Largest Canadian cities since 1921

[Crawford]

Huh. That was an interesting take on Toronto.

I always got the sense that Toronto in the beforetimes (before global migration and national preeminence) was a modest, kinda dour city led by uptight WASPs. Here it's described like a Dallas. Brash and boosterish.

[Docere]

"A big, US style, Chicago-like town, inhabited, it is said, by 1,000,000 people with a sharp eye for a dollar...Toronto lives in an era of boom and bigness...Like Chicago, which it resembles in drive and vision, and which it greatly admires, Toronto is not content in its youth simply to prosper cozily by trading with the rich agricultural belt which surrounds it."

[Docere]

For much of its history, Toronto could be described as "Chicago run by the British."

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Huh. That was an interesting take on Toronto.

I always got the sense that Toronto in the beforetimes (before global migration and national preeminence) was a modest, kinda dour city led by uptight WASPs. Here it's described like a Dallas. Brash and boosterish.

Yeah people often don't realize that Toronto has been a booming center for immigration for far longer than the last few decades. While everything is influenced by content, immigration in Canada is isn't really an offshoot of some global trend. My mother moved there around '65 as soon as graduating highschool and it was already very immigrant heavy at that point. She would often tell me about all the different immigrant neighbourhoods, districts and groups that she found so fascinating coming from a small town. And these were all well established before she arrived.The main difference is that it was dominated by Mediterranean and Caribbean immigrants rather than southern and eastern Asian like it is today. Those groups - particularly east Asian - were certainly represented and there was already more than one Chinatown. But they weren't any better represented than other groups.

[Docere]

An article from Time Magazine from 1937 on Toronto's rise. It had already had the largest stock exchange in Canada, due to mining wealth:

https://time.com/archive/6756854/business-miners-mart/

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

By municipality you mean? Otherwise, the Island of Montreal hit 1 million around 1930, while Metro Toronto (ie. today's City of Toronto) reached a million sometime in the 1940s.

City means city limits. Metro means Metropolitan Area. I thought this was clear on SSP.

Montréal was the first Canadian city to reach 1 million. That was a big deal for Canada at the time.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Huh. That was an interesting take on Toronto.

I always got the sense that Toronto in the beforetimes (before global migration and national preeminence) was a modest, kinda dour city led by uptight WASPs. Here it's described like a Dallas. Brash and boosterish.

As is usually the case with these types of historical narratives and stereotypes, things become simplified & exaggerated over time, and never tell the full story.

There's truth to it as well of course, but I don't think "modest & dour" would necessarily have described the city's WASP elite of the time either. The article characterizes them as "Conservative-Progressive", which feels more accurate. They were certainly pious, and conservative when it came to things like alcohol & other "vices" or their loyalty to the crown; but progressive on matters like civic infrastructure, social welfare, and racial tolerance.

At the same time, Toronto is and always has been a mercantile city, and a city of immigrants. The only real reason for its existence is to make money - a certain boosterish, striver, hustler culture naturally goes hand in hand with that.

Originally Posted by Wigs

City means city limits. Metro means Metropolitan Area. I thought this was clear on SSP.

Montréal was the first Canadian city to reach 1 million. That was a big deal for Canada at the time.

Was it also a big deal when the City of Toronto finally surpassed the million mark on January 1st, 1998, after tripling in size overnight?

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Was it also a big deal when the City of Toronto finally surpassed the million mark on January 1st, 1998, after tripling in size overnight?

Not as much

But it should have been a big deal to mention the City of Toronto surpassed the 3 million mark at some time in 2022-2023.

The 2024 estimated population was 3,273,119

[Docere]

As its base you can see elements of Chicago and London in Toronto. On the one hand Toronto shares with Chicago its Great Lakes location, grid pattern and developed as a center of industry and commerce bolstered by a rich agricultural hinterland. King and Bay/Union Station area, Yorkville, Yonge Street etc. certainly feels far more like Chicago. But it also shares some historical, institutional and planning features of London. I'm thinking of University of Toronto campus, Queen's Park, Osgoode Hall, St. Lawrence Market/Old Town area (very "un-Midwestern"). Or Victorian neighborhoods like Cabbagetown or the "garden suburb" of Rosedale. Toronto always had a sort of dual role of practical, industrial/commercial city but also civic/cultural capital.

[Werthers]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Was it also a big deal when the City of Toronto finally surpassed the million mark on January 1st, 1998, after tripling in size overnight?

Yeah I thought that was kind of a big deal as the city's population went from ~700,000 to 2.5 million overnight. It was national news

Originally Posted by craigs

Los Angeles does not have a hippie vibe at all, let alone "decidedly."

Toronto is not like New York City. You are thinking of Chicago.

You're right, my bad. The Bay area/San Francisco is far more synonymous with hippies than LA although I disagree with you about Toronto, I think a good argument can be made that Toronto is more like NYC than Chicago, if you put aside their lakefront locations

Originally Posted by Wigs

City means city limits. Metro means Metropolitan Area. I thought this was clear on SSP.

Montréal was the first Canadian city to reach 1 million. That was a big deal for Canada at the time.

When I talk about a city's population I never mean the city proper, I always mean the metro population because some city populations are really small compared to their metro population. For example the city of Calgary has a population of 1.3 million people which is ~ double that of Detroit or Boston and 2.5X the population of Atlanta yet who considers Calgary bigger than Boston, Detroit or Atlanta?

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Werthers

I've always considered Vancouver to be the LA of Canada as they're both the biggest westcoast cities, both having miles of sandy pacific beaches, a decidedly hippy vibe as well as being centers for film and TV production

Toronto is more like a mix of NYC and Chicago as both Chicago and Toronto are on the great lakes but Toronto is also Canada's biggest city like NYC is America's biggest, as well both TO and NYC being the business capitals of each country

Chicago is probably the most monocentric big urban area in North America while Toronto is very polycentric like LA. Hamilton and Oshawa are real cities within the same urban area, and Burlington and Brampton are edge cities. Some people consider Mississauga to be an edge city too, I am not sure I agree, but it is telling that a $4 billion LRT line under construction there does not touch the Toronto boundary...

Having to serve a polycentric urban area, the arrangement and design of the overall transit network in the Toronto area has much more in common with the LA area than with Chicago or NYC. "LA area" vs "Toronto area" might be misnomers. "LA-Long Beach-Santa Monica-Pasadena-Santa Ana area" vs. "Toronto-Hamilton-Oshawa area" would be more correct.

Maybe you can compare Toronto proper with Queens... But Toronto proper with all of NYC proper, Toronto-Hamilton-Oshawa urban area vs. New York (or New York-Newark?) urban area, I am not so sure...

I think Chicago and New York get brought up mostly because of their proximity to Toronto. Toronto is the largest city of its country like New York. Financial centre like New York as you say. But I think it is actually closer to Los Angeles.

If you want to compare to an east coast city, I would say Washington with all its suburban high rise slabs. Washington also mostly postwar like Toronto and LA. Washington DC municipal governance also being subjected to interference from President Trump similar to what City of Toronto has been going through with Premier Doug Ford.

[Nouvellecosse]

Not sure I'd place LA and Toronto in the same category of being polycentric. Toronto has more large downtown office towers than LA despite having only half the metro or UA population. Toronto looks polycentric due to the different highrise clusters, but it has very few large office towers outside downtown since most of the non-downtown towers are residential. But Highrises on their own don't make a place polycentric; it depends on what they're used for. Downtown Toronto also has a higher residential population, two major universities, one of the continent's busiest train stations, one of the busiest shopping mall in NA, and so on.

Plus, Chicago also has Evanston which is much closer in than Hamilton or Oshawa which are so far away that they don't have much bearing on Toronto itself. It's true that Chicago suburbs are probably less transit friendly, but that doesn't really speak to centrality.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Doady

Having to serve a polycentric urban area, the arrangement and design of the overall transit network in the Toronto area has much more in common with the LA area than with Chicago or NYC.

One of the big reasons ridership is so low in greater Los Angeles is that the transit network is centered on downtown. This is especially true of the rail network: six of eight commuter rail lines terminate downtown; four of six light rail lines serve downtown; both heavy rail lines terminate downtown. The bus system is more geographically dispersed than the rail system, but is still significantly based on downtown service. That's part of why so many Angelenos drive--the city is far more polycentric than the transit network is.

[Docere]

643,000 people work in downtown Toronto which is about a sixth of the workforce in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area.

[MonkeyRonin]

As I hypothesized in one of the other threads, the Canadian-US city equivalents start to fall apart when you consider their historical growth patterns - American cities have been shaped by more defined boom-bust patterns and subsequently have more clearly defined characteristics. Canadian cities have had more gradual growth (and fill more "roles" in their respective regions), and as a result have more of a mix of styles and urban growth patterns from different eras.

Neither Chicago nor LA nor DC or any other city makes a great comparison for Toronto for example, because its urban development has been more like a mix of those (with further local/non-American influences completely unrelated to any of them as well) than it has been like any particular one of them:

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Growth like this is responsible for a big part of the difference between Canadian and American cities, IMO. So much of American urban history has been characterized by extreme booms & busts - there are cities that have gone from barely existing to being some of the largest in the world in a matter of decades. Oftentimes, these have then been followed by periods of stagnation or decline. But as a result, each of these city's civic identity is largely characterized & tied to a specific era of urban design; whether that be the late-1800s/early-1900s planning & architecture of Chicago, LA's early-automotive era design, or the late-20th/early-21st century suburbia of Dallas or Houston.

Canadian cities meanwhile have been shaped by more gradual-but-constant growth. There are ups and downs of course, and some have grown more than others, but the list of largest cities mostly hasn't changed much over the last hundred+ years. The outcome of this is that urban growth has been more haphazard and layered; and it can be hard to pinpoint a specific urban identity for each - eg. somewhere like Toronto is as much a late-1800s Victorian city as it is a mid-century sprawler or post-modern city.

[Docere]

The changes in the Canadian metro population rankings over the last century have been pretty minor. The main change has been the relative drop of Winnipeg and rise of Calgary and Edmonton, as well as Toronto displacing and moving far past Montreal. Interestingly the big shift occurred in the 1970s - it is when Montreal ceased to be the largest city in the East and Winnipeg in the Prairies.

[Docere]

Toronto began to take off in the 1880s when it doubled in population from 86,000 to 181,000. The 1890s were a rather sluggish decade in Canada but then it boomed again between the turn of the last century and the 1920s. By 1931 there was a population of 631,000 and significant suburban population outside city limits. That's a pretty big expansion within the lifetime of many.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

As I hypothesized in one of the other threads, the Canadian-US city equivalents start to fall apart when you consider their historical growth patterns - American cities have been shaped by more defined boom-bust patterns and subsequently have more clearly defined characteristics. Canadian cities have had more gradual growth (and fill more "roles" in their respective regions), and as a result have more of a mix of styles and urban growth patterns from different eras.

Neither Chicago nor LA nor DC or any other city makes a great comparison for Toronto for example, because its urban development has been more like a mix of those (with further local/non-American influences completely unrelated to any of them as well) than it has been like any particular one of them:

I mentioned on one of those threads (or maybe in this one, on the first pages) that the US urban historical demographic is very unique. No other country showed this pattern where you have some cities booming and others shrinking.

Every country have (and had) faster and slower areas, but nothing as extreme and universal as in the US.

[Docere]

Greater Toronto Area population since 1961:

1961 2,118,250
1971 2,923,082
1981 3,417,701
1991 4,235,736
2001 5,081,826
2011 6,054,196
2021 6,712,341


The surrounding regions were created in the early 1970s, I could find populations going back to 1961.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I mentioned on one of those threads (or maybe in this one, on the first pages) that the US urban historical demographic is very unique. No other country showed this pattern where you have some cities booming and others shrinking.

Every country have (and had) faster and slower areas, but nothing as extreme and universal as in the US.

I mean Detroit and Phoenix are similar sized today. In 1950 Detroit was the fifth largest city in the US and Phoenix was about the same size as Peoria.