{"id":45347,"date":"2018-10-17T03:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T07:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45347"},"modified":"2018-10-16T11:48:05","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T15:48:05","slug":"how-toronto-got-its-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/10\/17\/how-toronto-got-its-name\/","title":{"rendered":"How Toronto got its name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh<\/a> on the origins of the name of Canada’s largest city (which, surprisingly, isn’t<\/em> the Mississauga name for “big stink on the water”):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Detail from a 1688 map of western New France by Vincenzo Coronelli that locates \u201cLac Taronto\u201d at Lake Simcoe.
City of Toronto Culture Division\/Library and Archives Canada via the National Post<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

By the time of Franquelin, \u201cTkaronto\u201d had already become \u201cTaronto,\u201d a generic name for the highway between Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario. The Humber River was called the Toronto River by the French before Gen. John Graves Simcoe and the British got hold of everything. The word, in turn, became attached to a trading settlement at the southern end of the trail \u2014 a pretty crummy place, by all accounts, but one destined for bigger things as part of a global seafaring empire.<\/p>\n

The miracle is that it held on to the name. Simcoe insisted that \u201cToronto,\u201d on being anointed as the site of the new capital of Upper Canada in 1793, be dubbed \u201cYork\u201d in honour of Prince Frederick (1763-1827), Duke of York and second son of George III. This Duke of York is the \u201cGrand Old Duke of York\u201d from the satirical verse about military futility. He was also commander-in-chief of the British armies that helped to chase Napoleon out of Europe twice, and is thought to deserve genuine credit for this, so be careful who you write insulting rhymes about.<\/p>\n

Simcoe dubbed Toronto \u201cYork\u201d just because he was sucking up to a very identifiable future boss, and for no other reason. The people of Toronto seem to have understood this and resented it. In the decades to come, it was occasionally observed that there were something like a dozen other places in Upper Canada called \u201cYork.\u201d Moreover, Simcoe\u2019s \u201cLittle York,\u201d as it was often called, seems to have presented an increasingly embarrassing parallel with the Americans\u2019 bustling New York.<\/p>\n

In 1834, when the Legislative Council of Upper Canada decided that the capital needed to be formally incorporated as a city, the citizenry remembered that they belonged to \u201cToronto\u201d and appealed to the council to have the more musical old name restored. Over four decades their annoyance had not receded. Diehards who wanted York to remain York for imperial-grandeur reasons were outvoted, and Toronto\u2019s formal Act of Incorporation observes that \u201cit is desirable, for avoiding inconvenience and confusion, to designate the Capital of the Province by a name which will better distinguish it.\u201d The appellation \u201cToronto,\u201d of course, had actually been nicked from a spot some way off, but the white settlers had mislaid that information, and didn\u2019t check with anyone who would know better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh on the origins of the name of Canada’s largest city (which, surprisingly, isn’t the Mississauga name for “big stink on the water”): By the time of Franquelin, \u201cTkaronto\u201d had already become \u201cTaronto,\u201d a generic name for the highway between Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario. The Humber River was called the Toronto River by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,1117,7],"tags":[438,624,87,207],"class_list":["post-45347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-cancon","category-france","category-history","tag-firstnations","tag-maps","tag-ontario","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bNp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45349,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45347\/revisions\/45349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}