Ontario, Oregon
Ontario was founded on June 11, 1883, by developers William Morfitt, Mary Richardson, Daniel Smith, and James Virtue. In March 1884, Richard Welch started a post office for the quarter of Ontario, so named by James Virtue after Ontario, Canada. Two months later Joseph Morton applied for a Morton post office at an island about one mile south of town, with Oscar Scott as postmaster. Unfortunately for Morton and Scott, merchants Morfitt and Richardson of Malheur City, gold miner Virtue, and lumberman Smith of Baker City acquired more land and were better financed. More importantly, Morfitt had negotiated a train depot for Ontario. All the settlers and speculators knew the railroad was coming and how important that would be to Ontario's future so Scott closed his Morton post office and built a hotel at present-day Ontario. By December, Scott was Ontario's postmaster.
Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum was formally established on 16 April 1912 and was jointly governed by the Government of Ontario and the University of Toronto. Its first assets were transferred from the University and the provincial Department of Education, coming from its predecessor the Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts at the Toronto Normal School. On 19 March 1914, at 3:00pm, the Duke of Connaught, also the Governor General of Canada, officially opened the Royal Ontario Museum to the public. The museum's location at the edge of Toronto's built-up area, far from the city's central business district, was selected mainly for its proximity to the University of Toronto. The original building was constructed on the western edge of the property along the university's Philosopher's Walk, with its main entrance facing out onto Bloor Street housing five separate museums of the following fields: Archaeology, Palaeontology, Mineralogy, Zoology, and Geology. This was the first phase of a two-part construction plan that intended to expand the museum towards Queen's Park Crescent, ultimately creating an H-shaped structure.
The first expansion to the Royal Ontario Museum publicly opened on 12 October 1933. The renovation saw the construction of the south wing fronting onto Queen's Park and required the demolition of Argyle House, a Victorian mansion at 100 Queen's Park. As this occurred during the Great Depression, an effort was made to use primarily local building materials and to make use of workers capable of manually excavating the building's foundations. Teams of workers alternated weeks of service due to the physically draining nature of the job.