London is a charming old Ontario city of tree-lined streets and stately vintage homes. It was chosen in 1792 as the site for Upper Canada’s future capital but it never achieved its goal. Like its British namesake it too sits on the Thames River. As you tour the city, you will see that it has borrowed other names from the British capital.

London became a prosperous community. Sitting in the middle of good, agricultural land, it was also in a convenient location halfway between Toronto and Detroit and was served by good transportation systems. It became the centre of the oil industry, following the discovery of oil in the Sarnia area in the mid 1800s, and remained so until Imperial Oil transferred its headquarters form London to Petrolia.

Always a major manufacturing city, London is the distribution and financial hub of the area – it is the headquarters of a number of national life insurance and trust companies.