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Topographic Control in the Toronto Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Griffith Taylor*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, The University of Toronto
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Extract

The physical features controlling the economic development of a region can be classified under the two main headings of geological and climatic controls. All pastoral, agricultural, mining, or industrial life depends essentially on the distribution of minerals, soils, water supply, temperature, and rainfall. There is, however, another geological feature which exercises great influence on human interests, and that is the topography, i.e., the arrangement of mountain and plain, of rivers and lakes, and all the elements which in more precise language build up the science of geomorphology. The present study attempts to show, first of all, what are the main features in southern Ontario, more particularly within a couple of hundred miles of Toronto, which have necessarily greatly affected the settlement of the region. Secondly the evolution of the city of Toronto as determined by the minor topographic features is described in somewhat general terms. It is hoped that this will pave the way to a more complete study of the city in the near future.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1936

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References

1 See the stage-diagram of the paleo-geography of North America in Canadian Geographical Journal, 03, 1936, p. 161.Google Scholar

2 In the following paragraphs, numbers in brackets refer to mantles as numbered in figure I.

3 The Moraine System of Southwest Ontario” (Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute, 11, 1913).Google Scholar

4 Coleman, A. P., The Pleistocene of the Toronto Region (Annual Report of the Ontario Department of Mines, vol. XLI, part 7, 1932).Google Scholar

5 As in the writer's copy of the two volumes by Middleton, C. T., A New and Complete System of Geography (London, 1779), vol. II, p. 486.Google Scholar

6 See that interesting repository, Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto (series 5, Toronto, 1908), p. 283.Google Scholar

7 Many of the data are derived from Guillet's, E. C. Toronto: From Trading Post to Great City (Toronto, 1934).Google Scholar

8 See the useful pictorial popular chart published in 1932 by Mrs. G. K. Douglas.

9 Robertson's Landmarks, p. 290.

10 Ibid., p. 60.

11 Jackman, W. T., Economics of Transportation (Toronto, 1926).Google Scholar

12 MacGibbon, D. A., The Canadian Grain Trade (Toronto, 1932).Google Scholar

13 Sharp, T., Town and Countryside (Oxford, 1932).Google Scholar

14 Coleman, The Pleistocene of the Toronto Region.