The Toronto History Walks Yearly Pass is available. Get it now for $125.00 for 1 year of unlimited tours, email
torontohistorywalks@gmail.com
for more information or for signing up!
** Please note: Please e-transfer the ticket amount when booking your space for this tour! You can e-transfer to the following email at:
torontohistorywalks@gmail.com
In this new volume, Landmarks 4 revisits the site of some of Toronto's urban legends, and historic buildings that gave rise to the city. This walk's focus is on the King Street West, Portland Street and lower Bathurst Street area
From there we wander around the area taking in landmarks not otherwise explored on other Toronto History Walks tours. So get your brains and feet ready for a workout my friends.
The British coffee house at the corner of King Street West and York Street in the old Chewett building dates from the 1830s. However, after the demise of the coffee house it became one of Toronto's best hotels the Rossin House.
There is also a connection to one of Toronto's best known characters, John Howard of High Park fame and the provincial Lunatic Asylum. It was in this building that John Howard lived until his country home out in High Park was completed.
Victoria Square is a little known gem in the heart of Toronto, and some of our earliest history begins there. So this tour returns walkers to the time period between 1812 and 1880 and everything in between.
Toronto is a city that hides its history in plain sight. Beneath the glass towers are layers of stories — grand hotels that vanished overnight, political scandals whispered through stone corridors, theatres that once glittered under gaslight, and laneways where the city first learned how to become a metropolis.
This new Toronto History Walks series of 60 different walking tours invites the walker to slow down, and see the city differently.
Over the course of 30 carefully chosen stops, this walking tour traces the landmarks that helped shape the history of Toronto. Beginning at the site of the legendary Holland House — once one of the city’s finest mansions, and a gathering place for politicians, and businessmen, the routes wind through the city uncovering stories both famous and forgotten.
Some locations are grand and imposing. Others are easy to walk past without a second glance. Every stop reveals a piece of Toronto’s personality. At Osgoode Hall, visitors will stand before one of the city’s most elegant historic buildings. Nearby, the old banks and newspaper buildings of the financial district recall an era when Toronto proudly called itself “Toronto the Good,” even as corruption and backroom dealings simmered beneath the surface.
The tour also explores the vanished city — the Toronto that survives only in photographs, and memory. Walkers will discover where magnificent Victorian structures once stood before demolition crews erased entire blocks in the name of progress. Former theatres, hotels, markets, and department stores emerge again through storytelling, helping modern explorers imagine the bustle, smoke, and noise of earlier generations.
Stories of fire, disaster, celebration, and reinvention. Participants will hear how the Great Fire of 1904 transformed downtown streets, how immigrant communities reshaped neighbourhoods block by block, and how Toronto repeatedly reinvented itself through booms, depressions, wars, and waves of newcomers.
But this tour is not simply about dates and buildings. It is about people. The politicians who argued over Confederation. The hotel clerks who witnessed scandals. The newspaper editors who shaped public opinion. The shopkeepers, labourers, entertainers, and ordinary Torontonians whose lives unfolded along these same streets.
Toronto has always had hidden corners and strange tales: tunnels beneath streets, forgotten cemeteries beneath office towers, unsolved crimes, and buildings said to carry echoes of the past. Even longtime residents may find themselves surprised by…
