Dundas Street (/ˈdʌnˌdæs/) is a major historic arterial road in Ontario, Canada. The road connects the city of Toronto with its western suburbs and several cities in southwestern Ontario. Three provincial highways—2, 5, and 99—followed long sections of its course, although these highway segments have since been downloaded to the municipalities they passed through. Originally intended as a military route to connect the shipping port of York (now Toronto) to the envisioned future capital of London, Ontario, the street today connects Toronto landmarks such as Yonge–Dundas Square and the city's principal Chinatown to rural villages and the regional centres of Hamilton and London.
A historic alternate name for the street was Governor's Road, as its construction was supervised by John Graves Simcoe, lieutenant governor of Upper Canada; and the section between Hamilton and Paris still bears that name, albeit without an apostrophe.
Dundas Street is also one of the few east-west routes to run uninterrupted through the central and western Greater Toronto Area, from Toronto to Hamilton (the others are Lake Shore Boulevard/Lakeshore Road, Eglinton Avenue, Steeles Avenue/Taunton Road, Queen Street (Brampton)/Highway 7, and Bovaird Drive/Castlemore Road/Rutherford Road/Carrville Road/16th Avenue). Within Toronto, the TTC's 505 Dundas streetcar route serves the street from Riverdale to the Junction.
Following controversy over the namesake of the street, Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, in delaying the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade,[1] Toronto City Council voted in 2021 to rename the section of the street within Toronto – with other municipalities reviewing their use of the name.[2]
- ^ "Recognition Review Project Update and Response to the Dundas Street Renaming Petition" (PDF). Toronto City Council. June 29, 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 28, 2021. Retrieved June 29, 2021.
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