Earliest Toronto

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

This is a well-written and enlightening short history of Toronto from
its earliest mention in the historical record until the 1820s. Since
about one-and-a-half million Torontonians have no “collective
memory” of their city, economist and author Robert MacIntosh says the
book is for “young immigrants from all over the world—and from
elsewhere in Canada” who may wonder about how Toronto came to be. He
also wants “to bring a new perspective” to our understanding of the
city’s infancy, and it is a revelation to read that about half of the
city’s documented story came before the founding of York. MacIntosh
writes of the two almost-forgotten French centuries, whose memories and
place names were obliterated (along with those of Aboriginal origin) by
John Graves Simcoe. Rather than celebrating Governor Simcoe (who was in
Toronto for just 18 months) as the city’s founder, MacIntosh sees a
“duplicitous” politician who did not want Toronto to be the capital
of Upper Canada, and who consistently “failed to honour the
government’s obligations.” Instead of redeeming promises of land
made to men such as Asa Danforth and William Berczy who organized
settlement and built the earliest roads, Simcoe “used his royal
prerogative to benefit himself and his small group of friends on the
Executive.” At least the embittered Danforth, who moved to the United
States, is remembered with a prominent Toronto artery; few traces exist
of William Berczy, a famed European court painter turned colonizer who
brought the first major lot of settlers to the Toronto area and,
MacIntosh suggests, perhaps deserves the title “Founder of Toronto.”


There is a fine selection of contemporary illustrations and maps and
the notes on sources are themselves interesting, but it is surprising to
read that primary sources for some eras are all but non-existent. For
example, it is impossible to know with certainty just when, and even
where, the first bridges were built across the Don and Humber rivers.