From the The Ontario Genealogical Society website:

Researching Toronto in the 1850s is now much easier!

Toronto Branch has produced an indexed transcription of the Toronto tax assessment rolls for 1853.
The first component of the project is a searchable online index available on this web site. The index also links to digital images of the assessment rolls—so you can confirm our transcription right from the primary source! The index (more than 9,000 names of owners and occupiers) and images is available free of charge to researchers around the world.

I checked it out and found folks, perhaps you will too.
bebe aka yvonne