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September 9, 2012

Located at the top of Toronto’s University Avenue is the Ontario Legislative Building, a stately structure that is also known as the Parliament Buildings (to others it’s known as the Pink Palace, and by a few as the Ontario gas works).

Now approaching 120 years of service, it is one of the most recognizable buildings in the province. However, as “ancient” as it may be, it is in fact only the latest in a long list of buildings of various shapes and sizes that have served the governments of the Province of Upper Canada, then the Province of Canada, and finally the Province of Ontario.

The first provincial parliament building was located in Navy Hall in Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake). The legislative assembly was subsequently relocated to the Town of York (now Toronto) to a site considered to be more secure than Navy Hall, a building that stood within canon shot of those threatening American troops across the Niagara River. As it turned out, the supposedly secure site at York wasn’t. The structure was destroyed by fire during the American invasion of our community in April 1813. (More details about this site and the War of 1812 battles are revealed at the Ontario Heritage Foundation’s First Parliament Building exhibition hall at the southeast corner of Front and Berkeley streets.)

Front Street looking east to Simcoe Street, circa 1953. The third Parliament Building was demolished in the early 1900s and replaced by the CPR freight sheds located in behind the Peter Witt streetcar on the Bathurst route. Note the Barclay (now demolished) and Royal York hotels in the background.

The third Provincial Parliament Buildings on the north side of Front west of Simcoe Street. (Photo from the Ontario Archives.)

As the years went by, successive legislative assemblies relocated into a variety of buildings. Finally, officials got their act together, and in 1832 a new building on the north side of Front Street just west of Simcoe was erected and became the third “real” parliament building.

When the Dominion of Canada, consisting of the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (Canada East and Canada West) came into being in 1867, the former Canada West, now renamed the Province of Ontario, became the sole occupant of the Front Street building.

The rundown old building endured for several more decades and was finally replaced by the fourth Ontario Legislative Building. Designed by English architect Richard Waite (the selection of the “foreigner’s” design is a story all by itself) and built at a cost of $1.25 million, it opened for business at the top of University Avenue on April 4, 1893.