Interactive timeline · 9,000 BCE to 2026
At the Forks of the Thames: 11,000 years of history in 36 moments.
36 moments5 eras55 sourcesAbout ↓
9,000 BCE – 1792
Hunters followed retreating glaciers, farming villages rose along the Thames, and Anishinaabe peoples moved into the region after 1650.
As the last glaciers retreated, small Palaeo-Indian bands followed caribou herds along the shore of glacial Lake Algonquin. Major campsites near Parkhill and Thedford, northwest of London, were visited repeatedly between about 11,000 and 10,400 years ago.
During the Terminal Woodland period, peoples of southwestern Ontario grew corn, beans and squash and lived in palisaded villages. The Iroquoian-speaking nations later known as the Neutral, Erie, Huron and Petun emerged from these communities.
In the 1500s a fortified Neutral Iroquoian village stood on a bluff above Medway Creek in what is now northwest London. Archaeologists from Western and the national museum dug there between 1895 and 1923; the property was donated to Western in 1969 and the site was listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places in 2004.
💡 Fun fact
Did you know? A longhouse and palisade have been reconstructed on the site, next to the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.
Conflict and epidemics in the Historic Period (about 1550–1650) dispersed several Iroquoian nations of the region, including the Neutral. In the following decades Algonquian-speaking Anishinaabe peoples moved into the Thames watershed; the Chippewas of the Thames are among their descendants.
1793 – 1852
Simcoe chose the Forks of the Thames, the Chippewa ceded the town site by treaty, and a courthouse town grew with a garrison and a Black refugee community.
Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe designated the Forks of the Thames as the future capital of Upper Canada and renamed the river, which French fur traders had called La Tranche, the Thames. The capital went instead to York (Toronto), and no town was built at the Forks for more than 30 years.
Alexander McKee, for King George III, and 13 chiefs, warriors and people of the Chippewa Nation signed the London Township Treaty, which transferred the land that includes the original London town site. Descendants of the Chippewa signatories include the Aamjiwnaang, Caldwell, Chippewas of the Thames, Kettle and Stony Point, and Walpole Island First Nations.
A provincial statute that took effect on January 30, 1826, moved the seat of the London District from remote Vittoria to the Crown reserve at the Forks. Mahlon Burwell surveyed the town plot, a temporary courthouse went up, and work began on the stone courthouse that still stands.
Treasurer John Harris built the mansion later known as Eldon House, which still stands on Ridout Street. By that year the settlement had about 1,000 people, enough to qualify as a separate parliamentary riding, which it became in 1836.
During the Rebellion of 1837, local supporters of the government held the town and the new courthouse held captured rebels. In 1838 British soldiers moved into a garrison on the land that is now Victoria Park, and troops were generally stationed there until 1869.
About 240 Oneida men, women and children came from New York State and settled on land along the Thames in Delaware Township, southwest of London, which they bought through arrangements with Upper Canada's land commission. Each settler paid $42. The land became the Oneida Nation of the Thames, one of three First Nations communities near London along with the Chippewas of the Thames and Munsee-Delaware Nation.
London was incorporated as a town in 1840, with George J. Goodhue as first town president. Fires in 1844 and 1845 nearly destroyed the town centre, which was quickly rebuilt; Covent Garden Market opened at its present location in 1845. The town was reincorporated with stronger powers in 1848, when the census counted 4,584 people.
Irish-born farmer John Kinder Labatt invested £2,000 in Samuel Eccles's London brewery, founded about 1827–28 by John Balkwill. He bought out Eccles in 1854 and renamed it the London Brewery; by the 1960s Labatt was one of Canada's largest brewers.
By the 1840s London had a sizeable community of Black refugees from slavery in the United States. Land was bought in 1847 on Thames Street for an African Methodist Episcopal church, London's first Black church, which became part of the British Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856. Abolitionist John Brown reportedly spoke there in 1858; the congregation moved to Beth Emmanuel Church on Grey Street in 1869.
1853 – 1913
The Great Western Railway arrived, London became a city, and banks, insurers, breweries and a university took root.
The first train on the Great Western Railway reached London from Hamilton. A building and land-speculation boom followed, including the Tecumseh House hotel, until the financial panic and depression of 1857.
London was incorporated as a city effective January 1, 1855, and tinsmith Murray Anderson was elected its first mayor. The Board of Trade, now the Chamber of Commerce, followed in 1857.
The Methodist-run Mount Elgin Industrial Institute stood at Munceytown, on Chippewas of the Thames land southwest of London. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation lists it as operating from 1867 to 1946; other accounts date an earlier phase to about 1851. The NCTR memorial names children who died while attending, the earliest in 1859 and the latest in 1944.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedResidential schools were federal policy run with churches. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to former students on behalf of the Government of Canada on June 11, 2008.
In 1877 china merchant W. J. Reid drained a swampy river flat in London West and laid out a diamond, Tecumseh Park, for the London Tecumsehs, who played their first series there in early May against Hartford. The Labatt family bought the park and gave it to the city in December 1936 with $10,000 for improvements, and it was renamed in the family's honour. It is believed to be the oldest continually used baseball ground in the world.
Anglican Huron College opened in 1863, and the Western University of London, Ontario, now Western University, followed in 1878. In the same years London gained financial firms that became national names: the Huron and Erie trust company by 1864 and London Life Insurance in 1874.
The river steamer Victoria was carrying more than 600 passengers, far beyond its capacity. As the crowd shifted from side to side, the boat heeled over, its boiler broke through the bulwarks and the upper deck fell onto the passengers; at least 182 people died, most of them from London. Contemporary reports put the toll near 200.
After heavy rain, the Thames rose overnight on July 10–11, 1883, flooding the low-lying working-class district of London West and wrecking the fences and stands at Tecumseh Park. Sources differ on the death toll: the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority says about a dozen people died in London, while other accounts count 17. The flood led the city to begin building a system of dykes along the river.
London annexed London East in 1885, London South in 1890, London West in 1898, and Pottersburg, Ealing and Chelsea Green in 1912. By 1914 its population was about 55,000.
Between 1886 and 1888 the federal Department of Militia and Defence built a barracks in London to house Company D of the Infantry School Corps. Designed by chief engineer Henry James, it was the first purpose-built infantry training school erected by the Dominion government. The building was used for recruiting, training and demobilization in both world wars, was designated a national historic site in 1963, and now houses the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum.
A crowd gathered in City Hall to celebrate the newly elected mayor, Dr. John D. Wilson, when the floor gave way. Twenty-three people were killed and scores were injured, the mayor-elect among them.
1914 – 1960
Influenza closed the city in 1918, Banting conceived his insulin experiments here, London regiments served in both world wars, and the 1937 flood led to a regional flood-control system.
The first cases reported in London, on September 30, 1918, were five bandsmen of the 1st Battalion, Western Ontario Regiment, at the Carling Heights military camp. For about three weeks in October, schools, theatres, churches and other public venues in the city were closed, and a second wave followed in the winter of 1919. Historian Orlo Miller estimated that one in six Londoners fell ill; across Ontario about 8,705 deaths were recorded.
Frederick Banting, then practising medicine in London and preparing a lecture for Western's medical school, wrote down in the early hours of October 31, 1920, the idea that led to the discovery of insulin in Toronto in 1921–22. His house at 442 Adelaide Street North was designated a national historic site in 1997.
The Thames rose a record 23 feet (about 7 m) in London, flooding London West and destroying more than 1,000 homes, with damage of about $3 million at the time. Sources differ on deaths: the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority counts five, while a city history mentions one resident. It remains the largest recorded flood on the river and the benchmark for flood-plain rules.
The 1st Hussars armoured regiment landed on Juno Beach in Normandy on D-Day, and its Sherman tank Holy Roller came ashore about 20 minutes behind the first assault wave. It was the regiment's only tank to serve from D-Day to VE Day, a period in which the 1st Hussars lost 346 tanks. Holy Roller was moved to Victoria Park in 1956 during the regiment's centennial and stands there as a memorial.
The Upper Thames River Conservation Authority was formed in 1947, a decade after the flood. It built the Fanshawe Dam between 1950 and 1952 for $5 million, shared by Ottawa (37.5%), Ontario (37.5%) and the authority (25%, almost all paid by London). The dam can reduce downstream flood peaks by up to 40%.
1961 – today
Large annexations, suburban growth, sports titles and a renewed focus on Black and Muslim community history.
London annexed large parts of surrounding townships, adding about 60,000 residents. New suburbs followed, and downtown landmarks such as the McClary factory and the Hotel London were demolished for new developments. By the city's 150th anniversary in 1976 its population was nearing 250,000.
The museum founded in 1933 as the Museum of Indian Archaeology, now the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, moved to the edge of the Lawson village site. It has since partly reconstructed the village, and excavation continues there.
Under the London-Middlesex Act, 1992, passed by the Ontario legislature on December 10, 1992, London annexed almost all of Westminster, including the village of Lambeth, on January 1, 1993; a strip south of Highway 401 went to North Dorchester Township. The city also took in part of London Township, including Hyde Park, and land from West Nissouri Township that included the London airport.
The London Knights beat the Rimouski Océanic 4–0 in the final to win their first Memorial Cup, in their 40th OHL season, on home ice. Corey Perry was tournament MVP; during the season the team set a CHL record with a 32-game unbeaten streak. The Knights won the Cup again in 2016 and, on June 1, 2025, beat the Medicine Hat Tigers 4–1 in Rimouski for their third title.
General Motors opened a diesel locomotive plant in east London in 1950; Caterpillar's Progress Rail bought its owner, Electro-Motive Diesel, in 2010. After the union rejected demands that included a wage cut of about half, the company locked out about 465 Canadian Auto Workers members on January 1, 2012, and on February 3 announced the plant would close and its work would move to other plants. Kellogg's closed its Dundas Street cereal plant, which had operated since the 1920s, on December 22, 2014.
The Middlesex-London Health Unit reported the region's first case of COVID-19 on January 31, 2020, in a Western University student who had returned from Wuhan, China. By the end of January 2021, London and Middlesex County had recorded 5,642 cases and 175 deaths, and 67 of the area's 93 institutional outbreaks had been in seniors' facilities.
A man drove a pickup truck into a Muslim family out for a walk, killing Salman Afzaal, Madiha Salman, their daughter Yumna and Talat Afzaal; a nine-year-old boy survived. Nathaniel Veltman was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder in November 2023, and on February 22, 2024, Justice Renee Pomerance ruled the attack was terrorism and imposed life sentences.
After a decade-long preservation campaign, the 1840s chapel was moved from Thames Street to Grey Street in 2014 and then to Fanshawe Pioneer Village in November 2022, where it was restored. A new plaque was unveiled there on Emancipation Day, July 28, 2024.
About this timeline
Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee and Lenni-Lenape peoples, and earlier Neutral Iroquoian villagers, have lived along the river once recorded as Askunessippi, the antlered river, now the Thames for thousands of years. The British Crown acquired the town site through the London Township Treaty of 1796, and London was founded in 1826 as a district town at the Forks of the Thames. Railways, breweries, insurance firms and a university made it the main city of southwestern Ontario, while floods, a steamboat disaster and a 2021 hate-motivated attack shaped its memory.
1 moments on this page carry a government record note.
FAQ
London was founded in 1826 as the seat of the London District, after Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe had chosen the site in 1793. It became a town in 1840 and a city on January 1, 1855.
In 1793 Simcoe renamed the river, which French traders called La Tranche, the Thames, and designated the Forks as the future capital. The town founded there in 1826 took the name London, mirroring the English capital on its own Thames.
London lies in the territory of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee and Lenni-Lenape peoples. The original town site was transferred by the Chippewa Nation in the London Township Treaty of September 7, 1796. The Chippewas of the Thames, Oneida Nation of the Thames and Munsee-Delaware Nation are nearby.
The capsizing of the steamer Victoria on the Thames on May 24, 1881, killed at least 182 people, most of them Londoners.
Written from the sources linked on each moment: the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Parks Canada, Library and Archives Canada, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, provincial and city archives, and others. Where governments acted wrongly, we say so and note whether it has been officially acknowledged, is established by the record, or is disputed. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it.
Newfoundland and Labrador
Prince Edward Island
New Brunswick
Quebec
Ontario
Manitoba
Saskatchewan
Alberta
British Columbia
Northwest Territories