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Vaughan () (2021 population 323,103) is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located in the Regional Municipality of York, just north of Toronto. Vaughan was the fastest-growing municipality in Canada between 1996 and 2006 with its population increasing by 80.2% during this time period and having nearly doubled in population since 1991. It is the fifth-largest city in the Greater Toronto Area, and the 17th-largest city in Canada.

Toponymy

The township was named after Benjamin Vaughan, a British commissioner who signed a peace treaty with the United States in 1783.

History

In the late pre-contact period, the Huron-Wendat people populated what is today Vaughan. The Skandatut ancestral Wendat village overlooked the east branch of the Humber River (Pine Valley Drive) and was once home to approximately 2,000 Huron in the sixteenth century. The site is close to a Huron ossuary (mass grave) uncovered in Kleinburg in 1970, and one kilometre north of the Seed-Barker Huron site.

The first European to pass through Vaughan was the French explorer Étienne Brûlé, who traversed the Humber Trail in 1615. However, it was not until townships were created in 1792 that Vaughan began to see European settlements, as it was considered to be extremely remote and the lack of roads through the region made travel difficult.

Despite the hardships of pioneer life, settlers came to Vaughan in considerable numbers. The population grew from 19 men, 5 women, and 30 children in 1800 to 4,300 in 1840. The first people to arrive were mainly Pennsylvania Germans, with a smaller number of families of English descent and a group of French Royalists. This migration from the United States was by 1814 superseded by immigrants from Britain. While many of their predecessors had been agriculturalists, the newer immigrants were highly skilled tradespeople, useful for a growing community.

Among the facilities established by this group were a number of hamlets, the oldest of which was Thornhill, where a sawmill was erected in 1801, a grist mill in 1815, and had a population of 300 by 1836. Other such enclaves included '' Kleinburg, Coleraine, Rupertville' (Maple), Richmond Hill, Teston, Claireville, Pine Grove, Carrville, Patterson, Burlington, Concord, Edgeley, Fisherville, Elder's Mills, Elgin Mills, Jefferson, Nashville, Purpleville, Richvale, Sherwood, Langstaff, Vellore'', and ''Burwick (Woodbridge)''.

In 1846, the Township was primarily agricultural but had a population of 4,300. There were six grist mills and 25 saw mills. By 1935, there were 4,873 residents.

However, World War II sparked an influx of immigration, and by 1960, the population stood at 15,957. The ethnocultural composition of the area began to change with the arrival of different groups such as Italians, Jews and Eastern Europeans.

Incorporated in 1850 as ''Vaughan Township,'' a municipal government was established. Vaughan Road was a historic road constructed in 1850 that linked Vaughan Township with Toronto. It incorporated parts of present-day Dufferin Street north of Eglinton Avenue in Toronto, though all that remains of it today is the separate alignment farther south, running through the eastern half of the former City of York. In 1971, the new regional government of York Region was established, acquiring policing and welfare services from the communities it served; simultaneously, the township merged with the Village of Woodbridge to form the Town of Vaughan. In 1991, it changed its legal status to City of Vaughan.

Two F2 tornadoes tore through the city of Vaughan during the Southern Ontario Tornado Outbreak on August 20, 2009. Premier Dalton McGuinty and Mayor Linda Jackson toured the destruction the next day and reported 200 homes in critical shape and as many as 600 additional homes likely to be demolished. The tornadoes also ripped up trees, flipped cars, and left thousands of people without electricity. Vaughan declared a state of emergency because of the widespread damage. No deaths were reported from the tornadoes, but one man who was injured in the storms suffered a heart attack the following morning.

North American telephone customers placing calls to Vaughan may not recognize the charge details on their billings. Although Vaughan has been a single municipality since 1971, the local incumbent local exchange carrier, Bell Canada, splits the city into three historical rate centres– Kleinburg, Maple and Woodbridge. Part of the Thornhill rate centre extends into Vaughan. Indeed, Vaughan does not even appear in the telephone book.

Mayor and councillors

Vaughan is governed by a nine-member council comprising a mayor, three regional councillors, and five local councillors. The mayor, elected at large, is the head of the council and a representative on York Region Council. The three regional councillors are also elected at large, and serve on both the city council and York Regional Council. Five local councillors are also elected, one from each of Vaughan's five wards, to represent those wards on Vaughan Council.

City councillors meet at Vaughan City Hall, located in Maple. The city's City Hall was opened on September 25, 2011, and is named in memory of late Mayor Lorna Jackson. The new Civic Centre is one of the first in Canada to conform to a LEED Gold Standard, the second highest environmental classification available.

Vaughan is the first municipality in Ontario to have a Youth City Councillor. The youth city councillor is appointed as a non-voting member of Council every six months to represent the youth of Vaughan. Vaughan council originally rejected the proposal of a youth councillor but, after the Vaughan Youth Cabinet amended its proposal, Council accepted the recommendation.

After serving as mayor for nine years, Lorna Jackson saw the Town of Vaughan become incorporated as the City of Vaughan. Following the death of Mayor Lorna Jackson in 2002, Michael Di Biase was appointed mayor by Vaughan council by virtue of his position as one of two regional councillors representing Vaughan, Joyce Frustaglio was the other regional councillor. Gino Rosati, a Vaughan local councillor, was subsequently appointed by Vaughan Council to fill Di Biase's position as regional councillor and a by-election was held to fill Rosati's local councillor's position which was won by Linda Jackson, the daughter of Mayor Jackson. Di Biase first became involved in the city's politics in 1985, when he was elected as a local councillor in 1985. Di Biase retained the mayorship in the 2003 municipal election, defeating challenger Robert Craig.

In the municipal election on November 13, 2006, Di Biase was narrowly defeated by Linda Jackson, who was sworn in as mayor on December 4, 2006. On June 18, 2008, an audit of Jackson's 2006 campaign finances found that the politician exceeded her legal spending limit of $120,419 by at least $12,356, or 10 per cent. The auditors, LECG Canada Ltd., say that amount could almost double if what they believed to be unreported contributions in kind at various election events but couldn't prove are later verified.

They also found other apparent contraventions of the Canada Elections Act, including at least five instances where associated companies made donations that exceeded the normal $750 donation limit per company.

On June 24, 2008, Vaughan Council voted unanimously to hire a special prosecutor to consider laying charges against Mayor Linda Jackson under the Municipal Elections Act in reaction to the auditors' report. Council hired Timothy Wilkin, "an expert in municipal law" to decide what if any charges are to be laid. If Jackson is charged and found guilty, she would face punishments ranging from fines to removal from office.

Subsequently, an audit was conducted on former Mayor Di Biase's 2006 election campaign funds. This exposed 27 contraventions under the Elections Act, along with a $155,000 anonymous cash payment made to his lawyer to cover his legal fees. Di Biase has refused to disclose who made this payment.

On 25 October 2010, longtime MP Maurizio Bevilacqua was elected mayor and he assumed office in December 2010.

On 24 October 2022, former Ontario Liberal Party leader Steven Del Duca was elected mayor and he assumed office on November 15, 2022.

Geography

Vaughan is bounded by Caledon and Brampton to the west, King and Richmond Hill to the north, Markham and Richmond Hill to the east, and Toronto — in the dissolved cities of Etobicoke and North York, to the south.

Communities and identity

The city is made up of nearly a dozen historic communities. Likely as a result of the municipality being established when it was still largely a rural area with scattered settlements, most residents (and even non-residents) identify more with the larger communities than they do with the city as a whole and have greatly expanded their areas, and the City officially designates five in the urban area as major communities, with all of the built-up areas of the city considered as being within one of them. This includes corporations such as Bell Canada, which uses the original community rate centres and lists them separately in the phone book, resulting in local calling areas being different throughout the city.

*Woodbridge: North/South - Major Mackenzie/Steeles, East/West - Hwy 400/Hwy 50
*Maple: North/South - King Vaughan Line/Rutherford, East/West - Bathurst/Hwy 400
* Thornhill: North/South - Hwys. 7 and 407 (Major Mackenzie for the area west of Bathurst)/Steeles, East/West - Yonge/Dufferin
*Concord: North/South - Rutherford/Steeles, East/West - Dufferin/Hwy 400
* Kleinburg: North/South - King Vaughan Line/Major Mackenzie, East/West - Hwy 400/Hwy 50

Vaughan Metropolitan Centre

The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre is a new 179 hectare (442 acre) central business district under development around the intersection of Highway 7 and Jane Street, at the site of the former hamlet of Edgeley.

When the Township of Vaughan officially became a town in 1971, it was made up four historic communities (Maple, Kleinburg, Thornhill, and Woodbridge) large enough to have their own village or town centres. Vaughan committed to building a new business and commercial core distinct from all of them. This commitment became policy in 1998 when Official Plan Amendment 500 called for the Vaughan Corporate Centre, as it was then branded, to become a focal point for business activity and major commercial development.

It is served by the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre subway station, which is the northwestern terminus of Line 1 Yonge–University of the Toronto subway system. It is also a major transit hub for York Region Transit (YRT), as well as Viva and Züm bus rapid transit services.

Koreantown North

Vaughan section of Thornhill is home to northern boundary of Toronto's Koreantown North. Along with neighbouring Markham, Korean businesses flank Yonge from Steeles to as far north to Centre St./Thornhill Summit Dr. (but some can also be found in Richmond Hill up to Elgin Mills Rd.)

Climate

Vaughan like much of the Greater Toronto Area features a continental climate ''Dfb'' and has four distinct seasons.

Services

Health care

Vaughan was the largest city in Canada without a hospital until the 2021 opening of Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital on Major Mackenzie Drive north of Canada's Wonderland. Its planning began in 2007. The provincial government of Ontario approved construction of the hospital in July 2011, and a tender for bids to construct it was issued in 2014 or 2015. Land preparation for construction began in the summer of 2014. Construction on the grounds began in October 2016. The expected date of completion was late 2020. It is part of a regional hospital system with a "single governance, administration and medical staff" managed by Mackenzie Health. The hospital officially opened on 6 June 2021.

Fire services

Transportation

Vaughan offers a complex transportation infrastructure, which includes highways, public transit, regional roads, municipality-funded roads, and train services.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Vaughan had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Median age as of 2021 was 41.6, on par with the Ontario median age of 41.6. Visible minorities make up 35.4% of the population.

According to the 2021 Census, English is the mother tongue of 45.2% of the residents of Vaughan. Italian is the mother tongue for 9.8% of the population, followed by Russian (6.0%) and Mandarin (4.0%). Each of Spanish, Persian, Cantonese, Urdu

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