Toronto's Lost Villages

Book excerpt: Explore the vestiges of the hamlets and villages that have been swallowed up by Toronto’s relentless growth. Over the course of more than two centuries, Toronto has ballooned from a muddy collection of huts on a swampy waterfront to Canada’s largest and most diverse city. Amid (and sometimes underneath) this urban agglomeration are the remains of many small communities that once dotted the region now known as Toronto and the GTA. Before European settlers arrived, Indigenous Peoples established villages on the shore of Lake Ontario. With the arrival of the English, a host of farm hamlets, tollgate stopovers, mill towns, and, later, railway and cottage communities sprang up. Vestiges of some are still preserved, while others have disappeared forever. Some are remembered, though many have been forgotten. In Toronto’s Lost Villages, all of their stories are brought back to life.