Toronto

Toronto, the most populous city in the province of Ontario, Canada, sits on Lake Ontario, centered near the mouth of the Don River just north of the bend of the Golden Horseshoe statistical region that wraps around the western part of the lake. Its prominence dates from 1867 when it become the provincial capital under the newly formed Dominion of Canada. The metropolitan area has 5.298 million people, with 2.732 million within the municipality.¹ Its CN Tower is the continent's tallest man-made structure at 1815 feet (1976), and is a telecommunications tower with observatory decks at 1150 and 1465 feet. The tallest conventional building is First Canadian Place (1156 feet to the tip; 978 feet to the top of the mechanical penthouse; completed in 1976), which boasts 600 tons of Italian marble per floor. Previous tallest buildings are: Commerce Court West, 1972 to 1976 (942 feet); the TD Bank Tower, 1967 to 1972 (732 feet); Commerce Court North, 1931 to 1967 (476 feet); the Royal York Hotel, 1929 to 1931 (407 feet); the Sterling Tower, 1928 to 1929; the Optima Business Center, 1915 to 1928; the Canadian Pacific Railway Building, 1913 to 1915 (223 feet); the Trader's Bank Building, 1906-1913 (177 feet); the Temple Building, 1896-1901 (110 feet); and the Beard Building, 1894-1896 (76 feet). Other structures of note are the TD Canada Trust Tower with its setbacks (856 feet, 1990); the City Hall East Tower (328 feet, 1965); the Canada Life Building with beacons that encode weather forecasts (285 feet, 1931); the Rogers Center, a baseball park (formerly the SkyDome; 282 feet, 1989); Union Station, a rail terminus (1927); the Ontario Provincial Legislative Building (1892); the triangular Gooderham Building (1892); Casa Loma, a castle-like former residence (1914), now a museum; and the Prince Edward Viaduct, a bridge (1918, 131 feet).²

Tourists enjoy the CN Tower, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery, as well as Canada's Wonderland amusement park³ in nearby Vaughan (population 306 thousand⁴) and Toronto generally.⁵ The area is served by two airports, the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport within the city, and the Toronto Pearson International Airport, partly in the city and partly in Missassauga (population 722 thousand⁶). Both are amont the nation's busiest.⁷

Historical maps

External references

Toronto's skyline, Ontario, Canada

Footnotes

1. 2016 figures from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horseshoe, 'Census Metropolitan areas' and 'Municipalities' sections, accessed October 17, 2018. World-gazetteer.com, accessed February 6, 2013, had a metropolitan calculation for 2012 of 6.804 million.
2. Information about buildings comes from emporis.com, accessed November 6, 2018. The set of historically 'tallest' buildings does not include the Old City Hall (339 feet, 1899), St. James' Cathedral (1853, 305 feet with an 1870 addition) and St. Lawrence Hall (1851, 121 feet).
3. https://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions-/ontario-cdn-on-on.htm, accessed October 17, 2018.
4. 2016 figure from the side bar of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan, accessed October 17, 2018.
5. https://www.touropia.com/best-places-to-visit-in-canada/, accessed October 17, 2018.
6. 2016 figure from the side bar of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississauga, accessed October 17, 2018.
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_Canada, accessed October 17, 2018.
8. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Tables of the World's Largest Cities." Toronto was the largest city in the area in 1900 CE as it is today.