Where to Stay in Markham, Ontario

What is Markham known for?

The old village survives inside Markham as a heritage district, its older houses standing apart from the suburban grid the rest of the city has grown into. Markham Museum keeps the record. Beyond those two the city is the largest in York Region and fourth largest in the Greater Toronto Area, which makes it a base for Toronto at a remove.

What are the main landmarks in Markham?

Old family houses outnumber everything else here. The Wedding Cake House, Wales House, the Adam Clendenen House, the Abraham Reesor House and the Tomlinson-Gates House are each recorded in their own right, and the Village of Markham Post Office joins them from the civic side. Markham Museum gathers the rest.

Markham Centennial Centre serves the present-day city, while names such as the Menno Raymer House, the Archibald Fenwick House and the Joshua Miller House show how much of the inventory is domestic.

What is the history of Markham?

Markham dates from 1794. The name attaches to ground settled long before the suburban city that now carries it, and the surviving houses are the clearest evidence left of that early period. Their names read like a register.

The Abraham Strickler House, the Christian Raymer House, the David Gohn House, the Joseph Marr House and the Jonathan Gowland House each carry the family that built or held them, which is how the record of early Markham survives. Unionville grew separately. The village is a heritage district inside the City of Markham, kept as a distinct place rather than absorbed into the grid that surrounds it.

Growth came late and fast. York Region turned suburban in the shadow of Toronto, and Markham took the largest share of that expansion to become the biggest city in the region and the fourth biggest in the Greater Toronto Area. The old core held on.

Main Street North and Peter Street still carry catalogued addresses, the Village of Markham Post Office still stands, and the Markham Museum was set up to hold what the growth did not sweep away.

Where is Markham?

Toronto is the reference point. Markham lies northeast of Downtown Toronto inside York Region, close enough that the built-up ground runs on between them and far enough to count as a separate city in its own right. It is suburban ground.

Streets follow a modern grid across most of the city, with Unionville and the old village around Main Street North the exceptions that predate it.

What is the climate of Markham?

Markham shares Toronto's weather. The city sits in the temperate band of the northern hemisphere, near enough to Downtown Toronto that the seasons arrive on the same schedule, and that means a cold half of the year and a warm one with little middle ground between them. The cold half runs long.

Unionville reads better in the warm months, when its street can be walked without hurry, while the Markham Museum and the Markham Centennial Centre cover the rest of the year.

How do you get to Markham?

Toronto does the arriving for it. Most visitors reach Markham from Downtown Toronto, a short run northeast through the built-up ground of the Greater Toronto Area rather than a journey in its own right. The distance is modest.

That proximity is what makes Markham a workable base, and it is also why a stay here tends to be measured in the time it takes to get back into Toronto.