century the French set up a trading post (Fort Rouillé), but it was the British who, after the American Revolution, founded the settlement of York in 1793, the future capital of Upper Canada, driven by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. During the War of 1812, American troops took and burned York in 1813. In 1834, the city was reincorporated under its current name, Toronto. Through the 19th and 20th centuries it grew with successive waves of immigration — Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Greek, Portuguese and, later, communities from all over the world — that made it the multicultural city it is today. In the 20th century it consolidated its position as the country's financial centre, overtaking Montreal, and in 1976 the CN Tower opened. In 1998 six municipalities merged into today's Toronto 'megacity'. It is now the fourth largest city in North America. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Canada's economic and demographic heart: land of the Iroquoian and Algonquian nations, refuge of the Loyalists, cradle of Upper Canada and the country's industrial engine, home to Toronto, to the national capital Ottawa and to Niagara Falls.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before any city existed, the region where Toronto stands today was inhabited for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples. The area, on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario, was a natural crossroads: the so-called Toronto Carrying-Place Trail ran through here, an old portage route connecting Lake Ontario with Lake Huron and Georgian Bay by way of the Humber and Holland rivers. That route let Indigenous peoples cross southern Ontario while avoiding the lower Great Lakes, and it made this a strategic point for trade and travel.
Over the centuries, different peoples occupied or passed through the region: the Huron-Wendat, the Iroquois peoples and, later, the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) nation, who were living in the area when the Europeans arrived. For all of them, the Lake Ontario region was territory rich in game, fish and travel routes.
The city's own name carries that heritage. 'Toronto' comes from a word with Iroquoian roots (often linked to the Mohawk 'tkaronto'), which would mean something like 'where there are trees standing in the water' or 'place of trees in the water', and originally referred to an area of what is now Lake Simcoe, where stakes were driven in for fishing. Over time, that place name migrated south on the maps until it attached itself to the settlement beside Lake Ontario that we know today as Toronto.
The first stable European presence in the area was French. In the mid-18th century, in the thick of the rivalry with the British over control of the fur trade and the Great Lakes, the French set up posts in the region. The most important was Fort Rouillé (also known as Fort Toronto), built around 1750-1751 on what is now the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, beside the lake. It was a small trading fort that the French themselves burned down in 1759, during the French and Indian War, as they withdrew before the British advance.
After the British conquest of New France, the region passed to the British Empire. The great push to found a city came after the American Revolution: thousands of people loyal to the British Crown (the United Empire Loyalists) fled the new United States northwards, and Britain needed to organize and settle its territories north of the Great Lakes. In 1791 the province of Upper Canada was created, and its first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, looked for a well-protected capital, far from the American border.
In 1793, Simcoe founded the settlement of York on the shore of Toronto Bay, choosing it for its sheltered natural harbour and its defensive position. He named it York in honour of the Duke of York, the king's son, and made it the capital of Upper Canada. York was born as a small colonial town, wryly nicknamed 'Muddy York' for its mud-covered streets, but it was destined to grow.
The young capital of Upper Canada had its baptism of fire during the War of 1812, the conflict between the British Empire (and its North American colonies) and the newly independent United States. York, as the provincial capital, became a military target despite its modest size.
In April 1813, in what is known as the Battle of York, American forces landed and took the town after defeating the British garrison. As they withdrew, the defenders blew up the fort's powder magazine, causing many casualties among the attackers. In reprisal and during the occupation, American troops looted and burned several public buildings in York, including those of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada.
This episode had consequences that went far beyond little York. The burning of York's government buildings is considered one of the motivations for the later British reprisal of 1814, when imperial troops burned public buildings in Washington, including the presidential residence. For York, the war left a lesson in its own vulnerability, but it also strengthened loyalty to the Crown and a sense of separate identity from the neighbour to the south, a trait that would mark the political culture of the future Canada.
In 1834, the growing settlement of York was officially incorporated as a city and took back its Indigenous-rooted name: it became Toronto. Its first mayor was William Lyon Mackenzie, a combative figure who a few years later, in 1837, would lead the failed Upper Canada Rebellion, a rising against the colony's oligarchic government (the so-called 'Family Compact') which, though defeated, pushed through reforms towards more representative government.
Through the 19th century, Toronto grew steadily as the commercial, financial and transport centre of southern Ontario, driven by the railway, the port and industry. But what shaped its character most deeply were the successive waves of immigration. First came the Irish, in large numbers after the Great Famine in the middle of the 19th century; then Italians, Eastern European Jews, Chinese, Greeks, Portuguese and Ukrainians, among many others.
Each community left its mark on whole neighbourhoods — Chinatown, Little Italy, Greektown, the Jewish quarter of Kensington — that still define the city's cultural map today. For much of its history, Toronto was a city with a strong British and Protestant stamp (it was nicknamed 'Toronto the Good'), but immigration slowly turned it into one of the most diverse places on the planet. That mix, far from diluting, became its greatest pride and the basis of its multicultural identity.
Through the 20th century, Toronto cemented its position as Canada's great economic centre. Over the decades, and especially from the sixties and seventies onwards, it displaced Montreal as the country's financial capital. Several factors combined: the industrial growth of southern Ontario, the concentration of banks and companies, and also the political and linguistic tensions in Quebec, which led many corporate head offices to move from Montreal to Toronto. The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) became the most important in Canada.
The boom showed in the skyline. Downtown filled with bank and office towers, and in 1976 the work that would become the symbol of the city and the country opened: the CN Tower, at 553 metres, for decades the tallest free-standing structure in the world. Toronto also developed one of the most used public transport networks in North America (the TTC, with its subway opened in 1954) and the enormous PATH underground pedestrian network, designed to cope with the harsh winters.
In 1998, the six municipalities of the metropolitan area (Toronto, North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, York and East York) merged into a single large city, the Toronto 'megacity' that exists today. With more than six million people in its metropolitan area, Toronto ranks among the largest cities in North America. To its financial profile it added a growing cultural prominence: the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), born in 1976, is today one of the most prestigious in the world, and the city is a hub for film, television, theatre and music.
The Toronto of the 21st century is the culmination of all that history: a global metropolis, prosperous and, above all, deeply diverse. More than half of its residents were born outside Canada, and more than 150 languages are spoken on its streets, which makes it, according to numerous rankings, one of the most multicultural cities on the planet. Far from the 'melting pot' model that assimilates newcomers, Toronto embodies the Canadian ideal of multiculturalism, where different communities keep their identity and live side by side in a mosaic.
That diversity is lived in the ethnic neighbourhoods, in the astonishing variety of food, in the festivals that fill the calendar (from the Caribbean Caribana to each community's celebrations) and in the open, tolerant character of the city. Toronto is also a cultural capital: home to great museums (the ROM, the AGO), to TIFF, to a vibrant theatre and music scene, and to sports teams the country is passionate about, such as the Maple Leafs (hockey), the Raptors (basketball, NBA champions in 2019) and the Blue Jays (baseball).
Economically, it is still Canada's engine: a financial, technology and services centre, with a skyline that keeps growing. For the traveller, all this adds up to a city you cannot grasp from a single image, only by walking it neighbourhood by neighbourhood, trying its cuisines and letting its mix of cultures surprise you. Toronto shows that diversity, properly understood, can be a city's greatest wealth.