Province of Four Natural Regions

Ontario lies in four natural regions, each running across Ontario in a somewhat lateral direction. Starting with the southernmost region and moving northward, the four regions are the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands, the Canadian Shield, the Hudson Bay Lowland, and the Arctic Region.

Climate

Like most other provinces of Canada, Ontario has a continental climate. Northern Ontario has long, very cold winters and short summers. The southern part of the province, however, enjoys the tempering effect of the Great Lakes.

Rainfall is distributed throughout the year. At Toronto the average annual rainfall is 27.0 inches (68.5 centimeters). The growing season in the Toronto region averages 164 days a year. By contrast the growing season is only 82 days in the Kapuskasing area. In Toronto the January mean temperature is 20.7° F (–6.3° C) and the July mean is 69.4° F (20.8°  C). In Kapuskasing the January mean is –1.7° F (–18.7° C) and the July mean is 63.0° F (17.2° C).

Tourist Attractions

Ontario has more than 275 provincial parks, which cover a combined area of 17.5 million acres (7.1 million hectares). About 9 million people visit the parks each year. Ontario also has several national parks. (See also national parks, “Canadian National Parks.”)

National historic sites in Ontario include Fort Malden at Amherstburg, a defense post completed in 1799; Fort Wellington at Prescott, a defense post completed in 1813; and Woodside at Kitchener, the boyhood home of Mackenzie King, who was three times prime minister of Canada (see King, Mackenzie). The house where Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Canadian prime minister, lived in about 1848 is preserved at Bellevue House National Historic Site at Kingston (see Macdonald, John A.). Fort St. Joseph National Historic Site on St. Joseph's Island contains the remains of a fort built in the 1790s.

A popular annual event in Ontario is the excellent Stratford Festival, which features Shakespearean drama (see Stratford). The natural beauty of the province is celebrated in many other festivals—from the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa to the Six Nations Native Pageant held near Brantford.

People

Ontario's population of more than 11.4 million is the largest of any province in Canada. Urban dwellers total 84.7 percent, and 15.3 percent of the people are classified as rural. The southern peninsula is one of Canada's most thickly settled areas, and Ontario ranks third among the provinces in population density, with 27.5 persons per square mile (10.6 persons per square kilometer). About 40 percent of the people are at least partly of British origin. Almost 11 percent are of French descent. The remainder are mainly of European origin. About 5 percent of the people are of Chinese descent, 4 percent are East Indian, and 2 percent are at least partly Native American.

Noted writers born in Ontario include Sir Gilbert Parker, Ralph Connor (Charles W. Gordon), Archibald Lampman, and Duncan C. Scott (see Canadian literature). Ontario was the birthplace of four prime ministers—King, John G. Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson, and Paul Martin (see Diefenbaker; Pearson).

Economy

As in most urban societies, Ontario's economy is now dominated by the service sector. About 70 percent of the province's gross domestic product (the yearly value of goods and services produced) is derived from the service sector (see gross national product). The service sector also accounts for more than 70 percent of the jobs in Ontario. Service jobs occur in the fields of business and trade, banking, law, medicine, social work, and education as well as in government, transportation, and tourism. Jobs in the goods-producing sector of Ontario's economy occur in manufacturing, construction, farming, forestry, and mining.

Manufactured goods account for about 20 percent of the province's economy. Another 20 percent of Ontario's economy is derived from the services used in real estate, finance, and insurance transactions. Although farming, mining, and forestry are still important to the economy, they represent about 2 percent of Ontario's gross domestic product.

Ontario ranks first among the provinces in the total dollar amount obtained from the sale of its farm products. The province contains about half of Canada's highest quality farmland. Most of its farms are in the southern peninsula. It is the only section of the province where deep fertile soil is combined with a mild climate and a long growing season. Farming in northern Ontario is confined largely to the clay pockets stretching westward from the Quebec border to about the center of the province. Fruits and vegetables grown in nurseries also contribute to the province's agricultural output.

The chief sources of income for Ontario's farmers are cattle and calves, dairy products, pigs, vegetables, poultry, soybeans, corn, and tobacco. Fruit growing is a major activity in the Niagara region of the province along Lake Ontario. Apples, peaches, plums, and grapes are important products. Ontario leads the provinces in the production of tobacco, which is grown in the counties adjacent to Lake Erie. Other specialty crops include dry beans and mushrooms.

Forests cover about 54 percent of Ontario's land area. The provincial government controls cutting by issuing licenses to private companies. Lumber camps and sawmills are located primarily in the northern areas of the province. Once cut, the logs are processed for use as building board, plywood, and many other types of wood and paper products.

Ontario is second only to Alberta in the value of mineral output. It is one of the world's largest producers of nickel, and it is among Canada's top producers of gold, copper, sand and gravel, and stone. One of the oldest mining and smelting areas is in the Sudbury Basin, north of Georgian Bay. Nickel was discovered here in 1883 during construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Ontario produces about half the value of all goods manufactured in Canada—more than 285 billion Canadian dollars in the year 2002. Almost all of Ontario's industrial plants are located in the southern part of the province. Manufacturing has been drawn here for several reasons. Close at hand are such raw materials as timber and minerals to the north and farm products in the neighboring countryside.

The St. Lawrence-Great Lakes waterway system provides low-cost transportation westward to markets in the interior of the continent and eastward to the trade routes of the world. Hydroelectric power is available from Niagara Falls and from the rapids of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and their tributaries. The dense population provides both a skilled labor force and a large market.

The petrochemical industry is one of the province's leading industries, and Sarnia, located at the foot of Lake Huron, is one of the nation's leading production centers. Oil and gas from the Prairie Provinces provide the raw materials for plants manufacturing plastics, synthetic resins, synthetic rubber and textiles, and agricultural chemicals.

The Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, created in 1906, was once Canada's largest power-producing and power-distributing agency. Known as Ontario Hydro, the utility was owned by the Ontario government until it was privatized in 1999. Ontario Hydro was then replaced by several independently operated companies. As of 2004, the Ontario Power Generation company owned the province's many power-generating stations.

In the mid-1960s Ontario's first full-scale, uranium-fueled nuclear power plant opened on Lake Huron. By the early 21st century, the utility company's more recent nuclear power plants accounted for about two fifths of Ontario's electricity.

In 1965 a power failure in an electricity-generating plant at Queenston caused a massive blackout over an area covering southern Ontario and part of the northeastern United States. An even larger blackout occurred in the same regions on Aug. 14, 2003, when a power plant failed in Ohio. The plant shutdown caused problems along its transmission lines, which in turn caused power failures in the cities of Toronto and Ottawa.

In 1994 Ontario's close economic partnership with the United States was reinforced by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement ended many of the trade barriers between the two regions. Since NAFTA, Ontario's export goods have had easier access to the large markets in the United States and Mexico, the third partner in the agreement. The service sector also benefited from NAFTA. Commercial services in the areas of management and advertising were profitably exported to Mexico.

Chief Cities

Toronto, the province's largest city, is also Canada's largest metropolitan area (see Toronto). It is the provincial capital and the commercial, financial, industrial, and educational center of Ontario.

Ontario's second largest city is Ottawa, the national capital (see Ottawa). Mississauga, the third largest city, is a seaway port and an industrial and residential area. Hamilton, the fourth city in size and a leading Great Lakes port, is noted for its steel industry (see Hamilton). London is the industrial and distributing heart of the rich farmlands of the southern peninsula (see London).

Education

The elementary school system consists of public schools and separate Roman Catholic schools. It is under the supervision of the minister of education. Local administration is exercised by school boards, whose members are elected by popular vote. Roman Catholic elementary schools have long received provincial financial support. In the late 1980s this support was extended through the high school level. Instruction is available in French and English.

Higher education in Ontario is provided by the University of Toronto. Its seven federated colleges are St. Michael's, Trinity, Victoria, Knox, Wycliffe, Regis, and Emmanuel. Some other colleges and universities include Laurentian University of Greater Sudbury; McMaster University in Hamilton; the University of Ottawa and Carleton University in Ottawa; Queen's University and the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston; the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo; the University of Western Ontario in London; and the University of Windsor. There are also Brock University in St. Catharines; York University in North York; Lakehead University in Thunder Bay; the University of Guelph; and Trent University in Peterborough.

Ontario has 25 colleges of applied arts and technology and several colleges of agriculture. Ten special schools are operated by the Ministry of Education: four for the deaf, two for the blind and deaf, and four for those with learning disabilities.

Government and History

The government is nominally headed by the lieutenant-governor, who represents the British Crown. The actual power lies with the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Council, or Cabinet, headed by the premier. The legislature consists of 103 members popularly elected to a maximum term of five years. The province has 103 representatives in the federal House of Commons and 24 in the Senate.

After governing Ontario for 42 years the Progressive Conservative party lost its ruling position in 1985. Liberal party leader David Peterson then became premier. The province's first New Democratic party premier took office in 1990. From 1995 to 2003 the government was administered by the Progressive Conservative party. In late 2003 the Liberal party took office with Dalton McGuinty as its premier.

For nearly 200 years after New France was founded in eastern Canada, the Iroquois Indians prevented settlement in the country west of Montreal. Between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe lay Huronia, land of the Hurons. They were a peaceful people who lived in palisaded villages and practiced agriculture. They traded with the French and welcomed the missionaries. In 1611 Étienne Brulé spent a winter with the Hurons, and in 1615 he was in Samuel de Champlain's exploration party to Huronia. In 1648–49 the Iroquois massacred all but a few score of the Hurons.

Henry Hudson explored the shores of Hudson and James bays in 1610–11. The fur traders Pierre Esprit de Radisson and Médart Chouart, sieur de Groseilliers, penetrated deep into Ontario in the mid-1600s, and René Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, sailed the Great Lakes bordering Ontario in 1679–80. In 1673 Count Louis de Frontenac, governor of New France, challenged the Iroquois by building Fort Frontenac at the outlet of the St. Lawrence River near where Kingston now stands. (See also Frontenac; fur trade, history of the; Hudson, Henry; La Salle.)

The real founders of Ontario were United Empire Loyalists who were persecuted as Tories in the United States for supporting Great Britain during the American Revolution. By 1783 about 10,000 of them had settled on the northern shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario and along the upper St. Lawrence River. Refusing to adopt the French civil law and the Roman Catholic faith of their neighbors to the east, they forced the division of Canada into two provinces in 1791—Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec).

The first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada was Col. John Graves Simcoe. The site of the first capital was located on the Niagara River. In 1793 Simcoe founded a new capital on Lake Ontario and named it York for the duke of York, son of King George III. Many years later it was renamed Toronto.

In about 1802 Thomas Talbot, a young Irish officer who had served on Simcoe's staff, obtained a grant of many thousands of acres and in 1803 established the Talbot Settlement. Its capital was named St. Thomas. The Loyalists were joined by new arrivals from Great Britain and the United States. By 1812 the population of Upper Canada was about 90,000.

Ontario bore the brunt of the War of 1812 (see War of 1812). The United States underestimated the loyalty and ability of the handful of farmers here. Gen. Isaac Brock, the “hero of Upper Canada,” and Tecumseh, his Native American ally, seized Detroit at the war's outset. At Queenston Heights, Lundy's Lane, and other battlefronts, the Loyalists again showed their determination to remain British.

Another colonizer was John Galt, the Scottish novelist. In 1824 Galt founded the Canada Company, which bought almost 1¹/₂ million acres (600,000 hectares) reaching from west of York to Lake Huron. By 1837 the population of Upper Canada had grown to 350,000.

Increasing friction between the popularly elected assembly and the autocratic executive council, which was called the Family Compact, led to a short-lived rebellion in 1837 under William Lyon Mackenzie (see Canada, “History of Canada”; Mackenzie, William Lyon). John George Lambton, earl of Durham, was appointed to investigate the causes of the discontent in both Upper and Lower Canada. He recommended that the two be reunited.

After the Act of Union, effective in 1841, Upper Canada was known as Canada West. In 1867 it became a province of the newly formed Dominion of Canada and was named Ontario. The provincial boundaries were extended in 1888.

The population grew rapidly through immigration before World War I and after World War II, and the mineral and industrial output expanded with it. A 1950 treaty between the United States and Canada provided for increased power at Niagara Falls. The completion of a petroleum pipeline from Alberta to Sarnia in 1953 and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 gave further impetus to industrial development.

Since the mid-1990s Ontario has undergone an extensive municipal reorganization. The province dissolved many of its smaller communities by merging them with the larger municipalities in their area. As a result, both Toronto and Ottawa (as well as several other municipalities) increased in size and population in 2001. In some cases, new cities such as Greater Sudbury and Kawartha Lakes were created. Between 1996 and 2004 Ontario had reduced the total number of its communities from 815 to fewer than 450. In less than a decade, the province had decreased the number of its cities, towns, and other political entities by more than 40 percent. Population (2001 census), 11,410,046.