Who founded the City of York, now known as Toronto?

Discover Canada answers this in a single caption: Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe was Upper Canada's first Lieutenant Governor and founder of the City of York (now Toronto). The man the test wants is therefore Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe, who founded what Discover Canada labels as "the City of York (now Toronto)."

Simcoe was a Loyalist military officer and the first Lieutenant Governor of the new Upper Canada created by the Constitutional Act of 1791. His mandate covered the western, mainly English-speaking part of what had been the Province of Quebec, and the founding of York was part of building a new colonial capital and administrative centre for that population. Discover Canada places this in the same chapter that describes Loyalist arrival after 1776 and the rapid expansion of English-speaking settlement north of the new United States border.

Simcoe's role goes well beyond founding a city. Discover Canada writes that "Simcoe also made Upper Canada the first province in the British Empire to abolish slavery," and gives the year: "In 1793, Upper Canada, led by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, a Loyalist military officer, became the first province in the Empire to move toward abolition." So the same man who founded today's Toronto also led an early abolitionist step that the British Parliament did not match until 1807, when it prohibited the buying and selling of slaves, and 1833, when slavery was abolished throughout the Empire.

The question is testing whether new citizens know the original name of Toronto and the man who founded it. Both halves of the answer come from the same Discover Canada caption: "founder of the City of York (now Toronto)." The fact that the modern city's earlier name was York, and the founder was a single Loyalist officer, is the kind of compact fact the citizenship test rewards.

The answer also helps lock in a wider picture of late-1700s Upper Canada: a Loyalist-shaped colony, founded with a new capital, and an early move toward abolishing slavery. All three threads run through Simcoe in Discover Canada's account.