Amalgamation of Toronto
Forest Hill and Swansea were annexed by the City of Toronto, Leaside was merged with the township of East York to become the Borough of East York. Weston was combined with the Township of York to form the Borough of York. The Village of Long Branch and the towns of Mimico and New Toronto merged with the township of Etobicoke to form the Borough of Etobicoke. North York township was promoted to the Borough of North York. Scarborough was also transformed into a borough.Amalgamation occurred in 1998 when the regional municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and its six constituent municipalities – East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, York, and the City of Toronto (1834) were dissolved by an act of the Government of Ontario. A new single municipality called the City of Toronto (colloquially dubbed the "megacity") was formed, replacing all seven governments. The expanded city became the fifth most populous municipality in North America, behind Mexico City, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago; it later surpassed Chicago in population.
Greater Toronto Area
The term "Greater Toronto" was first used in writing as early as the 1900s, although at the time, the term only referred to the old City of Toronto and its immediate townships and villages, which became Metropolitan Toronto in 1954 and became the current city of Toronto in 1998. The use of the term involving the four regional municipalities came into formal use in the mid-1980s, after it was used in a widely discussed report on municipal governance restructuring in the region and was later made official as a provincial planning area. However, it did not come into everyday usage until the mid- to late 1990s.