Toronto

People have lived on this broad plateau of rivers and ravines for more than 10,000 years. By the 1660s the Haudenosaunee had two villages here, Teiaiagon on the Humber River and Ganatsekwyagon on the Rouge; by 1701 the Mississaugas, an Anishinaabe people, had displaced them. The French built a trading post, Fort Rouillé, in 1750 and abandoned it in 1759. In 1787 the British arranged the Toronto Purchase with the Mississaugas, a transfer of more than 1,000 square kilometres that remains widely disputed, and in 1793 Governor John Graves Simcoe founded the town of York on the land, moving the capital of Upper Canada here from Newark, today's Niagara-on-the-Lake.

American forces captured and plundered York in 1813 during the War of 1812. In 1834 the town was incorporated as the City of Toronto, taking back its Indigenous name, with the reformer William Lyon Mackenzie as first mayor; refugees from slavery in the American South were already arriving. Railways and industry followed, and for a century the city was so dominated by the Protestant Orange Order that it was called the "Belfast of Canada". The Great Fire of 1904 destroyed a large part of downtown, and Hurricane Hazel killed 81 people in the Toronto area in 1954.

After the Second World War, immigration from Europe, then from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa, transformed the city, and by the 1980s it had overtaken Montreal as Canada's largest. In 1998 Metropolitan Toronto and its six municipalities were merged into a single city. Toronto hosted WorldPride in 2014, the Pan American Games in 2015, and matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Toronto's culture is defined by its mix. About half of its residents were born outside Canada, more than 200 ethnic origins are represented and over 160 languages are spoken. Neighbourhoods such as Chinatown, Greektown on the Danforth, Little Italy and Koreatown grew around earlier waves of immigrants, and the Toronto Caribbean Carnival — Caribana — has grown since 1967 into a summer festival drawing well over a million people to its parade.

The city is the centre of English Canada's media, publishing and theatre, and one of the largest film and television production centres in North America, sharing the nickname "Hollywood North" with Vancouver; its streets often stand in for New York or Chicago on screen. The Toronto International Film Festival, founded in 1976, fills the city every September, and its audience award has become a pointer to the Oscars. Pride Week in late June is one of the largest LGBTQ+ festivals in the world.

Hockey comes first in sport. The Maple Leafs are one of the NHL's Original Six clubs, with 13 Stanley Cups, and the Hockey Hall of Fame has been in Toronto since 1958; the Blue Jays play baseball beside the CN Tower. The city's ravines, islands and lakeshore are much loved as an escape from the towers.

Toronto had about 2.8 million people at the 2021 census, making it the fourth-largest city in North America, and its census metropolitan area about 6.2 million. Growth has been fast: Statistics Canada estimated that the city added about 143,000 people in the year to July 2024, then recorded a small fall the following year.

Bay Street is Canada's Wall Street. The Toronto Stock Exchange and the headquarters of all five of the country's largest banks are here, along with insurers, media companies such as Bell Media and Rogers, technology firms and a large film industry. Factories and warehouses have moved to the suburbs around Pearson Airport and in Peel and York regions. Housing affordability is the defining local issue, and condominium towers have risen across downtown and along the transit lines.

The city is a patchwork of neighbourhoods: Victorian and Edwardian houses in Cabbagetown, The Annex and Rosedale, high-rise condominiums downtown, and the post-war suburbs of Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough, each with its own centre. Most people commute by subway, streetcar, GO train or car. Life moves outdoors in summer, to the Islands, the beaches and patios, and underground in winter, when the PATH links many downtown buildings.

Toronto's food is its immigrants' food. Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants line Chinatown's streets, Greek tavernas the Danforth, Italian cafés Little Italy and Corso Italia, Korean restaurants Koreatown on Bloor Street, and the city also has Portuguese, Hungarian, Japanese, Caribbean, South Asian and many other kitchens.

The one dish the city claims as its own is the peameal bacon sandwich. Peameal bacon is lean, boneless pork loin, wet-cured and unsmoked, then rolled in cornmeal — originally ground yellow peas, which gave it the name — and the Toronto pork packer William Davies, who came from England in 1854, is credited with developing it. Sliced, fried and piled on a Kaiser roll, it is most associated with St. Lawrence Market, the city's public market since 1803.

Kensington Market's food shops, bakeries and cafés and the Saturday farmers' market at St. Lawrence are the classic places to shop and graze. Ontario contributes butter tarts, and wine and icewine from the Niagara Peninsula, a short trip away.