Earliest Toronto

Robert M. MacIntosh

ISBN 10: 1897113412 / ISBN 13: 9781897113417

Published by General Store Publishing House, 2006

About this Item

A history of the area that became the City of Toronto with a somewhat different focus than most accounts of 'Hogtown'. The author of this history credits William Berczy with establishing permanent settlement just north of Lake Ontario. And, it was these settlers who established a viable community, not the transplanted British 'leaders' whose object was to serve their time, and return home. The book is illustrated with maps, and drawings. It contains a reference for sources, a bibliography, and index.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1735673386930

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Earliest Toronto
• Publisher: General Store Publishing House
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1897113412
• ISBN 13: 9781897113417
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Almost half the population of Toronto-immigrants and newcomers from elsewhere in Canada-has no cultural memory of our city's beginnings. In a bid to fill this gap, Earliest Toronto tells the city's story up to the War of 1812 and its aftermath. Beginning with the dramatic conflicts in the aboriginal communities around Lake Ontario before the coming of the Europeans in the early seventeenth century, followed by two centuries of French exploration and settlement, the city's early history will surprise many Torontonians. Simcoe, the founder of the village of York in 1793, is often presented as a great administrator and military leader. In fact he was a poor manager with no attachment to Canada, and a vigorous advocate of English snobbery and class distinction. His chief concern was to gain preferment in London and to transplant the values of the British class system to the forest frontier. Earliest Toronto makes a plausible case that the real founder of Toronto was William Berczy, a remarkably cultured and determined man who led an expedition of German immigrants to Markham in 1794, and who contributed significantly to the early development of the new settlement. Later chapters focus on the people and events that shaped the early years of a struggling frontier community. One of the stories is about the sinking of the Speedy on Lake Ontario, and how it led to the building of The Grange, today one of Toronto's oldest extant buildings and the birthplace of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

About the Author

Educated at McGill and Cambridge Universities, Robert MacIntosh has lived over fifty years in Toronto. After a brief career as an academic economist and long one as a banker, he wrote Different Drummers: Banking and Politics in Canada, published in 1991. A collector of books about Toronto, he decided to challenge the conventional wisdom about the real founders of the city.