The History of Toronto:
Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, is the largest of Canada's vibrant urban centres. It is the hub of the nation's commercial, financial, industrial, and cultural life, and is the capital of the Province of Ontario. People have lived here since shortly after the last ice age, although the urban community only dates to 1793 when British colonial officials founded the 'Town of York' on what then was the Upper Canadian frontier . It became the capital of Ontario in 1867. That backwoods village grew to become the 'City of Toronto' in 1834, and through its subsequent evolution and expansion Toronto has emerged as one of the most liveable and multicultural urban places in the world today.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION, 1929-39

The post-war retrenchments were followed by recovery and rising prosperity through most of the 1920s, but then, in October 1929, stock markets around the globe ‘crashed,' bringing on the Great Depression that scarred life in the city, surrounding areas, and the world beyond for the next decade . Like people elsewhere , Torontonians lost their savings, and even their homes, when businesses laid off workers (raising the unemployment rate in the city to 30 per cent by 1933) and cut the wages of those who retained their jobs (with the result that salaries fell by an average of 40 per cent). The city and the neighbouring jurisdictions found it nearly impossible to cope with the growing demands to help the 25 per cent of the population on relief at the same time that municipal revenues fell precipitously . In fact, the suburban governments around Toronto, except Swansea and Forest Hill, collapsed into bankruptcy under the strain before the provincial and federal governments responded to the crises by assuming significant roles in providing relief.

Things began to improve slowly in 1934, but times nevertheless remained tough . For instance, building construction was modest after projects begun before the Depression were completed early in the 1930s. Much of the building that did occur focused on apartments, which increased the number of people who lived in this form of housing to 30 per cent of the population. Meanwhile , the owners of many large downtown homes converted them from single-family residences into rooming houses and flats as the hard-pressed and increasingly servant-less middle class no longer could cope with these properties and therefore moved to smaller houses farther away from the city centre. This change was particularly noticeable along Jarvis Street, in Parkdale, and in the Annex. Despite the slow revival of the economy, industrial output in 1939 still did not match that of 1929.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939-45

In 1939, as in 1914, Torontonians rallied to fight as Canada went to war against Germany and her allies. As before, the CNE grounds became a military camp while other facilities sprung up around the city. Perhaps the most unusual one was the Royal Norwegian Air Force base at the island airport, where men trained after their country fell to the Germans, although another contender was the laboratory located in the Casa Loma stables, where workers secretly assembled ASDIC (or sonar) sets so that the warships of the Royal Canadian Navy could hunt Nazi U-boats more effectively. Fortunately the loss of life among Canadians was smaller in this conflict than it had been in the earlier war but nevertheless remained high as city residents perished while serving in the army, navy, air force, and merchant marine. Also, as occurred in the previous war, residents in Toronto from enemy countries fell under a cloud of suspicion, or even were interned, such as occurred among the Italians, whose homeland allied with Adolf Hitler against the Allies.

WARTIME INDUSTRY IN TORONTO, 1943
As in the previous conflict, Canada became one of the allies' pre-eminent suppliers of war materiel. Much of the nation's output came from new factories in and around Toronto that had been built expressly for the war, the most famous being Victory Aircraft in Malton, which produced Lancaster Bombers for the air forces of the British Commonwealth. Downtown, older enterprises re-tooled to meet wartime needs, with the best known being Inglis, near Strachan and King, which switched from producing household appliances to Bren guns and other armaments for the army.