Toronto is the provincial capital city for Ontario, Canada’s most highly populated province. Toronto is home to over 240 ethnic groups with over half of its population foreign-born and over 180 languages and major dialects spoken.

Nicknames for Toronto include T.O., The Big Smoke, Hogtown, Toronto the Good and the digital moniker T-Dot.

Toronto is the fourth-largest North American city, boasting the continent’s third-biggest tech sector. Toronto also has both the number two food and beverages industry and the second-strongest financial center in North America. There are two airports in Toronto, serving a total 200 worldwide destinations in 55 countries.

Research website numbeo ranks Toronto in the top 49% compared to the 250 cities evaluated on its overall quality of life index at June 2020. Toronto scored well on index factors such as health care (upper 18%), pollution (cleanest 34%), purchasing power (strongest 42%) and safety (safest 43%). On the negative side, Toronto rates relatively poorly on traffic commute time (slowest 15%), climate (worst 23%), cost of living (most expensive 26%) and property price to income ratio (highest 29%).

Toronto was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the site for the highest wine cellar on the planet. The Cellar in the Sky located in Toronto’s CN Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere, lies a record 1,151 feet (351 meters) above ground.

Another Guinness World Record was awarded to Toronto for the colossal Canadian flag constructed from 248,072 LEGO® bricks. On display In Toronto’s LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre, the brick model flag is 11 feet 7 inches (47 meters) tall and 21 feet 2 inches (46 meters) wide.

Downtown Toronto is home to Canada’s biggest exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange. The city also serves as the headquarters for Canada’s 5 biggest banks as well as 16 other Fortune Global 500 companies. A random sampling of these world-class businesses uncovered food processing and distribution conglomerate George Weston Limited, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and Manulife Financial.

Toronto has many heritage sites, the subject of frequent tours. For example, Toronto’s historic Distillery District is considered the biggest and best-preserved collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America.

In addition, the Toronto Transit Commission operates North America’s biggest and busiest streetcar system.

From an international trade perspective, Canadian province Ontario shipped C$209.4 billion worth of goods around the globe during 2019. Highest-value Ontarian exports are automobiles, nuclear reactors and machinery, gold, silver, base metals, chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals according to the Canadian International Merchandise Trade Database.

Toronto’s unemployment rate was 14.2% in August 2020, up from 6.3% one year earlier.

Capital Facts for Toronto, Canada: Quick Reference

 
Torontonians celebrate Canada Day as a national holiday each July 1.

Metropolitan Toronto’s land area occupies 2,280.21 square miles (5,905.71 square kilometers). Population for the Greater Toronto area was 6.2 million people as of September 5, 2020.

At the provincial level, Ontario’s population was 14.75 million dwellers as reported by Statistics Canada at June 2020.

Greater Toronto’s population density is 2,718 residents per square mile (1,049 per square kilometer).

Zooming out to Ontario’s provincial land boundaries, population density dilutes to 42 people per square mile (16 per square kilometer).