Places in Digital Toronto City Directories, 1837-1969 (online finding aid)
About Places in Digital Toronto City Directories
This online finding aid was prepared to assist researchers find individual places (other than Toronto itself) that were listed in historic local city directories available in digital format, 1837-1969. Provided are approximately 1,750 direct links to more than 100 places now part of the City of Toronto, that had separate listings in local directories or had their own directories. Many of the place names survive as communities, neighbourhoods and streets in Toronto.
Digital Toronto City Directories
What's included in Places in Digital Toronto City Directories
Column A: Place names used in the directory or a standardized name
- Place names are listed alphabetically
- Place names generally are transcribed exactly as they were published in a directory. A standardized name may be used, however, to keep entries for the same place together. A qualifier may be added to distinguish the place when the same name was used for different places, e.g., "Cedarvale (East York)" and "Cedarvale (York Township)", or for a place within a place, e.g., Scarborough. In some cases, a note indicating the name that was used in the directory itself may be included in Column C
- Only place names of communities that are within the boundaries of the City of Toronto as of 1998 are included
- Only place names that were listed in a separate section of a directory or had their own directory are included
- The 1837 Toronto city directory was the first to have a separate listing for places outside the city limits. Etobicoke, Scarborough and York townships were included in the section, "Home District, or the Counties of York and Simcoe" (along with many other places that are not now part of Toronto)
- Surrounding places also were listed separately in city directories of Toronto (1846-47, 1850-51, 1866, 1868), York County (1870, 1871, 1876, 1881, 1935) and York Township (1909)
- Toronto suburbs and outlying neighbourhoods were listed as appendices to Toronto city directories continuously from 1874 to 1929
- Starting in 1930, Toronto city directories combined the listings for the City of Toronto and the suburban areas in the main lists for names, streets and businesses. However, a separate alphabetical list of suburban streets, grouped by individual suburb, continued to be provided
- Separate directories have been digitized for East Toronto (1907), Long Branch (1927), North Toronto (1908), Parkdale (1881), Toronto Junction (1906) and Yorkville (1876)
Column B: Year directory published
Entries for each place are arranged chronologically by the year when it was published in a directory. Digital directories published between 1837 and 1969 are included. (The first Toronto directory, published in 1833, is not included because it had no separate listings for surrounding communities.)
Direct links are provided to the starting page for the place in the digital Toronto city directory for the year indicated. Files for some directories are very large so it may take a few seconds to load the individual page. Links are made to PDFs if they are the only available digital copy; the size of each PDF is indicated in Column D.
Column C: Notes
Notes are provided in some entries to indicate:
- A brief title for those directories that are not Toronto city directories, e.g. directories for York Township, Parkdale, etc.
- The extent of information included in a directory, especially if it is brief information
- Cross references. Jump links are provided to take users to the first date in a date range
- Historical descriptions for some places that are not included in Columns E, F and G
- Alternate forms of place names
Column D: PDF size
Column E: Description used in the dictionary
Directories often included a description of the place, and these have been transcribed exactly as they appeared. The full description is provided in the entry for the first year when it was published, along with an indication of the year(s) when the description was repeated word for word. Changes to descriptions are recorded in the entry for the year when the change was made, with the new information provided following an ellipse (…).
Column F: Description used in Places within Toronto, Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
Descriptions of Places within Toronto prepared by the Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society are provided, when available, in the first entry for the place.
Column G: City of Toronto Archives Authority Records
Links to authority records prepared by City of Toronto Archives staff are provided, when available, in the first entry for the place. The authority records provide key historical dates and facts, and link to records in the Archives that use that heading.
Column H: Municipality at the time of the 1998 Toronto amalgamation
Listed here are the names of the local municipalities - Etobicoke, East York, North York, Scarborough, Toronto and York - under whose jurisdiction the places were at the time of the amalgamation on 1 January 1998 that created the new City of Toronto.
What's not included in Places in Digital Toronto City Directories
- Links to places in Toronto directories that have not been digitized, 1970-2001. Print Toronto City Directories
- Places that were not listed separately in the Toronto city directories but were included in the main Toronto listings for names, streets and businesses
- Entries for Yorkville, for example, were interfiled with the Toronto listings in city directories published in 1850, 1856, 1859, 1861,1867-68 and 1870
- Once a community was annexed to Toronto, it no longer had a separate listing within a directory
- Places beyond the boundaries of the City of Toronto as of 1998.
- Alternative place names that were not used in the directories themselves
Background
This online guide was started in 2016 by Natalia Skripkin and Pavel Danzanov during a practicum at the Toronto Public Library for the Master's program, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Their work was based on manual finding aids that Toronto Public Library staff had prepared over the years. The students' work was supervised by staff at the Toronto Reference Library: Irena Lewycka, Services Specialist, Humanities and Social Sciences Department and Barbara Myrvold, Senior Services Specialist, Local History, Special Collections Department.
A thank-you to the City of Toronto Archives staff for assisting us to link to their authority records and to the Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society for preparing the helpful list describing "Places within Toronto".