News
‘Toronto’s First Post Office’ opens in 1834 after city incorporated
People celebrate the incorporation of Toronto, formerly the settlement of ‘Muddy York,’ on March 6, 1834, in a 1909 lithograph by Frederic Waistell Jopling.
James Scott Howard became York’s fourth postmaster in 1828, about a decade after arriving in the bustling capital of Upper Canada from Fredericton, N.B. Six years after Howard came to the helm of York’s postal service – a role that also pegged him, albeit unofficially, as Upper Canada’s deputy postmaster general – the capital incorporated as... Continue reading →
Two centuries of postal history trace York’s rise to Toronto
John White, attorney general of Upper Canada, mailed a letter from York to London, England, in February 1798, before the establishment of a post office in York. It was carried outside the mails to England. (Photo by Garfield Portch)
Now derided by some Canadians as the sarcastic “centre of the universe,” present-day Toronto served as the heart of the fledgeling Province of Upper Canada soon after its establishment in 1791. Two years later, with Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) still serving as the British colony’s first capital, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe made his first visit to the... Continue reading →