Friday, May 18, 2007

Guide to Ontario

Ontario is a province located in the east-central part of Canada, the largest by population and second largest (after Quebec) in total area. Ontario is bordered by the provinces of Manitoba to the west, Quebec to the east, and the American states of Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. Most of Ontario's borders with the United States are natural, starting at the Lake of the Woods and continuing through the four Great Lakes: Superior, Huron (which includes Georgian Bay), Erie, and Ontario (for which the province is named), then along the Saint Lawrence River near Cornwall. Ontario is also the only Canadian Province that borders the Great Lakes.

The capital of Ontario is Toronto, the largest city in Canada. Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is located in Ontario as well. The 2006 Census counted 12,160,282 residents in Ontario, which accounted for 38.5% of the national population. The province takes its name from Lake Ontario, which is thought to be derived from ontarío, a Huron word meaning "great lake", or possibly skanadario which means "beautiful water" in Iroquoian. Along with New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec, Ontario is one of the four original provinces of Canada when the nation was formed on July 1, 1867 by the British North America Act. Ontario is Canada's leading manufacturing province accounting for 52 per cent of the total national manufacturing shipments in 2004.

The province consists of three main geographical regions: The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and the central portions which covers over half the land area in the province, though mostly infertile land, it is rich in minerals and studded with lakes and rivers; sub-regions are Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. The virtually unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the extreme north and northeast, mainly swampy and sparsely forested; and The temperate, and therefore most populous region, fertile Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Valley in the south where agriculture and industry are concentrated. Southern Ontario is further sub-divided into four regions; Southwestern Ontario (parts of which formerly referred to as Western Ontario), Golden Horseshoe, Central Ontario (although not actually the province's geographic centre) and Eastern Ontario.

Despite the absence of any mountainous terrain in the province, there are large areas of uplands, particularly within the Canadian Shield which traverses the province from northwest to southeast and also above the Niagara Escarpment which crosses the south. The highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693m above sea level located in Northeastern Ontario. The Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern section, its northern extent is part of the Greater Toronto Area at the western end of Lake Ontario. The most well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the much more extensive Niagara Escarpment. The Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 85% of the surface area of the province; conversely Southern Ontario contains 94% of the population (see article Geography of Canada). Point Pelee National Park is a peninsula in southwestern Ontario (near Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan) that extends into Lake Erie and is the southernmost extent of Canada's mainland. Pelee Island in Lake Erie extends slightly further. Both are south of 42°N – slightly further south than the northern border of California.
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