a city in eastern Canada; capital of Ontario Province. Population (1971) of Toronto proper, 712,800; of Greater Toronto, 2,628,000. A port on Lake Ontario, Toronto is accessible to oceangoing ships via the St. Lawrence Seaway; in 1974 it handled 4.1 million tons of cargo. Greater Toronto is a large manufacturing center, accounting for one-fifth of Canada’s gross national product. Its leading industries include machine building for transportation and other sectors, electrical engineering, metalworking, petroleum refining, chemical production, printing, and production of clothing and foodstuffs. The city manufactures one-half of Canada’s total agricultural machinery and airplanes and three-fourths of the country’s total machine tools and electrical-engineering equipment. An important financial and cultural center, Toronto has two universities.
In the 17th century the site of present-day Toronto was occupied by an Indian settlement; in the 18th century it became a French trading post and later a fort. The British founded a town there in 1793; known until 1834 as York, it served as the administrative center of the British colony—or province—of Upper Canada from its founding to 1841. In 1837 and 1838 the town was the scene of an anti-British uprising.
Laid out in a rectangular grid of thoroughfares, Toronto until the mid-20th century consisted mostly of two-story dwellings. Among its oldest architectural landmarks is Fort York, whose stockade walls and interior wooden structures, erected in 1796, are preserved intact. Later buildings of note are Osgoode Hall, the city’s court building (1829–59, architects F. Cumberland and others); Casa Loma, a private residence (1911–14, architect E. J. Lennox); and a complex of structures including a railroad station, an airport, and a lakeport (1914–29, architects J. Lyle and others). Toronto’s modern edifices include the Regent Park high-rise housing project and the Park Plaza and Westbury hotels (1955–57, architects F. Page and H. Steele); the new Sun Life Building (1960, architect J. B. Parkin); the City Hall, a high-rise structure (1965, architects V. Revell and others); and the Toronto-Dominion Centre (1967, architect L. Mies van der Rohe).