Ontario is the southernmost province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it is home to over 14 million people, which is 38.5% of the country's population. Ontario is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec) and the fourth-largest jurisdiction of all the Canadian provinces and territories. It is home to the nation's capital, Ottawa, and its most populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario's provincial capital.
Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east and northeast. To the south, it is bordered by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania (through Lake Erie), and New York. Almost all of Ontario's 2,700-kilometre (1,700 mi) border with the United States follows rivers and lakes: from the westerly Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes drainage system. There is only about one kilometre (0.62 mi) of actual land border, made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.
The great majority of Ontario's population and arable land are in Southern Ontario, and while agriculture remains a significant industry, the region's economy depends highly on manufacturing. In contrast, Northern Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation, with mining and forestry making up the region's major industries. (Full article...)
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Sarnia is a city in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada. It had a 2021 population of 72,047, and is the largest city on Lake Huron. Sarnia is located on the eastern bank of the junction between the Upper and Lower Great Lakes, where Lake Huron flows into the St. Clair River in the Southwestern Ontario region, which forms the Canada–United States border, directly across from Port Huron, Michigan.
The site's natural harbour first attracted the French explorer La Salle. He named the site "The Rapids" on 23 August 1679, when he had horses and men pull his 45-ton barque Le Griffon north against the nearly four-knot current of the St. Clair River. This was the first time that a vessel other than a canoe or other oar-powered vessel had sailed into Lake Huron, and La Salle's voyage was germinal in the development of commercial shipping on the Great Lakes. Located in the natural harbour, the Sarnia port remains an important centre for lake freighters and oceangoing ships carrying cargoes of grain and petroleum products. The natural port and the salt caverns that exist in the surrounding areas, together with the oil discovered in nearby Oil Springs in 1858, led to the dramatic growth of the petroleum industry in this area. Because Oil Springs was the first place in Canada and North America to drill commercially for oil, the knowledge that was acquired there resulted in oil drillers from Sarnia travelling the world teaching other enterprises and nations how to drill for oil.
The complex of refining and chemical companies is called "Chemical Valley" and located south of downtown Sarnia. In 2011, the city had the highest level of particulates air pollution of any Canadian city, but it has since dropped to rank 30th in this hazard. About 60 percent of the particulate matter comes from industries and polluters in the neighbouring United States. (Full article...)
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Underground Railroad monument, Windsor (from Southern Ontario)
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Köppen Climate Map of Ontario (from Eastern Ontario)
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Highway 401 at the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto (from Southern Ontario)
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Ottawa (from Eastern Ontario)
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Ottawa in 2005 (from Southern Ontario)
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Science North in Sudbury. (from Northern Ontario)
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👁 Image 12North Bay is often considered to be the "Gateway" to Northern Ontario (from Northern Ontario)North Bay is often considered to be the "Gateway" to Northern Ontario (from Northern Ontario)
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Typical Great Lakes beach (from Southern Ontario)
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👁 Image 14Forests, lakes, and rivers dominate much of the Northern Ontario landscape. (from Northern Ontario)Forests, lakes, and rivers dominate much of the Northern Ontario landscape. (from Northern Ontario)
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Mathew Charles "Matt" Lamb (5 January 1948 – 7 November 1976) was a Canadian spree killer who, in 1967, avoided Canada's then-mandatory death penalty for capital murder by being found not guilty by reason of insanity. Abandoned by his teenage mother soon after his birth in Windsor, Ontario, Lamb had an abusive upbringing at the hands of his step-grandfather, leading him to become emotionally detached from his relatives and peers. He developed violent tendencies that manifested themselves in his physical assault of a police officer at the age of 16 in February 1964, and his engaging in a brief shoot-out with law enforcement ten months later. After this latter incident he spent 14 months, starting in April 1965, at Kingston Penitentiary, a maximum security prison in eastern Ontario.
Seventeen days after his release from jail in June 1966, Lamb took a shotgun from his uncle's house and went on a shooting spree around his East Windsor neighbourhood, killing two strangers and wounding two others. He was charged with capital murder, which under the era's Criminal Code called for a mandatory death penalty, but he avoided this fate when the court found, in January 1967, that he had not been sane at the time of the incident. He was committed for an indefinite time in a psychiatric unit. Over the course of six years in care at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre's Oak Ridge facility he displayed a profound recovery, prompting an independent five-man committee to recommend to the Executive Council of Ontario that he be released, saying that he was no longer a danger to society. The Council approved Lamb's release in early 1973 on the condition that he spend a year living and working under the supervision of one of Oak Ridge's top psychiatrists, Elliot Barker. (Full article...)
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Waterloo, Ontario taken from the North East corner of the Uptown Parkade
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👁 Image 2The CN Tower, located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a communications and observation tower standing 553.3 metres (1,815 ft) tall.The CN Tower, located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a communications and observation tower standing 553.3 metres (1,815 ft) tall.
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Sunset on North Tea Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario Canada
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👁 Image 4The Niagara Falls are voluminous waterfalls on the Niagara River, straddling the international border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York.The Niagara Falls are voluminous waterfalls on the Niagara River, straddling the international border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York.
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👁 Image 5A view of Ruskview, Ontario in 2017, an unincorporated rural community in Mulmur Township, Dufferin County, OntarioA view of Ruskview, Ontario in 2017, an unincorporated rural community in Mulmur Township, Dufferin County, Ontario
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A panoramic view of Hamilton, Ontario
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Downtown Ottawa is the central area of Ottawa
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- ... that nearly every person in Val Gagné, Ontario, died in the 1916 Matheson Fire, and the settlement was renamed to honour the heroic efforts of the parish priest?
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- Help expand stub articles: There are numerous stub articles relating to Ontario. You can help by expanding them. See Ontario stubs for a list. Also, for geographical (places) stubs, refer to:
- Eastern Ontario: Eastern Ontario geography stubs
- Toronto: Toronto geography stubs
- Ottawa: Ottawa stubs - All stubs relating to Ottawa in general
- Northern Ontario: Northern Ontario geography stubs
- Western Ontario: Western Ontario geography stubs
- Golden Horseshoe: Golden Horseshoe geography stubs
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