Yonge Street is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. Ontario's first colonial administrator, John Graves Simcoe, named the street for his friend Sir George Yonge, an expert on ancient Roman roads.
Yonge Street
Yonge Street from the sky (30% of the road visible)
2023 view of the intersection at Yonge and Wellington Street from the northeast.
Yonge Street view to north at Elgin Mills in Richmond Hill, ON
John Graves Simcoe was a British Army general and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York, which is now known as Toronto, and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and also in the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada.
Portrait by George Theodore Berthon
A memorial to Simcoe in Exeter Cathedral
The 1903 unveiling of the statue of John Graves Simcoe at Queen's Park in Toronto
Statue of John Graves Simcoe first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada by Walter Seymour Allward 1903 Queen's Park (Toronto)
