Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Simcoe establishes York at Toronto

When
1793
Where
town of York (present-day Toronto)
Part of
John Graves Simcoe founds Toronto

Simcoe founded the town of York in 1793 on Toronto Purchase lands, naming it after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany.

Governor John Graves Simcoe established the town of York in 1793 on the Toronto Purchase lands, naming the settlement after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. The founding followed the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, in which the Mississaugas surrendered the area to the British Crown. Simcoe also moved the capital there in 1793, and the town was later designated the capital of Upper Canada. The present-day city of Toronto developed from this settlement.

Sources

  1. Toronto Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-30
  2. John Graves Simcoe Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-27

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.