History
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 Etienne Brule 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 Rouille . 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 Montreal 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 Quebec, as many of Montreal'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.
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