http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/57740263

Earliest Toronto

This book is a fresh look at Toronto's history from aboriginal times up to the War of 1812. Diversity was a characteristic of Toronto from its very beginnings such as the successive aboriginal communities that occupied the north shore of Lake Ontario for centuries before the first Europeans. Half Toronto's recorded history was a story of the French regime. The celebrated founding of the city by John Graves Simcoe is cast in a new light, with the argument that an almost unknown settler should be considered a co-founder. William Berczy, leader of a group of German-speaking settlers, established a village of almost 200 residents in Markham when York had only two civilian homes. More than two hundred years ago, there were a few members of the French nobility and several black families in the forest clearing on Toronto's harbour. Upper Canada eliminated slavery in 1793, fifteen years before Britain and its empire. Writing in the Globe and Mail, Michael Posner noted that MacIntosh had assembled a large collection of books on Toronto. He told Posner that in reading them he had become dissatisfied with the presentation of Simcoe as a great military leader and administrator, and had decided to "set the record straight".

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