History
The original shoreline of the northern shore were low sandy bluffs, just south of today's Front Street. The mouth of the harbour pointed west. Fort York, on the north shore of the bay, near the mouth of Garrison Creek, guarded the harbour's mouth. It was briefly captured by American forces during the War of 1812.
The islands were originally a low sandy peninsula forming the southern limit of the bay. The Scarborough Bluffs are much larger bluffs that lie approximately ten kilometres east of the harbour. Strong lake currents over time washed the sand eroded from the bluffs westwards to form the peninsula surrounding the bay.
The peninsula became the Toronto Islands through the result of two storms and man-made activity. In 1852, a storm created a channel through the eastern edge of the peninsula that formed the south edge of the bay. The storm washed through excavations made for sand for local construction. In 1858, another storm widened the channel and made it permanent.
The eastern shore of the bay, approximately six kilometres east, was a marsh around the mouth of the Don River. In addition to the Don River a number of smaller creeks flowed into the bay. The original site of the town of York had half a dozen short creeks that flowed through it. As the town developed they all became polluted, and were buried. As the city grew the larger creeks, including Russell Creek, Taddle Creek and Garrison Creek, were also filled in.
Read more about this topic: Toronto Harbour
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“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)