This project was produced by Alex Meyers in 2014 for Digital History HI 9808 at Western University. Alex is a graduate student in the Public History program.
French explorer Etienne Brule may have been the first European to see Lake Ontario when he accompanied a party of Huron down the Humber River.
Many early maps of Canada and the Great Lakes region, like the example here, were created by Jesuit missionaries.
In 1750, the French built a small fort on the shores of Lake Ontario at what are now the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition.
Agents of the British Crown negotiated with leaders of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation for the purchase of approximately 250,000 acres of land on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
Lieutenant Governor Sir John Graves Simcoe established York and built a Fort York to guard the town.
Simcoe's dream was to transplant the rigid British class structure into the backwoods of Upper Canada as a bulwark against American-style democracy.
The early estates were owned by active or retired army officers, and senior civil servants.
Trinity College, was established by Bishop John Strachan as an Anglican university.
In 1851, Sanford Fleming (future father of standard time) was a 24-year-old surveyor when he and fellow-surveyor John Soughton Dennis produced this remarkable map of Toronto
The Toronto real estate market experienced a dramatic boom and bust cycle throughout the 19th century. Land speculators bought and subdivided large parcels of land that often went unoccupied for years.
This map was created to show tax exempt land in the city of Toronto. One particularly disputed category of exempt land was "lawns and gardens".
By the 1880's Garrison Creek had become a noxious open sewer, polluted by effluent from nearby homes and industries.
Toronto is growing rapidly and land surrounding Garrison Creek is subdivided for new residential areas. The city builds a bridge to connect Crawford Street on both sides of the ravine.
The ravine has been used as a recreational space by local residents for more than a century. The slopes of the ravine continue to be a popular spot for tobogganing.
Roland Caldwell Harris was Toronto remains Toronto longest serving Commissioner of Public Works, a position he held from 1912 until his death in 1945.
Workers build a new bridge designed by Roland Caldwell (R.C.) Harris, Toronto's Commisioner of Public Works.
By 1919, the Crawford Street Bridge is already showing signs of wear. The road bed began to buckle and crack.
This aerial photograph shows Bellwoods Park as it existed in 1947. The bridges on Dundas and Shaw street have been filled in creating a crescent-shaped slop west of the bridge.
Earth and debris from tunneling for the Bloor-Danforth subway line was dumped into the Garrison Creek ravine, burying the Crawford St. Bridge.
By 2004, the earth around the buried structure of the Crawford St. bridge had settled, creating large hollow space beneath the road surface.
Today there is very little indication that that was ever a bridge or ravine at Crawford St.
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