Our History

Though there had been precursors to the Toronto Board of Trade as early as 1835, the formation of the Toronto Board of Trade began in 1844 and was officially founded on February 10, 1845, in an act of the legislature of Canada.

In its Act of Incorporation, the Board’s principal objectives were: 

To promote and/or support such measures as, upon due consideration, are deemed calculated to advance and render prosperous the lawful trade and commerce and to foster the economic and social welfare of the City of Toronto...

To advance in all lawful ways the commercial interests of the members of the Corporation generally and to secure the advantages to be obtained by mutual co-operation.

It was provided that:

each and every person carrying on trade and commerce of any kind, or being a Cashier, Manager or Director of any Financial Institution, Railway or Insurance Company, shall be eligible to become a member of the said Corporation.

The first President of the Board, George Percival Ridout, alongside his brother established themselves as Ridout Brothers & Co., Hardware Merchants, with a shop near the corner of King and Yonge streets. Ridout was president of the Board until 1852 when he was elected to the legislature.

The Board’s Annual Dinner was first hosted in 1887 with a toast to “the commercial interests of the Empire.” The banquet, a celebration for the Board’s retiring president H. W. Darling was held at Rossin House and attended by 500 of the city’s leading businessmen.

133 dinners later, this annual event (with three exceptions – twice during COVID and once during the Great Depression) has hosted business and political leaders from around the world, convened at some of the City’s signature landmarks like the Royal York Hotel and Metro Toronto Convention Centre and has gone off, except for a few occasions, controversy free.

In the early years, the Dinner featured a live audience that would watch the packed floor from the galleries – often in a long-gone hockey arena. The Board’s second Annual Dinner reported a crowd of 582 present with 450 ‘ladies’ in the gallery.

Today, this esteemed event brings together more than 1,000 prominent leaders and influencers from the Toronto region business community in celebration of our theme, "Dare to Lead."

Past Annual Dinner speakers include:

• The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, British Plenipotentiary to the United States - 1887
• His Excellency the Right Honourable the Viscount Halifax, United Kingdom Ambassador to the United States – 1944
• Sir Derrick Holden-Brown, Chairman and CEO of Allied-Lyons PLC – 1988
• The Honourable Ralph Klein, Premier of Alberta - 1995
• Michael Lee Chin, Chairman and CEO of Portland Holdings – 2004
• Linda Hasenfratz, CEO, Linamar - 2016

The Board’s first signature location was located on the northeast corner of Yonge and Front, which at the time was along the shore of Lake Ontario, where more than 9300 square feet of frontage was purchased for just under $70,000 in 1887.

For the first time in Toronto, steel beams were used in a tower construction as nearly 1500 were used to support the seven-story structure, then considered a skyscraper, that opened in 1890 and served the Board and our members for 24 years.

The building was designed after Boston’s Chamber of Commerce Building by the firm Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. The Toronto Board of Trade Building was also home to the Toronto Transit Corporation until 1957 when the TTC moved to its current location at Yonge and Davisville. The building was demolished in 1958 to make way for a parking lot.

While the organization was officially founded in 1845, its formation began in 1844, and so, to mark its centenary, the Board hosted it’s Annual Dinner on January 24, 1944 at the Royal York Hotel. The keynote speaker, His Excellency the Right Honourable the Viscount Halifax, aptly framed the life and success of the Board, this way:

The Board of Trade has played a notable part in the development of this city and, I suppose, the history of the one is inseparable from the history of the other as of two friends who have grown up together. It is by the vigour and by the enterprise of her sons that Toronto holds so proud a place among the cities of our Commonwealth, and surely no single organization represents and expresses those qualities more faithfully than does the Board of Trade.

As Geoffrey H. Stanford in his history of the Board, To Serve the Community, the Story of Toronto’s Board of Trade says:

The Board looked back with some pride upon the accomplishments of its first hundred years. It has grown from a body comprising a handful of local merchants, possessing little status or power even in its immediate jurisdiction, to an organization whose views were not only heard with respect but were often sought by the governments of the city, the province and the nation and by groups representing various commercial interests.

In 1972 the Board of Trade admitted its first woman member, Sadie Moranis, who was also the first woman to found a real estate brokerage in Toronto in 1971.

A year later at a 1973 Annual Meeting resolution, the Board removed the longstanding, “informal but nevertheless rigid practice of limiting memberships in the Board to males” according to Geoffrey H. Stanford in his history of the Board, the Serve the Community, the Story of Toronto’s Board of Trade.

In subsequent years she would also become the first woman president of the Toronto Real Estate Board.

Sadie tirelessly championed women’s equality and deeply believed that given equal opportunities, women could succeed in business.

“It wasn’t easy, especially when you have no support from the women before you. Never having had a woman (as president) no one knew quite knew what to expect,”

she told the Toronto Star in an interview in 1987.

The question of how cities will afford the infrastructure and services residents and businesses require is a perennial issue, one which came to a head in 2004 when the Board’s launched its Enough of Not Enough campaign.

As the Board’s CEO Elyse Allan said:

Our roads are jam-packed, our transit system is stalled, people are searching further from the city to access affordable housing, and our waterfront remains an untapped opportunity. She added: Toronto is overdue for a new deal from the federal and provincial governments that will provide this city with additional, adequate and predictable funding to meet our short- term requirements and long-term city building needs.

The campaign was a precursor to Toronto Mayor David Miller’s own One Cent Now campaign in 2007 which the Board also supported.

The time for debating how the Toronto region would pay for the transit expansion that was so desperately needed was over. With its Let’s Break the Gridlock campaign, the Board sought to get the public involved to break the political gridlock that continually interrupts the planning, building, and funding of improved transportation infrastructure. The Board put forward recommendations on four revenue tools that would generate $2-billion per year and be dedicated to the expansion and operations of Metrolinx’s The Big Move.

Carol Wilding, the Board’s CEO noted that a lack of mobility was negatively impacting business bottom lines while also taking a huge toll on our region’s economy.

“Businesses have a lot of challenges trying to move employees around the region. It's affecting how people make choices about where they want to work, and where they want to live.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board galvanized the business community through its Reimagining Recovery Framework. The effort convened more than 25 sector tables; tracked international best practices; built awareness of the uneven impact of the pandemic across our region’s six business districts; activated pilot recovery programs in the Downtown Financial District and the GTA West Economic Gateway; and, launched a Recovery Activation Program across the Province to help businesses digitize.

The Board’s CEO Jan De Silva said:

As Canada's economic engine, it is important that the Toronto region be a leader in recovery efforts. We have assembled a Steering Cabinet of government and industry leaders organized around six areas of focus to reflect the diversity of our businesses. As each level of government puts forward its plan for recovery, they will have the benefit of the business community's point of view.

The Board became a sought-after partner to all orders of government – all done while businesses, residents and the Board’s staff, remained in lockdown.

To address one of the region’s most pressing challenges, our widening productivity gap, the Board created the Business Council of Toronto (BCT). The Council brings together a coalition of CEOs focused on closing the productivity gap through piloting innovative projects and targeted advocacy initiatives to address barriers to economic growth.

The Board’s CEO Giles Gherson said:

We’re kicking off a movement to make our region competitive again. We will deliver legacy impact to our region by solving the biggest issues holding businesses back from gaining the competitive edge they need for success. We believe a thriving, competitive business climate not only enables economic prosperity, but upholds and enhances livability – strengthening the social fabric of our region.