Proud history and great architecture at Queen’s Park

By MPP Toby Barrett

To The Haldimand Press

On July 1, 1867, Ontarians from all walks of life celebrated the birth of their new nation and new province, ever bearing in mind, Ontario’s Legislature preceded Confederation by 75 years.

In the provincial capital Toronto, a city with a population under 60,000, people marked the occasion by attending public bonfires, ox-roastings, military drills, lake excursions, and fireworks.

Queen’s Park had opened just seven years earlier as a City of Toronto public park. Prince Edward, Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII, attended a ceremony on September 11, 1860 and dedicated the park in the name of his mother, Queen Victoria.

There was no Legislative Building at Queen’s Park at the time, as sessions of the Legislature were held at a building on Front Street close to today’s financial district, at the intersection of King and Simcoe streets.

Members of Ontario’s first parliament, then known as MPs and governing the British colony of Upper Canada, first met in Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake, before moving to York, now Toronto, in 1793.

The first Premier of the new Ontario was John Sandfield Macdonald. A close ally of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sandfield Macdonald won Ontario’s first election during the summer of 1867. Sandfield Macdonald’s parliament had 82 members. Most ridings were in the south of the province—a large portion of what is now northern Ontario was then part of Rupert’s Land—which was not brought into Confederation until 1870. Ontario’s borders continued to change, finally settling into its present-day boundaries in 1912.