First Inhabitants, French Régime and British
Takeover, 8000 BCE-1805 CE

BCE (Before Common Era)
11000 Wisconsin Glacier melts, recedes and carves out Lake Ontario.
8000 Paleo-Indians camp on the Scarborough Bluffs .
Paleo-Indian spear points
7000 Archaic peoples camp around Toronto, mostly close to water.
Archaic spear points
Archaic axes 
1000 Woodland period begins with the appearance of pottery vessels.
CE (Common Era)
1000 Ontario Iroquoian farmers live in small villages throughout the Toronto area.
Ontario Iroquoian pottery

1250 Middle Ontario Iroquoian period begins; population grows, villages increase in size, and pottery vessels are decorated with horizontal lines.
Artifacts 
Partially restored pot
Pottery sherd
Restored pots
Restored "toy" pots

1450 Several hundred Huron (Quandat) live in longhouses within a fortified village at North Toronto.
Quandat Indian village

1500 Hurons desert Lake Ontario and move north to the area now known as Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay.
Map of Huronia, 1657

1615 Etienne Brulé, a French Explorer, is the first European to set foot in Toronto.
1665 Seneca Iroquois cross Lake Ontario and establish two fur trading villages: Teiaiagon near the mouth of the Humber and Ganatsekwyagon on the lower Rouge River.
Map of Lac Ontario ou De Frontenac

1701 Five Nations Iroquois formally relinquish the north shore of Lake Ontario to the Mississauga, Algonquian-speaking Ojibwa originally from the north end of Lake Huron.
1750 France builds a third, larger trading post, Fort Rouillé, at Toronto within today's Exhibition Park.
Map of New France, 1753

1763 Britain defeats France in the Seven Years War, and gains control of Canada.
1783 Britain loses the American Revolutionary War, and British loyalists flood into the upper St. Lawrence and lower Great Lakes.
1805 The Toronto Purchase is completed: Britain buys about 250,000 acres in the Toronto region from the Mississauga Indians.
Toronto Purchase, 1805
Mississauga-French Dictionary, 1800-1