John Graves Simcoe - first Governor of Canada 

Born on the 25 February, 1752, John Simcoe was raised in Exeter by his mother and educated at Exeter Free Grammar School, Eton and Oxford. He embarked on a military career in 1770 when he secured a commission as an ensign in the 35th Regiment of Foot. After fighting in the American War of Independence, he returned to England and married.

In 1791 he was appointed as the first Lieutenant- Governor of Upper Canada, arriving in the new province in June 1792. He was accompanied by his wife and their two youngest children. Although there had been considerable settlement in the eastern Upper Canada, the province was still a wilderness. Simcoe introduced a British system of government. He planned military strategy for defending Upper Canada against the United States and pushed some key roads through the wilderness to aid troop movements, increase settlement and encourage trade. The founding of Toronto was due to Simcoe.

Due to Simcoe, slavery was abolished in Ontario, Upper Canada in 1793, during the second legislative assembly, and was the first place in the British Empire to introduce a ban. He also campaigned, unsuccessfully, to ban slavery in Haiti, encountering fierce opposition from the British Government. It is probably for this work that he remained an untitled commoner, never gaining the recognition he deserved. He returned to England in 1796 due to ill-health. Simcoe died in Exeter in 1806.

There can be found an Ontario provincial plaque in the north east corner of Cathedral Close on the site of the house where John Graves Simcoe died.