Talk:Old Toronto

Old Toronto and "Downtown" are not the same thing!

Currently, there is a discussion regarding this issue, since I believe that the term "Old Toronto" is very ambiguous. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 21:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

In the above discussion it has been suggested to rename this page Toronto (former), I support that. JosephIWMolto (talk) 18:46, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Retitle article and links to it

Why are we still discussing this? Inertia? We (Torontonians) still refer to Scarborough, East York, Etobicoke, Toronto, etc. Canada Post still delivers to the cities of Scarborough, Toronto, etc. so to call Toronto Old Toronto is simply not right. I've never heard of Toronto being referred to as Old Toronto. This is the first and only time (in my 14 years in Toronto and 2 months out in the wilds of Scarborough) I've ever heard that name. City of Toronto indicates that you're talking about the unwieldy, dysfunctional megacity we're saddled with. If you want to distinguish between Toronto and the City of Toronto you could always use 'Metro Toronto'. People may refer to Metro Toronto when talking about the city of Toronto that existed before the megacity City of Toronto was foisted upon us. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.71.255.227 (talk) 02:23, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

The article is currently titled Old Toronto, but the only mention of that phrase within the article is in the third paragraph where it says "The old city is also called Old Toronto, but this term has historically referred to Toronto's boundaries before the Great Toronto Fire of 1904." The lead paragraph refers to the Old City of Toronto and goes on to define several alternative terms.

So "Old Toronto" has another meaning and is not really the name of the former Toronto. In addition, having "Old" as the first word of the title gives the false impression that it has to be capitalized, when still another version that people actually is "(the) old Toronto".

It would therefore make more sense the article to be retitled to Toronto (old city). (Some other alternatives are Toronto (pre-1998 city) or Toronto (pre-amalgamation) or Toronto (pre-megacity) or just Toronto (old). But I think the first one is clearest.)

Currently a whole bunch of pages about TTC subway stations, like this one, say in an infobox that the station is in a "district" (whatever that is) called "Old Toronto", which links to this page. These should also be updated to say "Toronto (old city)". --208.76.104.133 (talk) 08:48, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I've been bugged by this problem for some time, but don't really have a solution. There are a lot of pages and references which link to this (including the Toronto infobox), so it would be some work to fix it up properly. I have no problems with your proposal, so if you have the time to work on it, go ahead. If you're going to take on a large piece of work, it's a good idea to get an ID and set up a user page and stable talk page. It will help reduce the chance of your changes being reverted, among other reasons. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 20:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

How about calling this article City of Toronto (Old) or City of Toronto (Former)? JosephIWMolto (talk) 04:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this question of the article name desperately needs to be sorted out. It seems to me that the primary difficulty is that any attempt at consistency leeds to two equally problematic names:

• Old Toronto was a municipality which disappeared along with Scarborough, East York, York, North York and Etobicoke in 1998. The pages for those municipalities are named: Scarborough, Ontario; East York, Ontario; York, Ontario; North York, Ontario and Etobicoke (redirected from Etobicoke, Ontario) so the simplist solution is to call the article Toronto, Ontario were it not the case that that title interferes with naming for the current 'Megacity' of Toronto page. I assume there is nothing that can be done about that, after all the current Toronto really is a municipality in Ontario so Toronto, Ontario shouldn't really lead to the article for the old City? The only caveat is that if we divide articles on municipalities into:
• regional (counties, districts, metropolis) municipalities
• local (city, town, borough, village) municipalities
• unincorporated communities (postal villages, neighbourhoods, 'geographic' townships)

-slightly different naming patters have developed for each. Despite being otherwise completely inconsistent in their naming pattern, most articles on regions have the designation in the title: 'York County, Ontario', 'Metropolitan Toronto' and 'Regional Municipality of York' so the current 'megacity' of Toronto (if we treat it as a region which it effectively is, if not officially) should be 'City of Toronto' (current, post 1998 city) which leaves 'Toronto, Ontario' for the old (1834-1998) city in line with the article names for the other defunct local governments within the City of Toronto. Then the effective rule would be:

• regions would be named 'County of X' or 'X District' or 'Metropolitan X' or 'City of X' (megacity with no region)
• local governments (and former local governments) would be named 'X, Ontario'
• communities would be 'X, Toronto'

- 'Toronto' would lead to 'City of Toronto' (post 1998) or a Toronto disambiguation page. In this case would it be problematic calling the article on the old city (1834-1998) Toronto, Ontario?

If we are looking for some sort of consistency, there are two other possible solutions I think:

• a hierarchechal style which would include the name of the higher municipality. Toronto, Ontario in this case would be the article on the modern 'megacity' which would leave the old city (1834-1998) as Toronto, Toronto (former City of Toronto in the former Metropolis of Toronto) or an equally confusing Toronto, York (former City of Toronto in the former County of York).

• the last solution is regardless of whether the name is Toronto or Toronto, Ontario for either the pre or the post 1998 article, a word could simply be added to the end of the name of a defunct municipality: Toronto or Toronto, Ontario would be the post 1998 city, Toronto (?) or Toronto, Ontario (?) where ? is defunct or former would then be the name of the pre 1998 City (I think calling an article historic or old can be misleading). Of course this would not be consistent with how the other former cities of Metro have been named (Scarborough, Ontario; East York, Ontario etc.)

-One other thing to keep in mind is that the last solution treats a former municipality as only an entity of the past while, in effect, Toronto, Etobicoke, Scarborough etc. can also be considered current 'regions' or 'super neighbourhoods' of the current 'megacity' in which case we could be treating them more like neighbourhoods (many of which are also defunct municipalities while many others were never more the postal communities or commercial developments). Not that that helps much, there is little consistency in the naming of Toronto neighbourhoods except a tendency towards a hierarchichal style X, Toronto (such as Riverdale, Toronto) which would lead us back to the unacceptable name Toronto, Toronto (mega neighbourhood of Toronto in the modern City of Toronto)?!? If it is possible(?) to develop any general guidelines it could help with other naming questions! JosephIWMolto (talk) 09:32, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 02:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

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Toronto (former) → City of Toronto — I see there is an old discussion above regarding this topic but thought a better discussion could be generated here. "City of Toronto" is the name of the settlement with its original boundaries created in 1834. A similar scheme of naming can be seen with London and City of London. The qualifier "former" does not seem appropriate for use as a Wikipedia article title. EelamStyleZ (talk) 03:17, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

• that seems like a weird way to put it. "City of London" still exists; If you look at New York, the former cities are now bourroughs. 65.93.13.216 (talk) 04:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • True, but unfortunately that isn't the case in Toronto. We can still call them as "dissolved municipalities" or "former boroughs". It may be appropriate to refer to the old city of Toronto as "City of Toronto" as it was the official name of the original settlement created in 1834. EelamStyleZ (talk) 01:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

• Certainly I don't like the present title, but I don't like the suggested one either (it doesn't tell us that we're not talking about the present-day city). If Old Toronto won't do, how about putting in the dates: City of Toronto (1834–1998)?--Kotniski (talk) 11:22, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't think putting existence dates would be any more appropriate-I'd like to see one example of it that's being already used in an article title. Similar to how City of London refers to the "original" city of London, it can be inferred that so does City of Toronto. Also, we can also add a "not to be confused with Toronto" tag on the top of the article. Besides, the article itself will describe the fact that City of Toronto is referring to the city in its original boundaries while Toronto is the city with the present day boudaries that encompasses "Old Toronto". At the moment, I don't think there is a better way to refer to "Old Toronto" other than "City of Toronto". EelamStyleZ (talk) 16:13, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

So how do Torontians refer to this area of their city? Do they call it the City of Toronto, like Londoners refer to "the City" meaning that part of London? Do they call it Old Toronto? Do they not call it anything at all as it has no particular identity nowadays? We can't use the parallel of London unless actual usage is similarly parallel.--Kotniski (talk) 16:25, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe in the media they still refer to that part as just "Toronto" while they still specify other areas as "Scarborough", "North York", etc. (of course when they talk about the whole city they call it "Toronto" as well). "City of Toronto" can be seen as a parallel to "City of London" or an even better example, "City of Halifax", a dissolved municipality within the current city of Halifax. I believe Old Toronto is a colloquial term that is never widely used (I've only heard it being used on Wikipedia so far). By logic "City of Toronto" should be the proper name given to the dissolved municipality. While currently there is no official name that is used for that part, it was the official name for it prior to 1998 during the Metropolitan Toronto era. EelamStyleZ (talk) 16:50, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Does the current Toronto become the Megacity of Toronto or New Toronto ? 65.94.44.124 (talk) 06:03, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Logical or otherwise, we want to know if the proposed name is used for this area, not whether it ought to be.--Kotniski (talk) 11:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Present day Toronto is just "Toronto" as always. Megacity should not be used to refer to it as defies the definition of a megacity and Toronto is never refered to as "New Toronto" (there is already a neighbourhood by that name). And in present day terms, no "City of Toronto" isn't used to refer to the old Toronto. I do acknowledge WP:COMMONNAME, but really there is no common name currently to refer to that part of Toronto (other than its individual neighbourhoods, a collective name of "Downtown" which is obviously inappropriate, or "Toronto" when differentiating the former boroughs). Many don't agree with the current title "Toronto (former)" and Old Toronto isn't a widely used name either (although it could be considered as a title), which is why I think its historic official name should be used to refer to it. EelamStyleZ (talk) 18:48, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, maybe there isn't a better solution, but that historic name still needs disambiguating, since it sppears the phrase "City of Toronto" on its own doesn't imply that it's referring to a historic entity. So I still suggest disambiguating it with dates, or perhaps with the word "former" (City of Toronto (former), though I still prefer dates).--Kotniski (talk) 21:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm still skeptical about using the word "former" as a qualifier in the article's title. Like I said, I'd like to see some articles where it's currently being used - same with the historic dates in article titles for historic cities. An example of referring to the amalgamated part of the original city as "the city" can be seen with Halifax and City of Halifax. Also, there seems to be a proposal at the WikiProject Toronto page to redirect Toronto's former borough pages to pages that call them as cities (i.e. Scarborough, Ontario → City of Scarborough, North York, Ontario → City of North York, etc.). Redirecting Toronto (former) to a page called City of Toronto can also keep it in line with the mentioned renaming proposal. EelamStyleZ (talk) 04:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see that proposal, but I've said about all I can on this matter. If "City of Toronto" isn't a descriptor that people will readily associate with the former city as opposed to the present-day city, I don't see how it can stand as the title of this article on its own (without a disambiguator). But since you mention the Toronto project, I'll leave a note there and try to draw in some new opinions.--Kotniski (talk) 10:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, and the naming convention proposals can be found here. EelamStyleZ (talk) 15:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I suggested in my talk page "Former City of Toronto." One alternative suggestion as brought up by Kotniski is City of Toronto (1834-1998). How about Toronto (1834-1998)? Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 16:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If we were to use existence dates in the title then I think just "Toronto (1834-1998)" is enough. I still don't see anything wrong with naming it simply "City of Toronto". Former boroughs can also be named as "City of Scarborough", "City of Etobicoke", "Borough of East York", etc. just like how the proposal at WikiProject Toronto outlines. EelamStyleZ (talk) 00:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I think we must be talking past each other - the "thing wrong" with naming it simply "City of Toronto" is that this phrase (as I understand it) does not primarily refer to the City of Toronto of the period we're talking about. Have I misunderstood? Are you claiming that the phrase does primarily refer to the area of the old city rather than the present-day one? If that's the case, then there's no problem with having it as the title; but if it isn't, surely you can see the objection?--Kotniski (talk) 08:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I do see the objection. But I still do believe it would be a lot easier having it that way, rather than calling it "former" which seems inappropriate/misleading. It primarily did refer to that part of Toronto, of course. Even after the 1998 amalgamation of Old Toronto and its surrounding cities, it was still differentiated as a separate city for a short period of time. Right now "City of Toronto" could refer to one of many things, such as the municipal government of Toronto or all of Toronto as a whole. When one has to differentiate between the former cities however, Old Toronto is sometimes referred to as "former city of Toronto". EelamStyleZ (talk) 19:47, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

If not "City of Toronto", then I support a rename to "Old Toronto". Old Toronto is used to refer to Toronto in its former boundaries in this document by a University of Toronto report. EelamStyleZ (talk) 04:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• Merge into Toronto. What are we going to do, create ten Toronto articles for each of the old city limits before the various almagamations over the years? In terms of City of Toronto - that doesn't make any sense at all. Nfitz (talk) 06:01, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I actually thought that would be appropriate as well, but since we have separate articles for different former cities/boroughs I don't think Old Toronto should be an exception. I'm just hoping for it to be appropriately titled. EelamStyleZ (talk) 16:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose move to City of Toronto (lack of evidence that "City of Toronto" is used to refer to the topic of this article). Support move to Old Toronto. At least one source supports it per EelamStyleZ, and it's a natural choice. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.