Commentary
Toronto’s Yonge Street was once fabled as the longest street in the world. Though that boast is not now considered accurate by the Guinness Book of World Records (the title may actually be held by the city’s Bathurst Street), Yonge Street has a long and fascinating history.
For thousands of years, indigenous tribes created a series of trails that would connect Lake Ontario to the interior. The most important of these was the “Toronto Carrying Place,” a portage route running 45 kilometres from the Humber River on Lake Ontario to the Holland River near Lake Simcoe, and then onward via the Severn River system to Georgian Bay. The Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and later the Mississauga peoples used these paths for war, trade, diplomacy, and seasonal movement….