John Graves Simcoe (February 25, 1752 – October 26, 1806) was a British army officer and the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796. Then frontier, this was modern-day southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York (now Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and the abolition of slavery. His long-term goal was the development of Upper Canada (Ontario) as a model community built on aristocratic and conservative principles, designed to demonstrate the superiority of those principles to the Republicanism and democracy of the United States. His energetic efforts to establish a local gentry, a thriving Church of England, and an anti-American coalition with the Indian tribes were only partially successful.