The Toronto Purchase

The Toronto Purchase refers to a set of agreements, first made in 1787 and revised in 1805, by which representatives of the British Crown acquired roughly 250,000 acres of land along the north shore of Lake Ontario from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, land that underlies most of present-day Toronto. The 1787 agreement was later found to be legally deficient — it left the actual boundaries of the land blank and involved payment described by the Mississaugas as far below fair value — problems that went unresolved for generations even as the city of York, later Toronto, grew across the land in question.

A 200-year land claim

The Mississaugas of the Credit pursued a formal land claim against the federal government through much of the 20th and early 21st centuries, seeking compensation for the original agreement's deficiencies. That claim was finally settled in 2010, when the federal government agreed to pay the Mississaugas of the Credit $145 million, one of the largest specific land claim settlements in Canadian history at the time, formally closing a dispute that had run since the original purchase over two centuries earlier.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Toronto Purchase
• Wikipedia — Toronto Purchase

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