For any large city, particularly in the western hemisphere which was settled relatively recently in history, the geographical reason for the city being there is usually immediately clear. Smaller cities may be located because it was a convenient stopover, or there was a particular resource located there, or it was an easily defensible location, but major cities tend to have a further geographical reason for being.
Miami is where it is because it was logical to have a port city about as far south as one can go in the peninsula of Florida, facing toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Chicago is where it is because it is just about as far south as one can go on Lake Michigan, on the western side of the lake makes it a hub for shipping out grain, beef and, ore from the Midwest and also centrally located as a railroad hub. Today it's vast airport serves the same purpose as a stopover hub for changing planes.
Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and, Los Angeles are on the west coast, as far as one could go west and built around good natural harbors, because the continent was settled from east to west.
Denver is where it is because it is where the high plains meet the Rocky Mountains. This made it a convenient stopover while going west before entering the mountains.
Boston is where it is because the area was settled by northern Europeans and Cape Cod formed a good natural harbor.
New York City is where it is because, not only is there a good natural harbor, but with an abundant supply of fresh water from the Hudson River.
Montreal is where it is because it is as far as ships could sail up the St. Lawrence River before encountering the Lachine Rapids. " Lachine" means "China" in French and Jacques Cartier thought that continuing along that route would lead to China.
What none of this explains is Toronto. There is no corresponding geographical reason why such a large city should be on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. The Toronto Islands form a harbor, which was enough to get the city started as Fort York, but the harbor has been relatively insignificant in the development of the city and Hamilton's harbor has a much greater capacity.
It is actually a good thing for a major city to not have a geographical reason for it's existence. We saw in the posting on the World And Economics Blog, "The Inverse Geographic Prosperity Principle", that if a major city lacks a significant geographical reason for being where it is, such as a large city in the middle of a desert, that must mean that the city is prosperous. The major city in the desert would apply to Phoenix and Las Vegas. It would also apply to Houston, although that has oil going for it.
There is one, possibly unexpected, reason why Toronto has become such a major city. The two largest cities on the Great Lakes are Toronto and Chicago. The thing that they have in common is that both of their downtowns were destroyed by fire, Chicago in 1871 and Toronto in 1904. While initially a disaster this gave both cities the opportunity to start "The Property Order" over again, as we saw in the posting by that name on the World And Economics Blog, in what could be called "creative destruction". But even so, Chicago has it's geographical reason for being a major city while Toronto doesn't.
Toronto has not always been the largest city in Canada. I lived in Canada for several years as a boy and remember Montreal as definitely being the country's largest and most important city. Expo 67 was the grand celebration of Canada's centennial and there seemed to be no question that it should be held in Montreal.
I can remember when the only tall buildings in Toronto's downtown skyline were the original two black towers of the Toronto Dominion buildings. The Royal York Hotel was much more easily visible than it is today. But, for some reason, Toronto kept growing and surpassed Montreal in population in the early 1980s. The growth is mostly from immigrants, it seems that just about everyone wants to live in Canada and some years it admits immigrants amounting to several percent of it's population.
The arrangement of Canada's major cities is amazingly like that of the planets. There were nine planets, before Pluto was controversially demoted. If we take the nine largest cities, presuming the sun to be in the east, Halifax is Mercury. Quebec City is Venus. Montreal is earth. Ottawa is Mars. Toronto is Jupiter. Winnepeg is Saturn. Calgary and Edmonton are the sibling planets of Uranus and Neptune. Vancouver is Pluto.
Everyone learns the planets in school. But through the 1960s and 1970s the world entered the Space Age. We saw that Toronto was a distant second to Montreal in 1967. But astronauts first landed on the moon in 1969. Throughout the 1970s and 80s numerous space probes ranged throughout the Solar System. Space was everywhere, in the news, on television, in stories and in movies. Almost everyone knew quite a bit about the Solar System.
For Canada's mostly unrecognized role in the Apollo Space Program see the compound posting "Investigations", December 2018, 38) CANADA'S AVRO ARROW. Also see "Canada's Long-Forgotten Space Program", October 2021.
The giant of the Solar System is Jupiter. It is actually more massive than all the other planets combined. The second most massive planet, Saturn, is about one-third the mass of Jupiter. Jupiter serves as the earth's bodyguard. It acts as a gravitational vacuum cleaner and comets, and other objects, that could be devastating if they hit the earth, such as Shoemaker-Levy in the 1990s, hit Jupiter instead.
With the layout of Canada's major cities so much resembling the planets, although few if any people were consciously aware of it, Toronto had to become the largest city because it occupied what we could call "The Jupiter Position". This explains why Toronto was well behind Montreal in population and importance until the Space Age, when it had to move ahead.
I have been reading about both science and history since childhood and I can tell you that history is almost like gravity and electromagnetism as a force of nature. History is so important because we tend to repeat it, often without realizing it. This concept of Toronto occupying "The Jupiter Position" is not the only reason for it's growth but it explains why such a large city should be on the north shore of Lake Ontario, without there being any apparent geographical reason for it, at least any earthly geographical reason.
A prominent visible feature of Jupiter is it's "Great Red Spot". This is actually a storm that has been going on for centuries and is larger than the earth. To correspond with this Toronto has developed it's own "red spot". On a clear night the lights of Toronto can be seen on the other side of Lake Ontario, such as atop the Niagara Escarpment at Lewiston.
There is a red light visible, just like the Red Spot on Jupiter. It is the "S" on the Scotiabank tower in downtown Toronto. Image from Google Earth.
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