Canada's financial heart started with a resolution in a Masonic hall.

On October 25, 1861, the Toronto Stock Exchange was officially founded by a formal resolution passed at Toronto's Masonic Hall. It grew out of an informal association of brokers that had first met in 1852.

In the decades that followed, it became Canada's main stock exchange and one of the oldest and largest in North America, where mining, energy, banking and tech companies raise money from investors around the world.

Why it still matters: much of Canada's economic story, from railways to mines, has been financed on that exchange.

If you could have bought shares in one historical company, which would it be?

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