Tony Ruprecht (Davenport):

Today we celebrate a special day, German Pioneers Day. In 1788, King George established four counties, that is, four districts, for German settlement: Lunenberg, Mecklenberg, Hesse and Nassau. We’re here in Nassau today, for that matter. Since then, German Canadians have made a great contribution to this country, but specifically, I’m looking at the city of Toronto.

The co-founder of Toronto is none other than William Moll-Berczy, who came here with 64 German families from Pennsylvania. He was the co-founder with John Graves Simcoe. Together they laid out Toronto, they made the grid, and Mr. Simcoe asked Mr. Moll-Berczy to establish and in fact to dig up what is called Yonge Street today, right from down where the lake is to near Keswick. As Yonge Street was being developed, a lot of these Germans -- there were 64 families, as I said earlier -- lost their lives.

Today, of course, we see also in the city of Toronto some other items that are of German background, namely, the Toronto-Dominion Centre, which bears the famous international Bauhaus style, Ontario Place, the Eaton Centre, the Queen’s Quay Terminal. There are a lot of contributions that German Canadians have made.

Today, in the gallery are a number of German Canadians to help us to celebrate this special event: Gerry Meinzer, the founding president of the German Canadian Congress; Rolf and Sybille Rentmeister from Echo Germanica; Karl Ruppert, president of the Deutscher Welt Kongress; and Henry Betsch, Association of Danube Swabians of Toronto. Thank you for coming.