|
Toronto is a
Canadian city
located on the northwestern shore of
Lake
Ontario, and is the
provincial
capital of
Ontario. Toronto is the 5 most populous municipality
(population est. 2,613,900,
July 1, 2005) in North America behind
Mexico
City, New
York,
Los Angeles and
Chicago.
Toronto is a
global
city, exerting significant regional and international influence, and is one
of the most
multicultural and ethnically diverse cities in the world. It is Canada's
financial centre and economic engine, as well as one of the country's most
important cultural, artistic, and health sciences centres. Toronto was named the
world's most livable city in 1994 by
The
Economist. It was displaced in 2005 by Vancouver, but is still ranked
among the top ten. In
January 2005, Toronto was designated by the federal government as one of
Canada's cultural capitals.
The City of Toronto is part of the
Greater Toronto Area (GTA) (population est. 5,755,210
July 1, 2005), as defined by provincial authorities for urban planning
purposes. Toronto is also at the centre of the
Golden Horseshoe, a densely populated region in south-central Ontario which
is home to roughly eight million people,
or one quarter of the population of Canada.
The six former
municipalities of the former
Metropolitan Toronto (dissolved) were
amalgamated into one municipality, and the former
regional government system dissolved, by the
Ontario
government in 1998. This resulted in the creation of the ('megacity') City of
Toronto, in political structure, as it is today. The current mayor of Toronto is
David
Miller.
With no designator, Toronto alone usually refers to the GTA or (mistakenly,
unless CMA is cited) the Toronto
Census Metropolitan Area (Toronto
CMA; a rarely-used federal version of the Toronto city-region for federal
statistical reporting purposes) unless "City of" (or "municipality of") is
specified.
The City of Toronto is also in its own "county" (Census
Division (CD)) of type Division. As the City of Toronto is the only
municipality in the
Toronto Division CD, information about either or both is (or should be)
identical.
Toronto has collected a number of nicknames and epithets over the past two
hundred years, including Muddy York (18th-19th Century),
Hogtown
(Victorian), The Big Smoke (1920s), and Toronto the Good (1950s).
Popular current names include T.O. (for Toronto, Ontario) and T dot.
Residents often pronounce the name in a slurred manner, including Toronno,
Tronno, Tronna, Taranna.
Other Canadian Sites
|
