London as capital of Upper Canada

[Bonniecanuck]

After John Graves Simcoe was made Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, he oversaw the process of establishing a capital of the colony amidst fears of British North America being invaded by the nascent United States. The inland site he selected, on the Ontario Peninsula between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, was named London after the capital of the mother country, and a river running through it was in turn named the Thames - names which have stuck to this day. However, Simcoe's superior Lord Dorchester had already set aside land for a capital in advance of the establishment of Upper Canada, after the Toronto Purchase of 1787 saw the Mississaugas of the Credit River cede* an area centred around the modern City of Toronto; Dorchester had selected this site himself as a midway point between the military stronghold of Kingston to the east and the expanding Loyalist settlements around the Grand River and Niagara Peninsula. Simcoe subsequently established a settlement in the ceded territory to serve as a temporary administrative centre with the name York, apparently still hoping to bring London to fruition, however, York became the permanent capital in 1796, and the London site would not be settled until 1826.

There doesn't seem to be a wealth of detail about what Simcoe had in mind for the layout of the London he envisioned, but what would be the ramifications of this settlement being established 30 years before OTL, and as a capital? Would it or the surrounding region become the administrative and commercial hub of Southern Ontario? Could York/Toronto still have the potential to reach a scale similar to our timeline? How could events like the War of 1812 and (if it could happen) Canadian Confederation shape its development, or alternatively, how could this change alter those events?

*The provisions of the purchase were disputed by the Mississaugas, and would be addressed in an 1805 indenture and a 2010 land claims settlement.

 

[rfmcdonald]

The basin of Lake Ontario would have advantages over southwestern Ontario simply because the Lake Ontario basin is much more reachable. I would think that, instead of having London being a nucleus comparable in size to OTL Toronto, you would instead see a more even distribution of population, with the political status of *London giving that city what it would need to keep up pace with urban growth in *Hamilton and *Toronto.