First Post Office
In the early Victorian era, the British Empire needed good communications for all its colonies. In 1829, the British House of Commons founded their colonial postal service and five years later established a post office in a far-flung outpost of the newly created town of Toronto.
Remarkably, Toronto’s First Post Office has survived, weathering various municipal attempts by the city to have it demolished. The only remaining example in the world of a post office dating from the British North American postal era still in operation, the First Post Office functions fully.
Visitors make the trip to write a letter with a quill pen and seal it themselves with hot wax. Today’s mail, however, is processed by the national service, Canada Post. After a devastating fire in 1978, the building was entirely restored and refurbished to its former carved and decorated appearance using old documents and historical city archive records.