Adam Bunch

How Old City Hall can be Toronto’s new heart Toronto’s proposed Old City Hall renovation promises a place for gathering and the arts

New ideas need old buildings. In today’s @globeandmail I showcase a vision for Toronto’s Old City Hall as a space for contemporary culture - opening this year. Let’s go.

www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

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Indigenous Toronto WINNER OF THE HERITAGE TORONTO 2022 BOOK AWARDRich and diverse narratives of Indigenous Toronto, past and presentBeneath many major North American cities rests a deep foundation of Indigenous history ...

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If you'd like to know more about the Indigenous history of our city, you could try "Indigenous Toronto" among others: chbooks.com/Books/I/Indi...

And if you'd like more from me, my history newsletter: torontohistory.substack.com

A photo of the sun setting behind the Toronto skyline, taken from Ward's Island, silhouetting the CN Tower and downtown skyscrapers with grass and trees in the foreground. (Photo by me.)

27. So it seems, to me at least, that *if* we're going to recognize a day, it makes much less sense to celebrate Toronto’s birthday in March than to mark the anniversary of our founding at the end of July.

(A date that would sync up nicely with Simcoe Day, as it happens.)

Social media posts from 2023 made by the Toronto Blue Jays and the Toronto District School Board, wishing Toronto a "Happy 189th Birthday".

26. But it's still been a pretty widely shared idea.

A social media post by the City of Toronto official account that reads, "Happy Toronto Day! To mark the day the Town of York was officially incorporated as the #CityOfTO, the #Toronto sign will be lit blue today! Celebrate with us by sharing your favorite places, pictures and/or memories of TO using #TorontoDay"

25. Things have gradually been changing in recent years.

There's been a shift in the way many people talk about this date — recognizing it as "the anniversary of incorporation" rather than a "birthday."

Archival potos of First Nations people from the Toronto area: a group of Mississaugas, Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), Peter Martin (Oronhyatekha) and Tom Longboat (Cogwagee).

24. And it becomes easier to claim Indigenous history as an entirely separate “prehistory” (a word coined in English by our angry old friend Professor Wilson), to avoid talking about the ways Indigenous people contributed to & influenced our city’s founding years... And all the years since.

A newspaper ad from the early 1800s. It reads, "TO BE SOLD, BLACK WOMAN, named PEGGY, aged about forty years; and a Black boy her son, named JUPITER, aged about fifteen years, both of them the property of the Subscriber. The Woman is a tolerable Cook and washer woman and perfectly understands making Soap and Candles. The Boy is tall and strong of his age, and has been employed in Country bussiness, but brought up principally as a House Servant — They are each of them Servants for life. The Price for the Woman is one hundred and fifty Dollars — for the Boy two hundred Dollars, payable in three years with Interest from the day of Sale and to be properly secured by Bond &c. — But one fourth left will be taken in ready Money- PETER RUSSELL. York, Feb. 19th [or 10th] 1806"

23. You’re not talking about families like the Pompadours, who resisted their enslavement by settler families like the Russells, Denisons and Jarvises — having been brought to our city against their will and forced to labour here in its founding years.

A painting of a battle from the American Revolution, showing British soldiers marching up a hill under enemy fire.

22. You're not talking about how our province was established as a haven for refugees from the American Revolution.

Or how terrified of real democracy our city’s founders were as a result.

Or how their vision for Toronto is still influencing us to this day.

A collage showing Denonville, the governor of New France, and a map of the Lake Ontario region (labelled "Lac Frontenac"). An X marks the spot Ganetsekwyagon stood, with some flame icons showing places the French attacked the Seneca in what's now upstate New York.

21. And you're not talking about other important foundational stories either.

You’re not talking about the French, the forts they built near the Humber, their centuries of trade & war with the First Nations who lived on the shores of Lake Ontario, their scorched-earth campaign against the Seneca...

A sheet from the Toronto Purchase, hand-written with the dodems of three Mississauga chiefs.

20. You’re not talking about the Toronto Purchase: the treaty used to take this land from the Mississaugas — basically just a blank deed, invalid even by colonial standards.

Or how a soldier murdered Chief Wabakinine, whose name appeared on it.

A French map of Lake Ontario from the late 1600s. It shows most of the lake and its north shore, including the Toronto area. The Seneca villages of Teiaiagon and Ganatsekwyagon are both labelled, one on each of two branches of the Toronto Carrying Place trail, connecting what's now Toronto with what we now call Lake Simcoe (labelled as "Lac Taronto" on the map).

19. It means, for instance, that you’re probably not talking about the Toronto Carrying-Place: the First Nations trade route that first brought Europeans here & gave our city its name.

Or villages like Ganatsekwyagon and Teiaiagon that were here long before the city was founded.

Two images: on the left, Toronto Bay in 1793 (much like the third image in this thread, all forest and lake); on the right, a painting of King Street East in the 1830s, a wide dirt boulevard busy with people and horses.

18. So the story of settlers arriving & seizing Indigenous land for themselves is easier to ignore — in favour of a story about a town filled with people who’d been living here for generations, taking a step into modernity as an incorporated city.

(pic: 1790s vs 1830s)

A painting of Front Street in the 1830s. The old parliament buildings stand in the background. The street in front of it is busy with people and horses. In the foreground, a children play in a trickling stream of water. (Image via the City of Toronto)

17. But if we talk about 1834 as the birth of Toronto, then who was here before the city? 9,000 settlers.

We’re not talking about the moment our city was actually founded — and the events that led up to it.

Toronto Bay in 1793. We're looking west across the water, with the tree-and-sand-covered islands to the left and the low bluff and forest of what's now downtown Toronto on the right. In the foreground, a pair of First Nations men attend a smoking fire. A canoe rests on the beach. (Image via the ROM)

16. If we talk about Toronto's founding in 1793, we naturally have to talk about a *new* settlement.

One built on land First Nations had already been calling home for millennia. And where Mississaugas were already living when those first British soldiers showed up.

A horse-drawing parade float carrying a teepee, a canoe, and First Nations people.

15. And as Freeman points out, that shift is especially worrying when it comes to what it means for the way Toronto has remembered its relationship with Indigenous nations — particularly the Mississaugas.

Three images: on the left, American soldiers cradling their dying general with an explosion at Fort York in the distance during the Battle of York; in the top-right a women dying of cholera laid out on a bed, her skin having turned blue; on the bottom-right, two Regency gentlemen in top hats firing pistols at each other during a duel.

14. Of course, by shifting Toronto’s “birth” from 1793 to 1834 we’ve symbolically exiled 40 years of the city’s history.

A period that includes war, riots, duels, plagues & countless other formative events — stuff that’s still influencing our city to this day.

A painting of King & York in the 1830s. The dirt street is busy with horses, wagons and people.

13. So *that's* the date we’re still celebrating all these years later: the day the "Town of York" was incorporated & renamed as the "City of Toronto."

Toronto's "birthday" happened when it was already 40 years old.

A horse-drawn parade float showing Queen Victoria sitting under a canopy being approached by a man caring a large sheet of paper.

12. But maybe weirdest of all, the date being celebrated wasn’t the day the city was founded.

Instead, they decided Toronto’s “birthday” was the day it was incorporated as a city: March 6, 1834.

When 9,000 people were already living here.

(The moment of royal assent even got its own parade float)

An archival photo of Toronto in the late 1800s. A few pedestrians cross a downtown street as a streetcar and horse-drawn carriages pass by. (Photo via the Toronto Public Library.)

11. This was nearly 100 years after the city was founded — thousands & thousands since people set foot on this land.

But Wilson claimed Toronto had “scarcely a past… no record [to] look back upon." The city's story so far was nothing but “great white sheets.”

An angry-looking white man with a big beard on the left. On the right, an old archival photo of University College. (Photo via Wikimedia.)

10. They even invited this angry-looking fellow — Sir Daniel Wilson, the first ever history professor at the University of Toronto — to give a big speech about the history of the city.

He declared Toronto had no real history.

A horse-drawn parade float carrying rows British soldiers, a cannon and a ruler on a throne.

9. Instead, it was much more concerned with glorifying colonialism to fit a narrative of Toronto as a virtuous and *very* British city.

It twisted & diminished the city’s history, including stereotyping local First Nations & practically erasing the Mississaugas entirely.

A horse-drawn float labelled "YORK." It shows a teepee with some Indigenous people and a few British soldiers and settlers. (Image via the City of Toronto Archives)

8. There were historical floats included in the parades that week. But Toronto's first birthday party wasn’t *really* about honouring the city’s history at all.

The top of the first page of Victoria Freeman's "'Toronto Has No History!' Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Historical Memory in Canada's Largest City."

7. Victoria Freeman writes about the party in detail as part of her utterly fantastic article, “Toronto Has No History!”, which is based on her dissertation [PDF]: ow.ly/ZbKpi

It’s thanks to her work that I learned a whole lot of this stuff.

The cover of a program for the festivities. It shows images of the city and its history and reads "Semi-Centennial Celebration Toronto June 30th to July 5th.)

6. That year, they threw a huge, week-long bash in honour of Toronto’s “birthday.”

There were fireworks, parades, speeches...

King Street East in the late 1800s. The spire of St. James Cathedral towers above a row of four-storey buildings with shop fronts. The street is fairly busy, with pedestrians and horse-drawn carts. (Image via Wikimedia.)

5. By then, Toronto was a booming metropolis of about 100,000 people. Railroads! Electricity! Confederation!

Local politicians and business leaders wanted to celebrate it all, so they came up with an idea:

A birthday party.

A view of Victorian Toronto from Hanlan's Point. In the foreground, people in small boats celebrate with the smoky skyline in the distance. (City of Toronto Archives)

4. So, you might wonder:

If Toronto was founded 233 years ago this July, why are we celebrating its 192th birthday today?

Well, the answer lies with a bunch of Victorians who whitewashed the city’s history back in 1884.

Elizabeth Simcoe's watercolour of the Toronto waterfront. We're looking west across the bay in the foreground. To the right, the forest along the shoreline, with a few white squares and rectangles depicting the tents of the soldiers building Fort York. A few thin lines in the distance show us the masts of the British warships that brought them here.

3. Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the governor who founded our city, painted what she saw that week:

The masts of British ships, the white tents of the soldiers building Fort York, the towering green forests & pale blue lake...

A C.W. Jeffrey's depiction of the construction of Fort York. John Graves Simcoe stands in his red officer's uniform pointing something out to a couple of other men. Some are building wooden military installations to one side. In the distance, you can see the bay with a British warship anchored and a canoe on the wate.r

2. July 1793. The first British soldiers sail into a bay on the northern shore of Lake Ontario & begin chopping down trees, making way for a town that will become a city of millions.

A photo of Toronto's skyline as viewed across the bay from the islands. A boat sits on the beach in the foreground.

1. Today we celebrate Toronto’s 182th birthday. Which is pretty weird. Because Toronto isn’t 192 years old. And it wasn’t founded in March.

Here goes my annual rant…