Canadian Flag

"Ontario, Canada"

Ontario's Flag

The Population of Ontario in 1991, was 10,084,885. The total land area is 1,068,580 square kilometers or 412,581 square miles.

Although Ontario is not the largest Canadian province geographically, it ranks first in terms of population, gross domestic product (GDP), manufacturing output, and agricultural production. Its capital, Toronto, is the most populous city in Canada and presides as the nation’s center of industry, high technology, and finance. Topping things off—literally—is the 553-meter (1,815-foot) CN Tower in Toronto, the tallest freestanding structure in the world.

In contrast to the highly developed industrial trappings that define modern Ontario, early life in the region centered around hunting, trapping, and farming. Among the Native Americans present in Ontario when Europeans first arrived in the early 1600s were the Huron, who cultivated the rich lowlands between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, and the Ojibwa, who hunted for beaver and other small game in the northern forests. Both these and other groups of the region suffered aggression at the hands of the Iroquois, a confederation of Native American groups that dominated indigenous culture throughout much of eastern Canada and the United States during the 18th century.

European presence in the area was limited to a handful of small French settlements until 1784, when the first of about 10,000 émigrés from the United States began resettling in southern Ontario. Most of these new residents were English Loyalists who refused to join in the Revolutionary War. By the beginning of the War of 1812, more than half of the population of Ontario had originally lived in the United States. These newcomers staunchly defended their adopted home—then known as Upper Canada—by repelling U.S. forces during a series of wartime battles.

The rapid population and economic growth of the early 1800s—based in large part on the opening of the Erie Canal and other transportation improvements—were accompanied by increasing dissatisfaction with the region’s government. Colonial demands for self-determination were finally met in 1848, when the United Kingdom granted the recently unified Province of Canada a local government. Almost 20 years later, Ontario joined Québec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick in the formation of the Dominion of Canada.

For most of the 20th century the history of Ontario has been marked by robust and diverse economic development. The discovery of silver, gold, and other ores in the early 1900s quickly established the Sudbury District in southern Ontario as one of the world’s richest mineral areas. Today the extraction of such metals as nickel, gold, and copper places Ontario behind only Alberta in mineral output.

The region’s leading manufacturing enterprise also has its roots in the early 20th century. In 1904 automobile parts were ferried across the Detroit River for assembly in Windsor, thus laying the foundation for an industry that now produces most of the cars and many of the trucks in Canada. Other important segments of the manufacturing sector—which produces about as much as the other Canadian provinces combined—are food and beverage processing, chemical production, metalworking, and the assembly of electric and electronic equipment. Although Ontario farmers reap the largest fruit and vegetable harvests in the nation, livestock and livestock products such as milk and eggs account for the majority of agricultural income.

Much of the province’s economic success is closely tied to its physical features and natural resources. The expansion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s has enabled oceangoing ships to reach Ontario harbors along the Great Lakes, thereby connecting the province’s industries to ports worldwide. Vast forests of spruce, pine, poplar, and birch spreading across nearly 70 percent of Ontario supply the raw materials for key pulp and timber industries. The rich, loamy soils that underlie the rolling hills and lush valleys of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Lowlands account for the province’s enormous agricultural production.

Nearly all of the region’s mineral wealth lies buried beneath a portion of the Canadian Shield, which stretches across most of southern and central Ontario. The Canadian Shield features a low, rocky landscape of level plateaus and rounded hills, highlighted by swift-running rivers and most of the province’s 250,000 lakes. The Hudson Bay Lowland region lines the northernmost third of the province. This flat, poorly drained expanse is dotted with mossy bogs called muskegs. A narrow strip of arctic tundra edges the frigid waters of Hudson Bay.

1st page of Norfolk & Haldimand

Grand River

Lake Erie