John Graves Simcoe was a courageous leader in war and in peace. As Upper Canada's first Lieutenant-Governor, he set the style and direction of the administration of Upper Canada for at least forty years. He founded York, now Toronto; abolished slavery in the province years before it was abolished in Britain; set up institutions such as courts and trial by jury; and named rivers, villages, towns, and counties, all of which are still with us today.

Graves was born in 1752, the son of Captain John Simcoe, a naval officer who died in 1759 while on service with General Wolfe's expedition in Canada. Young Graves joined the British Army at age 18 as an ensign in the 35th Foot Regiment. Five years later, at 23, he was posted to Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. During that war, he took part in several actions and received promotions. In 1775, he was promoted to Captain and bought command of the Grenadier Company of the 40th Foot. In 1777, he was appointed Major-Commandant of the Queen's Rangers, a corps originally founded by the famous Robert Rogers of Rogers Rangers. In 1778, he was appointed to the provincial rank of Lieutenant Colonel and, in 1781, he was made Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army.

After being wounded several times and captured in 1781, Simcoe was invalided home, but recovered sufficiently to marry Elizabeth Postuma Gwillim in December 1782. For the next nine years, he was on half-pay. During this time he bought and managed the estate of Wolford Lodge in Devon.

1790 was a big year for Simcoe for three reasons: he was promoted to Colonel, he was elected to Parliament, and he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the new province of Upper Canada. After arriving in Canada, he reinstated the Queen's Rangers, with many of his former men rejoining. He used them to, among other things, build Yonge Street and the Dundas Road. On arriving in Niagara in July 1792, he found that the only accommodation was in tents he had brought with him. The tents had belonged to the famous Captain Cook, who had served under his father in Captain Simcoe's last voyage. His personal secretary was an Irishman, Lieutenant Thomas Talbot, who would go on to bigger and better things.

He set up the parliamentary system of an elected Assembly and an appointed Executive Council advising the Lieutenant-Governor. This system lasted fifty years. He organized surveys of townships, towns, and villages and he named rivers. Many of the names come from England. Others recognize people who would have been well known to Simcoe. His work was rewarded when he was gazetted Major-General in 1794.

Simcoe, however, did not get on with the Governor-General Lord Dorchester, with whom he had had a dispute dating back to Simcoe's time with the Queen's Rangers. In 1796, he had had enough, so he returned to England on a leave of absence. He never returned to Canada. He was appointed instead to Santo Domingo to restore order. He was there seven months and then returned to England, where he was made Lieutenant-General in 1799. He spent most of his time between 1799 and 1806 preparing defences in England against an expected invasion by the French. In 1806, he was appointed commander-in-chief in India, but before he could take up that post he was ordered to Portugal to fend off an expected attack by Napoleon. He became ill on the voyage and died on the way home.

A note about the names of Southwest Ontario communities and rivers: Originally Simcoe named the counties running from the western frontier opposite Detroit to the present Prince Edward County for the counties running south to north on the East coast of England. So the county directly opposite Detroit was named Kent. This part of Kent County later became part of Essex. South of Kent was Essex. Next came Suffolk, which ran from about Blenheim to Port Stanley and was later split between Kent and Elgin Counties. Norfolk County extended to the Grand River, then called the Ouse. Lincoln County contained all of the Niagara Peninsula as far as present Hamilton. York County was split into the West Riding, north of Hamilton as far as the Jones Baseline in Burlington, and the East Riding, about where the present City of Toronto is. In between was land belonging to the Mississaugas. To the east of the East Riding of York County, was Durham County, and to the east of that was Northumberland County. This convention is the reason why many of the early communities received their early names. The present village of Niagara-on-the-Lake was called Newark after the town in Lincolnshire. The community of Grimsby and the Welloand River were also named after Lincolnshire towns. The early community on the east side of the Detroit River was named Sandwich after the town in Kent and, of course, the early name of Toronto was York after the city in Yorkshire.