Toronto historical plaques — plaque text and locations across the City of Toronto

Historical plaques in Toronto stand thickest in a few downtown blocks and then scatter across the former boroughs. This page gathers the Toronto historical plaques recorded here, each with its plaque text and the corner, park or building front where it was found.

Plaque text, transcribed as cast

The plaque text on each Toronto page is the wording on the bronze, not a summary of it. Some of these plaques date from the 1950s and read like it; a few have since been replaced with revised wording, and where that happened the older plaque text is what a visitor photographing the marker at the time recorded.

Locations across the City of Toronto

Historical plaques in Toronto follow the old shoreline and the first concession roads more than the modern street grid. Within the City of Toronto a marker may sit on a traffic island, inside a lobby, or against a wall that has since been rebuilt around it. Each entry names the intersection or address as found, which is how Toronto plaque locations stay usable when a building changes hands. Toronto historical plaques are also among the most frequently relocated in the province, so the address recorded matters more here than elsewhere.

Why some Toronto historical plaques are here and others are not

Toronto historical plaques were at one point split off from the rest of this collection, and the pages for a number of them were removed. What survives here is the record as it was kept — a substantial part of the City of Toronto set, restored to the addresses that were linked to it. Toronto plaque locations that could not be matched to a surviving record point instead to this page, so a link followed from elsewhere still lands somewhere useful.

Every Toronto historical plaque recorded here

Recorded in Toronto, text not held

These markers were catalogued here, but the page carrying their wording has not survived. Each is listed under the name it was cited by; nothing has been rewritten. A link that once pointed at one of them lands on this page.

• James Shaver Woodsworth 1874-1942
• McMaster Hall
• Old City Hall
• Plaque honoring Mary Pickford's birthplace
• Queen's Park
• Sir John Henry Lefroy 1817–1890
• St. Michael's College
• The Discovery of Insulin
• The Macdonald-Mowat House 1872
• The Right Honourable Lester Bowles Pearson 1897–1972
• The Santa Claus Parade
• Upper Canada College

Where Toronto keeps its own record

The council, library and historical-society pages the directory listed for Toronto, carried over as they were.

Also linked from Toronto pages that no longer have one of their own: www.rom.on.ca/ · Link

Recorded but not yet photographed

• The Church of the Holy Trinity 1847 — The City of Toronto On the south wall of the church, in Trinity Square, on the east side o
• Colborne Lodge 1836 — The City of Toronto In front of Colborne Lodge 1836, at the south end of High Park on Colb
• C.W. Jefferys — The City of Toronto At his former residence on the east side of Yonge Street, just north o
• Canada First Movement — The City of Toronto On the east side of Bay Street between Adelaide Street West and King S
• Colonel James Givins — The City of Toronto In front of a school on Givens Street, east side, just north of Queen
• Canadian National Exhibition — The City of Toronto In Exhibition Place, west end, just east of the Dufferin Gate at the e
• Corporal Frederick George Topham, V.C. 1917-1974 — The City of Toronto At the rear of the former Etobicoke City Hall, on the SE corner of The
• The Bishop's Palace — The City of Toronto At the NW corner of University Avenue and Front Street West
• David Gibson 1804-1864 — The City of Toronto In front of Gibson House Museum on Park Home Avenue just west of Yonge