Timeline of Ontario History - Part of Province of Quebec, 1763 To 1790

Part of Province of Quebec, 1763 To 1790

• 1763– Britain wins the Seven Years War and takes full control of the future Ontario
• 1768- Guy Carleton commissioned "Captain General and Governor in Chief" on 12 April 1768. He remains in command at Quebec till 1778.
• 1775–1783 American War for Independence
• 1778 - Sir Frederick Haldimand takes command as “Captain General and Governor in Chief" 26 June 1778. He occupied Cataraqui (Kingston, Ont.), reinforced Niagara and Detroit, and strengthened other military outposts against the American threat
• 1779—Haldimand sends Captain Dietrich Brehm to strengthen the line of communication between Montreal and Detroit; over 5,000 Indians forced out of New York come to Ft. Niagara for food and shelter; he increases the goods distributed as gifts through the Indian Department from about £10,000 in 1778 to £63,861 in 1782.
• 1783- The Treaty of Paris ends the war; U.S. boundary along the St.Lawrence and Great Lakes
• 1784- Haldimand purchases lands for exiled Loyalists from the Mississaugas for or £1,180
• 1784 Haldimand sets up 8 new townships for settlement along the upper St Lawrence from the westernmost seigneury to modern Brockville, Ontario, and five more around Cataraqui.
• 1784–About 9,000 United Empire Loyalists are settled in what is now southern Ontario, chiefly in Niagara, around the Bay of Quinte, and along the St. Lawrence River between Lake Ontario and Montreal. They are soon followed by many more Americans, some of them not so much ardent loyalists but attracted nonetheless by the availability of cheap, arable land.

At the same time large numbers of Iroquois loyal to Britain arrive from the United States and are settled on reserves west of Lake Ontario.

Kingston and Hamilton became important settlements as a result of the influx of Loyalists.

• 1786- Haldimand replaced by Carleton, now Lord Dorchester.
• 1788- On July 24, 1788, Governor General Lord Dorchester proclaims the land area to be divided up into "Lower Canada" with a French legal system and "Upper Canada" with a British legal System, whereby the land districts had been named Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau and Hesse in honor of the Royal family and the present large Germanic population.
• 1788–The British purchase 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) on which they begin the settlement of York, now Toronto
• Thousands of "Pennsylvania Dutch" (German) farmers move from Pennsylvania to Upper Canada between the 1780s and the 1830s; they claimed a share of the United Empire Loyalists' foundational myth, drawing on its themes of loyalty and sacrifice.