| From The Publisher* | Toronto has ghosts: lost villages, hidden hamlets … Over more than two centuries, Toronto has ballooned from a muddy collection of huts on a swampy waterfront to become Canada's largest and most diverse city. Amid (and sometimes underneath) this urban agglomeration are the remains of many small communities that once dotted the region that is now Toronto and the GTA. Before European settlers arrived, there were Indigenous villages on the shore of Lake Ontario. With the arrival of the English, a host of farm hamlets, toll-gate stopovers, mill towns, and, later, railway and cottage communities sprang up. Vestiges of some are still preserved, others have disappeared forever. Some are remembered, many have been forgotten. In Toronto's Lost Villages, all their stories are brought back to life. |
| From The Publisher* | Toronto's Lost Villages leads the reader and the day-tripper to the many historic sites and streetscapes that mark long lost stage stops, mill villages, and railway communities, now engulfed by a surging city. |
| Biographical Note | Ron Brown, a geographer and travel writer, has authored more than twenty books, including Canada's World Wonders and The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. A past chair of the Writers' Union of Canada and a current member of the East York Historical Society, he gives lectures and conducts tours along Ontario's back roads. Ron lives in Toronto. |
