The City of Toronto itself has apopulation of almost 3 million people. Even more people live in theregions around it. All together, theGreater Toronto Area is home to over 6.2 million people. This makes it the biggestmetropolitan area in Canada.
Toronto was created in 1793 byJohn Graves Simcoe as the capital of what was then called "Upper Canada". At the time, it was called the "Town ofYork" after theDuke of York. When York was incorporated as a city in 1834, the name was changed to "Toronto". With the CanadianConfederation in 1867, it became the capital of the newly created province of Ontario. Toronto was one of two cities (along withMontreal inQuebec) that wanted to be the capital of Canada.Queen Victoria decided thatOttawa should be the national capital because it was located between the two.
DuringWorld War I andWorld War II, Toronto was used to train members of theCanadian Army. After the wars, even more immigrants came to the city. The population was becoming so big that theGovernment of Ontario decided to create Metropolitan Toronto in 1954, combining a number of localmunicipalities. These were Old Toronto, York, East York, North York,Etobicoke, andScarborough.
By 1981, Toronto had more people than Montreal even though it was created after Montreal. Because of that, the Ontario government decided to make Toronto a "megacity" in 1998. The firstmayor of Toronto wasMel Lastman. As Toronto moved into the 21st century, it became host to a number of worldwide events. These includedWorld Youth Day in 2002, WorldPride in 2014, and the2015 Pan American Games.
Toronto is full of places to visit, eat, shop, and enjoy. In thedowntown area areshopping centres, including the Eaton Centre, St. Lawrence Market, and the Distillery District. There are severaltheatres, many which are run by the Mirvish family. TheFour Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, opened in June 2006, is home to the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada. Across theharbor are the Toronto Islands, the best known of which is Centre Island.
Toronto is a verymulticultural city. Different people from around the world have moved to Toronto to live since the 20th century. There is a Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Tokyo, Greektown, Little Portugal, and other places where differentcultures are kept alive. These people holdfestivals where they share their culture with others. Among the most popular is theCanadian National Exhibition (CNE), which happens every year in August.
Like many cities around the world, Toronto has anairport,Toronto Pearson International Airport. There are flights to many places in Canada and the rest of the world. The airport is just northwest of thecity centre. Since 2015, there has been atrain service, the Union Pearson Express. It goes from the airport to Downtown in less than half an hour.
Toronto's main public transportation system is operated by theToronto Transit Commission (TTC). The main part of its public transport network is the Toronto subway system. That system includes three heavy-rail rapid transit lines spanning the city, including the U-shapedLine 1 and east–westLine 2 andLine 4. The TTC also operates an extensive network of buses and streetcars. The streetcars serve the downtown core. The buses provide service to many parts of the city not served by the sparse subway network.
The Government of Ontario also operates a commuter rail and bus transit system called GO Transit in the Greater Toronto Area. GO Transit carries over 250,000 passengers every weekday (2013) and 57 million annually. Most of them travel to or from Union Station. GO Transit is implementing RER (Regional Express Rail) into its system.
Housing in Toronto was ranked as 10th-leastaffordable in the world. The study compared Toronto with ninety other metropolitan areas in different countries.Hong Kong came in as the least affordable place to live in.[18]
In 2021, 51% of residents in Toronto were born outside Canada.[19] About 200 different languages are spoken in Toronto, with 45% of the residents speak afirst language other than French or English.[20]
↑Toronto, City of (2020)."History of City Symbols".www.toronto.ca. City of Toronto.Archived from the original on August 12, 2021. RetrievedOctober 27, 2020.
↑The motto is typically rendered without punctuation, while the city's coat of arms usestypographical bullets to space the words used in the motto. However, some sources from the municipal government of Toronto use punctuation to describe the motto as "Diversity, Our Strength."[3]
↑Maximum and minimum temperature data at The Annex was recorded by human observers from March 1840 to June 2003 under the station name "TORONTO".[10][11] From July 2003 to present, climate data has been recorded by anautomatic weather station under the name "TORONTO CITY".[12][13]
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