A 19th-century merchants' club that became the city's central business lobby
The Toronto Board of Trade
Founded in 1845 by the city's merchants, the Toronto Board of Trade grew into the central voice of the city's business community, shaping decades of civic infrastructure and economic policy debates.
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The Toronto Board of Trade was founded in 1845 by a group of the city's merchants and traders, organizing to advocate collectively for infrastructure and policy that supported commerce, at a time when Toronto's economy still ran heavily on lake shipping and the wholesale trade of goods moving through the port. The Board became an influential early voice in debates over harbour development, railway construction and the city's broader commercial infrastructure through the 19th century.
A lasting civic institution
The organization evolved over the following century and a half from a fairly narrow merchants' club into the central business advocacy body for the wider Toronto region, weighing in on municipal and provincial policy affecting the local economy, from taxation to transit funding to amalgamation. Now operating as the Toronto Region Board of Trade, the organization remains one of the most established and continuously operating civic institutions in the city, tracing its roots back nearly to the founding of the City of Toronto itself in 1834.
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