Toronto’s recorded history runs from Indigenous travel routes used long before European contact, through a French trading post in 1750 and 1751, the founding of the town of York on August 27, 1793, and incorporation as the City of Toronto on March 6, 1834, to a city of 3,358,275 people in 2026. This page tells that story in order, era by era. The full dated record sits in the complete timeline of Toronto history.
Before Europeans: the Carrying Place
The Ontario Heritage Trust states that people have lived on the north shore of Lake Ontario for more than 13,000 years, and names the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabek, and Métis as its traditional peoples. The best documented route is the Toronto Carrying Place, a portage trail along the Humber River. A plaque rededicated in 2023 at the South Humber Monument, worded jointly by the Etobicoke Historical Society, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and La Société d’histoire de Toronto, says that over thousands of years the Humber valley gave the Wendat (Huron), the Onondowagah (Seneca), and the Mississaugas of the Credit, among others, water, food, shelter, and a route for travel and trade. The Ontario Heritage Trust adds that two large seventeenth-century settlements, Teiaiagon on the lower Humber and Ganatsekwyagon on the Rouge, stood on the area’s trails. Which nation held the shore in which period is debated; the Indigenous history article sets out the competing accounts.
Two further perspectives bear on this period. The Huron-Wendat Nation, whose community of Wendake is near Quebec City, states in a Council resolution of June 15, 2015, that its ancestral lands include southern Ontario, which it calls Huronia, and that more than 8,000 Huron-Wendat archaeological sites there are estimated to have been destroyed by development, including in the Greater Toronto Area. The archaeologist Ronald Williamson, in an overview published in Ontario Archaeology in 2014, places ancestral Wendat villages along the rivers of the north shore between A.D. 1300 and 1600 and ties the mid-seventeenth-century dispersal to conflict with the Haudenosaunee after epidemics cut Wendat populations by more than half between 1634 and 1640. On the Haudenosaunee side, Parks Canada designates Bead Hill on the lower Rouge as the only known remaining and intact seventeenth-century Seneca site in Canada, dating it to about 1665 to 1687, and a City of Toronto report of November 15, 2024, describes Teiaiagon on the Humber as a Seneca village once home to 500 to 800 people. The websites of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council and the Six Nations of the Grand River that were read for this page do not discuss Toronto, so the Haudenosaunee account of the north shore is not given here in the nations’ own words.
The role of these nations in the city’s past is covered in more detail in the separate article on Indigenous history in Toronto.
The French post, 1750 to 1759
The first European building on the site of the present city was Fort Rouillé, also called Fort Toronto. The Ontario Heritage Trust plaque at Exhibition Place states that it was built in 1750 and 1751 on the orders of the Marquis de la Jonquière, Governor of New France, to strengthen French control of the Great Lakes and to capture trade near an important portage. The plaque calls it the last French post built in present-day southern Ontario. Its garrison destroyed it in July 1759, after other French posts on Lake Ontario had surrendered. The story of the post and its names is told in the article on Toronto’s earlier names.
Land, treaties, and the Toronto Purchase
British claim to the land rests on the Toronto Purchase. The Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation record that Sir John Johnston, Superintendent General of the Indian Department, met Mississaugas at the Bay of Quinte in 1787, and that the Mississaugas were said to have sold the land. A deed was found years later, but it was blank and did not describe the land, and the chiefs’ marks were on separate pieces of paper attached to it. A second agreement, signed on August 1, 1805, paid ten shillings, and the Mississaugas kept the exclusive right to fish in the Etobicoke River. The Crown’s own text of that deed, published by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, recites an earlier agreement dated September 23, 1787, at the Carrying Place at the head of the Bay of Quinté and says the instrument made then did not describe the land. The deed gives the area as 250,808 acres, while the First Nation gives 250,830 acres, so the area is stated here as about 250,800 acres (about 1,015 square kilometers). The Government of Canada announced a $145 million (CAD) settlement of the Toronto Purchase and Brant Tract claims in 2010. According to the Government of Canada release, the claims argued that the First Nation had not been adequately compensated, and the settlement was financial only, with no change to current land ownership. Other references describe the 1787 transaction as a completed sale, so the First Nation’s own account and the deed text are followed here.
York, 1793 to 1834
The City of Toronto Archives dates the founding of York to August 27, 1793, when Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe laid out a town and garrison on the harbor. The reasons for the choice of name are covered in the article on the earlier names.
The town’s best-known military event came during the War of 1812. On April 27, 1813, British forces evacuated Fort York and blew up the powder magazine as American troops advanced, and the explosion killed and wounded soldiers on both sides, including the American general Zebulon Pike, according to the City of Toronto’s Fort York site. Seven of the fort’s eight historic buildings were constructed between 1813 and 1815. The City bought the fort in 1909, and it became a National Historic Site of Canada in 1923. Other surviving structures are listed on the page about historic buildings of Toronto.
The city, 1834 to 1900
York was incorporated as a city on March 6, 1834, and took back the name Toronto. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography states that William Lyon Mackenzie was chosen Toronto’s first mayor by his fellow councillors after the city’s first election, held on March 27, 1834. The meaning of the word itself is examined in the article on the origins of the name.
The 20th century: fire, Metro, and amalgamation
The City of Toronto Archives records that the Great Fire began on the night of April 19, 1904, in the E. & S. Currie Building on Wellington Street west of Bay Street, and was under control by 4:30 a.m. The exhibit reports no deaths, an estimated loss of $10 million in 1904 dollars, and about 5,000 workers out of work. The cause is unknown. Counts of buildings lost differ between sources, so no single figure is given here.
On April 15, 1953, Toronto became one of 13 municipalities in the new Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, which shared services across the region while each member kept its own council. The City of Toronto Archives dates the end of that arrangement to January 1, 1998, when six municipalities were amalgamated into the present City of Toronto.
Toronto by century
| Period | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before the 1700s | Ancestral Wendat villages on north-shore rivers (A.D. 1300 to 1600); Teiaiagon and Ganatsekwyagon are 17th-century villages; Seneca village at Bead Hill, about 1665 to 1687 | Williamson (2014), Ontario Heritage Trust, South Humber Monument plaque, Parks Canada |
| 1700s | Fort Rouillé built 1750 and 1751 and burned in 1759; York founded August 27, 1793 | Ontario Heritage Trust, City of Toronto Archives |
| 1800s | Toronto Purchase deed signed August 1, 1805; Battle of York April 27, 1813; incorporated as a city March 6, 1834 | Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (deed text), Mississaugas of the Credit, City of Toronto, Dictionary of Canadian Biography |
| 1900s | Great Fire April 19, 1904; Metropolitan Toronto formed April 15, 1953; amalgamation January 1, 1998 | City of Toronto Archives |
| 2000s | Toronto Purchase claim settlement of $145 million (CAD) announced in 2010; city population 3,358,275 in 2026 | Government of Canada, City of Toronto (Statistics Canada data) |
Frequently asked questions
When was Toronto founded?
The City of Toronto Archives dates the founding of the town of York to August 27, 1793. A French trading post, Fort Rouillé, stood on the same shore in 1750 and 1751, and Indigenous nations used the area long before that, so the answer depends on what is counted as a founding.
When did York become Toronto?
York was incorporated as the City of Toronto on March 6, 1834.
Who lived in the Toronto area before Europeans arrived?
The Wendat, the Haudenosaunee (including the Seneca village of Teiaiagon), and the Mississaugas are all documented along the Humber, in different periods. The Ontario Heritage Trust says Indigenous people have lived on the north shore for more than 13,000 years. The Huron-Wendat Nation’s Council states that its ancestral lands include southern Ontario, and the archaeological record read for this page places ancestral Wendat villages on the north-shore rivers between A.D. 1300 and 1600.
How many people live in Toronto?
In 2026 the City of Toronto had an estimated 3,358,275 residents. Statistics Canada reports the larger metropolitan area separately.
Last verified: October 2026
Sources
- Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, The Toronto Purchase Treaty, No. 13 (1805)
- Ontario Heritage Trust, Layer by Layer exhibit
- Etobicoke Historical Society with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and La Société d’histoire de Toronto, South Humber Monument press kit, 2023
- Ontario Heritage Trust, Fort Rouillé provincial plaque
- Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Treaty Texts, Upper Canada Land Surrenders (Toronto Purchase, No. 13, 1805)
- Conseil de la Nation huronne-wendat, Resolution 6598, June 15, 2015 (copy hosted by the County of Prince Edward)
- Ronald F. Williamson, “The Archaeological History of the Wendat to A.D. 1651: An Overview,” Ontario Archaeology 94, 2014
- Parks Canada, Directory of Federal Heritage Designations, Bead Hill National Historic Site of Canada
- City of Toronto, Report for Action, Designation of the Teiaiagon-Baby Point Heritage Conservation District, November 15, 2024
- Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council, The Confederacy’s Creation
- Government of Canada, Canada and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation celebrate historic claim settlement, 2010
- City of Toronto Archives, resources on former municipalities (dates for 1793, 1834, 1953, 1998)
- City of Toronto, Fort York National Historic Site
- City of Toronto Archives, web exhibit The Great Fire of 1904
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography, William Lyon Mackenzie
- City of Toronto, 2021 Census backgrounder on population and dwellings (Statistics Canada data)
Related reading
- Toronto history overview and complete timeline
- Indigenous peoples of the Toronto area
- Fort Rouillé, York, and the earlier names
- Surviving historic buildings
- Where the word Toronto comes from
Cite this page
APA: History of Toronto. (2026, October 23). Toronto History: From Indigenous Roots to Today. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/the-fascinating-history-of-toronto-canada-from-its-indigenous-roots-to-its-modern-metropolis
MLA: “Toronto History: From Indigenous Roots to Today.” History of Toronto, 23 Oct. 2026, https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/the-fascinating-history-of-toronto-canada-from-its-indigenous-roots-to-its-modern-metropolis. Accessed .
Chicago: History of Toronto. “Toronto History: From Indigenous Roots to Today.” Last modified October 23, 2026. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/the-fascinating-history-of-toronto-canada-from-its-indigenous-roots-to-its-modern-metropolis.
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