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Ryerson Polytechnical Institute
Named after the Reverend Egerton Ryerson founder of the province's educational system, the Ryerson Institute of Technology was established in 1948 to provide technological education for post-secondary school students. The buildings and many staff members of the former Toronto Training and Re-establishment Institute for veterans, located on this site, were transferred to the new institute. Diploma courses were offered in various schools of technology, commerce and the applied arts, and the Institute rapidly became a... -
Major-General The Hon. Aeneas Shaw
Aeneas Shaw, a son of Angus, 9th Chief of Clan Ay, was born at Tordarroch, near Inverness, Scotland. A Loyalist, he served in the Queen's Rangers during the American Revolution, and later settled in what is now New Brunswick. Commissioned in the reorganized Queen's Rangers, he went to Quebec in 1792 and from there led the Rangers' first division to Upper Canada. The following year he settled at York (now Toronto) and later built a... -
Stanley Barracks 1841
The British army established a military post here in 1840-41 to replace aging Fort York. Known as the New Fort, it consisted of seven limestone buildings around a parade square, and a number of lesser structures. Massive defensive works were planned for the perimeter but never built. In 1893, the fort was renamed Stanley Barracks in honour of Governor Lord Stanley. Canadian forces assumed responsibility for the post in 1870 and garrisoned it until 1947. The barracks then served as public housing until the early 1950s, when all but this building, the Officers' Quarters, were demolished. -
Thomson Settlement, The
The first permanent resident in Scarborough Township was David Thomson, a Scot who came to Upper Canada with his brother Andrew in 1796. Each was granted 400 acres, and David built a log cabin on his property that year. He was soon joined by other settlers, including his brothers Andrew and Archibald. The Thomsons, who were stone masons, worked on the first Parliament Buildings at York (Toronto). A road connecting the settlement with York was... -
Corporal Frederick George Topham, V.C. 1917-1974
Toppy" Topham was a medical orderly with the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion when it parachuted behind enemy lines on March 24, 1945 during the Allied assault on the Rhine. As he tended to casualties, he saw two medical orderlies killed in succession while treating a paratrooper in the drop zone. Topham rescued their patient and, despite being shot through the nose, continued to clear wounded from the area before seeking treatment. While rejoining his company... -
Toronto General Hospital
This institution, the first general infirmary in Upper Canada, began operation in 1829. It was periodically hampered by administrative and financial difficulties, but through the initiative of the influential businessman, Joseph Flavelle, Chairman of the Board of Trustees (1904-21), services were reorganized and steps taken for the construction here of a new hospital. Designed by the firm of Darling & Pearson, it was begun in 1911 and officially opened two years later. Toronto General Hospital... -
Toronto Normal School
The Toronto Normal School, the first provincial institution for the systematic training of elementary schoolteachers, was established in 1847 through the initiative of the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Schools for Canada West. In 1852, the School was located in classical revival-style buildings designed for this site by F.W. Cumberland and Thomas Ridout. At first, the Normal School had to provide academic instruction for some poorly educated student-teachers but, increasingly, emphasis was placed on... -
Founding of Weston, The
Settlers were attracted to this vicinity in the 1790s by the area's rich timber resources and the water power potential of the Humber River here. By 1792 a sawmill was established on the west bank and within two decades a small hamlet, known as "The Humber", had developed. About 1815 James Farr, a prominent local mill-owner, named it Weston after his English ancestral home. The community subsequently expanded along both sides of the river until... -
Wycliffe College
This college was founded in 1877 to prepare men of evangelical conviction for the Anglican ministry. Four years earlier, a group of Anglican clergy and laity committed to evangelical principles had formed the Church Association of the Diocese of Toronto. The Association brought a noted theologian and administrator, the Reverend James Paterson Sheraton, from Nova Scotia to establish the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School and serve as its Principal and first Professor. It opened on October... -
Yonge Street 1796
The shortest route between the upper and lower Great Lakes lies between here and Georgian Bay. For John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada's first lieutenant-governor, this protected inland passage had strategic military and commercial potential. He founded York (Toronto) in 1793, then ordered a road built to replace native trails that led north to Lake Simcoe and its water links with Lake Huron. Completed on February 16, 1796, it was named after British Secretary for War... -
York Mills
In 1796, Thomas Mercer, a Loyalist, acquired some 200 acres of land in this vicinity. James Hogg, an enterprising Scottish emigrant, purchased part of this property about 1818 and built a grist-mill on the west branch of the Don River near here. In the 1820s, the mill became the nucleus of a small settlement known as Hogg's Hollow. The first St. John's Anglican Church (1817) was among the earliest built north of York. When the... -
Frederick Arthur Verner 1836-1928
Verner was born at Sheridan, Halton County, and educated at Guelph. In 1856 he went to England to study art. Returning to Toronto, he established his first studio in 1862. Like his older contemporary, Paul Kane, Verner travelled through the west, recording the life of the Plains Indians and painting the great buffalo herds. An early member of the Ontario Society of Artists, he was later elected to the Royal Canadian Academy. He lived in... -
Founding of Brampton, The
Chinguacousy Township, part of the Mississauga Indian tract, was surveyed in 1819. John Elliott, John Scott and William Buffy were early settlers here of a crossroads hamlet first known as Buffy's Corners. In 1834 Elliott laid out a village plot and by 1837 the community numbered 18 families. Elliott and William Lawson, a fellow native of Brampton, England, were influential in naming the village, which was incorporated in 1853, and in establishing a Primitive Methodist... -
Founding of Bolton, The
In 1821 George Bolton, an English immigrant purchased 200 acres of land here on the Humber River. Two years later in partnership with his uncle, James Bolton, one of Albion Township's earliest settlers, he erected a grist-mill. This provided the nucleus around which a community known as Bolton's Mills was established by 1830. A post office named "Albion" was opened in 1832. By 1850 the settlement contained a sawmill, stores, a woollen factory, tannery and... -
Government Inn 1798-1861
Near this site on the Credit River's eastern bank, the government of Upper Canada built a "post-house" or inn in 1798, for the use of persons travelling between york and such settlements as Niagara and Detroit. Constructed of dressed timber, it was for some seven years the only building between Etobicoke River and Burlington Beach. Local Mississauga Indians gathered here to trade salmon and furs. Here also they signe the Treaties of 1805 and 1818... -
Honourable Thomas Laird Kennedy 1878-1959, The
Born on a farm which included this site, Kennedy was educated locally and in Toronto, and became active in local politics. He served with distinction in the First World War, later attaining the rank of colonel in the militia. Elected in 1919 to the provincial parliament as a Conservative member for Peel, he retained this seat, with the exception of one term, until his death. A fruit grower most of his life, he was concerned... -
Frederic W. Cumberland 1820-1881
An outstanding Canadian architect, civil engineer and railway manager, Cumberland was born in England and practiced there before immigrating to Toronto in 1847. He quickly gained recognition, designing such notable buildings as St. James Cathedral (1850-53) and University College (1856-59), Toronto. In 1860 he completed this house, Pendarvis, in which he lived for 21 years. As an engineer, Cumberland became increasingly involved in railway construction and management, and after 1858 achieved wide prominence as managing... -
Archives of Ontario, The
In 1903, responding to public demands for an historical records repository, the Ontario government established a provincial archives under Alexander Fraser, a Toronto editor and historian. As first Archivist of Ontario, he initiated an ambitious acquisition program and began the publication of important documents in a valuable series of annual reports. The Archives Act of 1923 directed the transfer of inactive government records to the Archives and by 1934 it had developed as a major... -
Aurora Armoury
Built in 1874 as a drill shed for the 12th Battalion of Infantry or York Rangers, the Aurora Armoury was part of a network of defence training facilities for citizen soldiers. It evokes the larger stories and traditions of the province's militia regiments, recruited regionally, and possessing close affiliations with their communities of origin. The armoury was also the site of Edward Blake's famous "Aurora speech" of 1874, in which the prominent politician and former... -
Bay Queen Street Store, The
Department stores revolutionized shopping in the late nineteenth century by offering selection, low prices and money-back guarantees. In 1895, Robert Simpson commissioned architect Edmund Burke to design his new department store at the southwest corner of Yonge and Queen Streets. It was the first building in Canada with a load-bearing metal frame and a façade clearly patterned on this internal structure. By 1969, Simpson's department store had been enlarged six times and occupied two city... -
Colonel The Honourable Herbert Alexander Bruce, MD, LLD 1868-1963
Herbert Bruce was born at Blackstock in 1868, and grew up on a farm located on this Port Perry site. In 1893, he graduated in medicine from the University of Toronto. Specializing in surgery, he rose to the top of his profession, and in 1911 founded the Wellesley Hospital, Toronto. During the First World War, he was appointed Inspector-General of the Canadian Medical Services and produced the Bruce Report, a frank criticism of medical care... -
Fool's Paradise
This property sits on the ecologically sensitive, geologically significant Scarborough Bluffs that display sediments left by glaciers over 70,000 years during the last phase of the Pleistocene epoch. Aboriginal peoples may have inhabited this site as early as 8,000 B.C. Scottish immigrant James McCowan settled this land for farming in 1833, calling it "Springbank" because of the springs running from the ancient shoreline of Lake Iroquois (predecessor of Lake Ontario) to the north. In 1939... -
George Weston, 1864-1924
George Weston was born in Oswego, New York in 1864. His family moved to Toronto and at age 12 George was apprenticed to a local baker. In 1882, Weston bought a bread delivery route from his employer and two years later a bakery. With the increasing popularity of his "Real Home Made Bread," he opened the "Model Bakery" near this site, in 1897. This bakery used the latest bread-making technology and was praised by the... -
Hurricane Hazel
On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel hit southern Ontario with 110 km/h winds and over 200 mm of rain. Many rivers, including the Humber, Don and Rouge overflowed flooding communities in much of southern Ontario. The storm killed 81 people, left 1868 families homeless, and caused extensive property damage. International and local donations to a flood relief fund assisted victims, and all three levels of government shared the expenses of paying for property damage and... -
King Edward Hotel, The
The King Edward Hotel was built by George Gooderham's Toronto Hotel Company to meet the demand in the rising metropolis for a grand hotel. When it opened in 1903, the hotel, affectionately known as the "King Eddy," was embraced by the city. The fireproof, eight-storey building, designed by eminent Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb and prominent Toronto architect E.J. Lennox, provided luxury and service in dramatic settings. The 18-storey tower, with its top-floor Crystal Ballroom...