Toronto

Toronto is the capital of Ontario, on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario in southeastern Canada. Its name probably comes from a Mohawk word for a place where trees stand in the water. The CN Tower, finished in the 1970s, has a glass floor and an outdoor walk around its rim high above the city.

John Graves Simcoe founded the town of York on the harbor in 1793 as the capital of Upper Canada. It was incorporated as the City of Toronto in 1834, with William Lyon Mackenzie as its first mayor. Toronto became the capital of Ontario at Confederation in the 1860s and grew on railways, banking and manufacturing. Immigrants from Italy, Portugal, the Caribbean, China and South Asia arrived in large numbers after the Second World War. The present city formed in the 1990s, when the six municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto were merged into one.

Thomson Reuters, the news and information company, has its headquarters in the city, and Restaurant Brands International runs Tim Hortons and Burger King from Toronto. The film and television studios along the Port Lands have made Toronto a frequent stand-in for American cities in films and series.

The Royal Ontario Museum mixes a 1910s building with the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a jagged glass and aluminum addition of the 2000s. The Hockey Hall of Fame, in a former bank building, keeps the Stanley Cup on display. The Distillery District preserves the Victorian brick buildings of the Gooderham and Worts whisky distillery as a quarter of galleries, shops and restaurants. The Toronto Islands, a short ferry ride from downtown, have beaches, parks and a small amusement park facing the skyline.