How Toronto displaced Montreal as Canada's #1 city (user search)

A pretty common but simplistic narrative is that until the rise of Quebec separatism Toronto was basically a podunk town, then the anglos and banks fled to Toronto and it became #1.

But obviously there were other factors at work that go back earlier in time. It ultimately goes back to Toronto being English-speaking and having a more favorable location. By the interwar period, Toronto was already close to Montreal in size.

Toronto was located in the Great Lakes region and better access to American markets. Like Chicago, it was located near industry and prosperous agricultural land. It also gained because American capital preferred Toronto while British capital. Montreal was the old mercantile center and had easier access to Britain (pre-air travel). In the 1920s, American investment in Canada surpassed British. American firms, largely from the Midwest, set up headquarters in Toronto.

Toronto wealth largely came from the mines of northern Ontario and Toronto became a global mining center. Toronto pulled ahead as a business and financial center, by the early 1960s Toronto had an equal number of head offices as Montreal and twice as many stocks were traded.

The St. Lawrence Seaway too benefitted Toronto and Ontario, as it reduced Montreal's role as a port.

Would also add the auto sector and particularly the Auto Pact which was beneficial to Southern Ontario's prosperity.

Interesting to read this quote about Toronto from 1952: "A big U.S.-style, Chicago-like town, inhabited, it is said, by 1,000,000 people with a sharp eye for a dollar...Toronto lives in an atmosphere of boom and bigness...Like Chicago, which it resembles in drive and ambition, and which it greatly admires, Toronto is not simply content in its youth simply to prosper cozily by trading with the rich agricultural belt which surrounds it."

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