Portal:Ontario/Selected biography/1
John Graves Simcoe (February 25, 1752 – October 26, 1806) was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791-1796. Then frontier, this was modern-day southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York (now Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as the courts, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and in abolishing slavery. He ended slavery in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the British Empire as a whole - by 1810 there were no slaves in Upper Canada, but the Crown did not abolish slavery throughout the Empire until 1834.