Toronto Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
46 free Toronto trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Toronto takes its name from a Mohawk word for trees standing in water, was founded as York in 1793 to be safer from American attack, and was promptly burned by Americans in 1813. This quiz follows the city from Simcoe's garrison town through incorporation in 1834, the Great Fire of 1904, Hurricane Hazel, the birth of Metro Toronto and the 1998 megacity, to a place where about half the residents were born outside Canada and 160 languages are spoken. It also covers what visitors know: the CN Tower's three decades as the world's tallest freestanding structure and its hands-free EdgeWalk, PATH's underground kilometres, the Islands cut off by an 1858 storm, Casa Loma's bowling alley, the ROM and its Burgess Shale fossils, Viljo Revell's City Hall, Union Station, the Eaton Centre's 52 million visitors, Kensington Market and the Distillery District. Sport gets its share: the Leafs' 13 Cups and 57-year drought, the Raptors' Jurassic Park name and 2019 title, the Jays' back-to-back World Series and the Argonauts' 19 Grey Cups. Nicknames from Hogtown to The Six round it out. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Toronto and its landmarks, teams and events, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Our Canada quiz covers the rest of the country.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Toronto's name is thought to come from the Mohawk word tkaronto, meaning what?
Trees standing in the water
Trees standing in the water described fish weirs of stakes at a narrows near Orillia, far to the north; a portage trail later spread the name south.
Q 02Which Toronto musician popularised 'the 6ix' as a nickname for his city?
Drake
Drake made it famous around his 2016 album Views, though he credits rapper Jimmy Prime with coining it; the 6 nods to the 416 and 647 area codes.
Q 03Which Toronto mayor admitted in 2013 to smoking crack cocaine while in office?
Rob Ford
Rob Ford refused to resign, and with no legal way to remove him, city council stripped him of key executive powers for the rest of his term.
Q 04US forces captured and burned York, now Toronto, during which war?
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 brought US troops ashore at York, and the retreating British set fire to their own half-built warship so the Americans could not seize it.
Q 05After US troops burned York's parliament buildings, British forces later retaliated by burning which city?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. was set ablaze in August 1814, the climax of a run of cross-border reprisals in which towns on both sides were burned.
Q 06During Toronto's Great Fire of 1904, what stopped the flames at the Kilgour Brothers factory?
Its sprinkler system
Its sprinkler system blocked the fire's spread, and the disaster pushed the city to adopt tougher fire-safety rules and building codes.
Q 07Which 1954 hurricane brought flash flooding to Toronto and killed 81 people in Canada?
Hazel
Hazel's floods swept homes off Raymore Drive, so Ontario let conservation authorities acquire floodplain land, and much of it became parkland.
Q 08Which of these became part of Toronto in the 1998 megacity merger?
Scarborough
Scarborough and the other five municipalities were dissolved into one new city under a contested plan that Ontario's government sold as a way to cut costs.
Q 09In the 2020s, which three North American cities outrank Toronto by population?
Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles
Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles are bigger, and Toronto overtook Chicago only around 2013.
Q 10In the 1920s, Toronto's Kensington Market was widely known as the market of which community?
Jewish
Jewish families leaving the overcrowded Ward district turned the ground floors of their houses into shops, and the market grew from there.
Q 11Which skyscraper ended the CN Tower's reign as the world's tallest free-standing structure?
Burj Khalifa
Burj Khalifa took the title, but the tower was built so tall partly because Toronto's new skyscrapers were blocking radio and TV signals.
Q 12What did 'CN' in CN Tower originally mean?
Canadian National, the railway that built it
Canadian National, the railway that built it, sold the tower in 1995, and its official name was then changed to Canada's National Tower.
Q 13What is the CN Tower's EdgeWalk, opened in 2011?
A hands-free rooftop walk
Q 21What delayed Toronto's Union Station, finished in 1920, from opening until 1927?
Unready approach tracks
Unready approach tracks kept it shut, and the Prince of Wales who finally cut the ribbon later abdicated as King Edward VIII.
Q 22Toronto Pearson, Canada's busiest airport, lies mainly within which neighbouring city?
Mississauga
Pearson began as Malton Airport, in what is now Mississauga, where the Avro Arrow jet was developed; the jet's cancellation hurt the local economy.
Q 23In the First World War, Toronto's William Davies Company was accused of what?
Profiteering
Profiteering charges dogged its managers until a 1917 inquiry cleared the company.
A hands-free rooftop walk circles the main pod 356 metres up, and walkers can let go because each harness is clipped to an overhead rail.
Q 14Toronto's PATH, spanning more than 30 km downtown, is mostly a network of what?
Underground walkways
Underground walkways began in 1900, when a department store dug a tunnel so shoppers could walk between its main store and its annex.
Q 15Until 1999 Guinness called which Toronto thoroughfare the world's longest, at 1,896 km?
Yonge
The figure conflated Yonge with Highway 11, which ran on to the Minnesota border.
Q 16Sir Henry Pellatt lost his castle, Casa Loma, over what?
Unpaid property taxes
Unpaid property taxes piled up after the city sharply raised his bill, and as his fortune collapsed Pellatt auctioned off his art and furnishings.
Q 17Architect Viljo Revell wanted which sculptor's work in front of his Toronto building?
Henry Moore
Henry Moore sold the city The Archer at a discount after councillors fought over buying it, and a fundraising drive paid instead of public funds.
Q 18Michael Snow's sculpture Flight Stop fills Toronto's Eaton Centre with what?
Geese
Canada geese hang mid-flight from the mall's ceiling, and the mall kept the Eaton's name even after the department store chain went bankrupt.
Q 19Burgess Shale fossils, collected for decades by Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, are famous for preserving what?
Soft-bodied animals
Soft-bodied animals rarely fossilize, and later study showed many did not fit the modern animal groups their discoverer had placed them in.
Q 20What did Toronto's first subway line replace?
Streetcars
Streetcars ran the route until the subway opened in 1954, after wartime commuter crowds strained Toronto's roads and transit.
Q 24The Distillery District preserves the buildings of which whisky maker, once Canada's largest?
Gooderham and Worts
Gooderham and Worts began with a waterfront windmill, and since the distillery closed in 1990 its buildings have hosted more than 800 film and TV productions.
Q 25Toronto shares the nickname 'Hollywood North' with which other city?
Vancouver
Vancouver and Toronto both draw American film and TV shoots with Canadian tax breaks, skilled crews and studio space.
Q 26Which Toronto festival began in 1976 as the Festival of Festivals?
TIFF
TIFF saw Hollywood studios pull films from its early editions, yet its 1981 People's Choice Award went to Chariots of Fire, a future Best Picture winner.
Q 27Caribana, Toronto's Caribbean carnival, was first held in 1967 to mark what?
Canada's Centennial
Canada's Centennial was the occasion, but the founding committee's successor owned the Caribana trademark, so the festival dropped that name in 2011.
Q 28What happened to Toronto star Bill Barilko in summer 1951?
Plane vanished
His plane vanished on a fishing trip, and his remains weren't found until 1962, the year Toronto next won the Stanley Cup.
Q 29Who put together the group that bought Toronto's St. Pats in 1927 and renamed the team?
Conn Smythe
Conn Smythe's purchase kept the team in Toronto at a time when a rival buyer planned to move it to Philadelphia.
Q 30In November 1946, which Toronto venue hosted the first game of the league that became the NBA?
Maple Leaf Gardens
Maple Leaf Gardens saw the Toronto Huskies lose that game to the New York Knickerbockers, and the team folded after its only season.