What caused Toronto to be the most populated city in Canada?

New York has been the major entry port for immigrants but Toronto is inland.

Although Toronto is right by the Great Lake, it is not the closest region to Europe or other major cities in America.



Are there any historical backgrounds of Toronto being the largest city in Canada?

And what were its main attractions for immigrants?What caused Toronto to be the most populated city in Canada?
We were second largest until sometime after the PQ got into office in Quebec. That started a movement of several corporate head offices from Montreal to Toronto.



Toronto and Montreal were historically the leading cities because of location and that we were regional trading centres. They've been pretty much the leading cities since before confederation, with Montreal being more important because it was more easily accessed by ship.



Toronto was a regional trading centre because of the river systems that came through here. After the revolution we were the main trading centre after Montreal, serving what became Upper Canada. We were also far enough from the US so we were relatively safe from invasion. Think back to fur trade days and early settlement. It probably helped that we had good rivers for water mills. Toronto, being accross from Buffalo also had access to the Erie Canal after it was built, so we had indirect access to New York.



But really, Montreal was the biggest until fairly recently. Good port access to Europe, trading hub for the fur trade, transhipment point between the great lakes system and ocean going shipping.



The main attraction for immigrants in the 20th century was that we were heavily industrialized and southern Ontario was (is?) the industrial centre for Canada. In its heyday, Massey Ferguson was shipping farm equipment from here to all over the country. We continue to attract immigrants because of economic opportunities and established immigrant communities.What caused Toronto to be the most populated city in Canada?
Between the end of World War II and 1971, both Montreal and Toronto grew enormously in size. Between 1941 and 1951, Montreal's population grew by 20% and Toronto's by 25%.Over the next decade, it was 35% for Montreal and 45% for Toronto. From 1961 to 1971, it was a little below 20% for Montreal and 30% for Toronto. By 1976, Toronto, the metropolis of Ontario, had surpassed Montreal in population size. This was over 30 years after Toronto had begun challenging Montreal as the economic capital of Canada. Indeed, the volume of stocks traded at the Toronto Stock Exchange surpassed that traded at the Montreal Stock Exchange in the 1940s. Finally in the 1970s, Toronto supplanted Montreal as Canada's business and economic centre. The loss of many headquarters and the departure of a large anglophone business community is generally believed to have lessened Montreal's economic importance.



Here is an overview of the history of Toronto since World War Two:



Following the Second World War refugees from war-torn Europe and Chinese job-seekers arrived. So too did construction labourers, particularly from Italy and Portugal. Following elimination of racially based immigration policies by the late 1960s, immigration began from all parts of the world. Toronto's population grew to more than one million in 1951 when large-scale suburbanization began, and doubled to two million by 1971. By the 1980s, Toronto had surpassed Montreal as Canada's most populous city and the chief economic hub.





During this time, in part owing to the political uncertainty raised by the resurgence of the Quebec sovereignty movement, many national and multinational corporations moved their head offices from Montreal to Toronto and other western Canadian cities.



In 1954, the City of Toronto and 12 surrounding municipalities were federated into a regional government known as Metropolitan Toronto. The postwar boom had resulted in rapid suburban development, and it was believed that a coordinated land use strategy and shared services would provide greater efficiency for the region. The metropolitan government began to manage services that crossed municipal boundaries, including highways, police services, water and public transit. In that year, a half-century after the Great Fire of 1904, disaster struck the city again when Hurricane Hazel brought intense winds and flash flooding. In the Toronto area, 81 people were killed, nearly 1,900 families were left homeless, and the hurricane caused more than $25 million in damage.



In 1967, the seven smallest municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto were merged into their larger neighbours, resulting in a six-municipality configuration that included the old, i.e. pre-1954 City of Toronto and the surrounding municipalities of East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and York. In 1998, the metropolitan government was dissolved by the Provincial Government in the face of vigorous opposition from the smaller component municipalities and all six municipalities were amalgamated into a single municipality, creating the current City of Toronto, with Mel Lastman as its first mayor (after being mayor of North York) and David Miller succeeding him as the current mayor.



The city celebrated its 175th anniversary on March 6, 2009, since its inception as the City of Toronto in 1834. Toronto hosted the G-20 summit during June 26鈥?7, 2010.