Fort Rouillé

Fort Rouillé was built by the French in 1750 on the shore of Lake Ontario, on land now inside the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, decades before John Graves Simcoe founded the town of York in 1793. Also known as Fort Toronto, it was established as a small fur-trading post intended to intercept Indigenous traders who might otherwise carry their goods to British posts further south, part of the broader French-British rivalry for control of the fur trade around the Great Lakes.

Burned by its own garrison

The fort's life was short: in 1759, as British forces advanced during the Seven Years' War and took Fort Niagara, the small French garrison at Fort Rouillé burned the post themselves rather than let it fall into British hands, then abandoned the site. The location sat largely unused for decades afterward until Simcoe chose the same general harbour for his new town, making Fort Rouillé the earliest European settlement on what is now central Toronto's waterfront, predating the city itself by more than forty years.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Fort Rouillé
• Wikipedia — Fort Rouillé

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