25 years, one mayor, one new skyline

North York

Almost single-handedly reshaped by one 25-year mayor, North York built its own downtown along Yonge Street — complete with its own city hall, square and skyline — before merging into Toronto in 1998.

Of all six former municipalities that merged into Toronto in 1998, North York has the most direct link to a single person — mayor Mel Lastman, who ran it for a genuinely unusual 25 consecutive years and used that time to build it a downtown from close to nothing.

Mel Lastman's 25-year mayoralty (1972–1997)

Lastman served as mayor of North York from 1972 to 1997, and used that long tenure to push through roughly $4 billion in redevelopment along north Yonge Street — a deliberate effort to give a suburban municipality its own genuine downtown rather than leaving it purely residential. North York was upgraded from a borough to a full city in 1979, with its new civic offices anchoring the project.

Mel Lastman Square

The centrepiece, Mel Lastman Square, opened June 16, 1989 — a 20,000-square-foot public space with an amphitheatre, fountains and a reflecting pool that becomes an outdoor skating rink in winter, sitting alongside North York Civic Centre, the North York Central Library and an arts centre, all built on the same stretch of Yonge Street through the 1970s and 80s.

From North York's mayor to Toronto's mayor

When the 1998 amalgamation merged North York into the new City of Toronto (see our full amalgamation history), Mel Lastman went on to become the first mayor of the newly unified megacity — a fitting cap to a career spent building a downtown for a suburb that, within a year, would no longer technically be one.

Sources

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