Historic Fort York, 1793-1993

Toronto doesn't know its own origin story. Most people in this city can't tell you that it was founded as a British military garrison in 1793, not as a trading post, not as a settler town, but as a strategic position.

Lieutenant Governor Simcoe chose a swampy stretch of lakeshore because the British needed a defensible capital for Upper Canada after ceding Niagara. The town of York grew up around those wooden walls. The Americans came in 1813, burned the fort, and left. The city rebuilt and kept going. That unglamorous founding is the most Toronto story imaginable, and almost nobody knows it.

The fort sits today under the shadow of the Gardiner, tucked between a highway and a rail corridor, easy to miss at 120 km/h. Benn's book is the only serious reckoning with what that site actually is: the place where this city began, and the 200-year record of what happened after.