Canada's largest city and the most multicultural metropolitan area on Earth — where over 200 languages are spoken, the CN Tower defined the skyline for 30 years, and Kensington Market and the Distillery District represent two entirely different centuries side by side
Toronto (2.9 million city; metro 6.4 million) is Canada's financial, media, and cultural capital and consistently ranks among the world's most liveable cities. It is the most linguistically diverse metropolitan area on Earth — over 200 languages are spoken, and more than half the population was born outside Canada, a demographic reality that produces one of the great food cities in the world: from Spadina Avenue's Chinatown to Little Portugal to the Sri Lankan and Tibetan restaurants of Scarborough. The Distillery District (former Gooderham & Worts Distillery, the largest in the British Empir…
The area around Toronto (from the Mohawk 'Tkaronto', meaning 'where there are trees standing in the water') has been inhabited for around 13,000 years. Fort York was established by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe in 1793 as the first capital of Upper Canada under the name 'York'; the town was captured and burned by American forces during the War of 1812 (1813), prompting retaliatory burning of Washington DC. Toronto was incorporated as a city in 1834 and grew rapidly through successive waves of immigration — first British and Irish (the Great Famine brought thousands of Irish in 1847),…