The one million square kilometres of
Ontario, Canada's
second-largest province, stretch all
the way from the St Lawrence River
and the Great Lakes to the frozen
shores of Hudson Bay. Some
two-thirds of this territory - all
of the north and most of the centre
- is occupied by the forests and
rocky outcrops of the Canadian
Shield, whose ancient, Precambrian
rocks were brought to the surface by
the glaciers that gouged the
continent during the last ice age.
The glaciers produced a flattened
landscape studded with thousands of
lakes and it was the local Iroquois
who first coined the name
"Ontario", literally
"glittering waters". The
Iroquois
- as well as their
Algonquin
neighbours to the north - hunted and
fished the Canadian Shield, but
their agricultural activities were
confined to the more fertile and
hospitable parts of southern
Ontario, in which the vast majority
of the province's ten million people
are now concentrated.
The first Europeans to
make regular contact with these
aboriginal peoples were the French
explorers of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, most famously
the intrepid Étienne Brûlé and
Samuel de Champlain. However, these
early visitors were preoccupied with
the fur trade, and it wasn't until
the end of the American War of
Independence and the immigration of
the United Empire Loyalists
that mass settlement really began.
Between 1820 and 1850 a further wave
of migrants, mostly English, Irish
and Scots, made Upper Canada, as
Ontario was known until
Confederation, the most populous and
prosperous Canadian region. This
pre-eminence was reinforced towards
the end of the nineteenth century by
the industrialization of the
region's larger towns, a process
that was underpinned by the
discovery of some of the world's
richest mineral deposits: in the
space of twenty years, nickel was
found near Sudbury, silver at
Cobalt, gold in Red Lake and iron
ore at Wawa.
Nowadays, a highly mechanized
timber industry, mineral mines,
massive hydroelectric schemes and
thousands of factories - making more
than half the country's manufactured
goods - keep Ontario at the top of
the economic ladder. However, this
industrial success has created
massive environmental problems
, most noticeable in the wounded
landscapes around Sudbury and the
polluted waters of lakes Erie and
Ontario. Furthermore, the province
remains firmly in the political
hands of the Progressive
Conservative Party, whose flinty
right-wing agenda owes much to the
UK's Mrs Thatcher. As a consequence,
privatization and tax cuts are in
vogue, along with endless moaning
about welfare scroungers, whilst
environmental issues take a back (or
nonexistent) seat.
With more than four million
inhabitants, Toronto is
Canada's biggest city, a financial
and industrial behemoth that boasts
a hatful of sights - the pick of
which are its art galleries - a
great restaurant scene and a vibrant
nightlife. To the east and west of
the city, along the north shore of Lake
Ontario , is the so-called
"Golden Horseshoe" - named
for its economic clout rather than
its looks and comprising sprawling
suburbs and ugly industrial
townships. Highlights here are few
and far between, but the steel city
of Hamilton , at the western
end of the lake, does have one or
two interesting historic sights and
is also near Canada's premier
tourist spot, Niagara Falls -
best visited on a day-trip from
Toronto or from colonial Niagara-on-the-Lake
. Most of the rest of southwest
Ontario , sandwiched between
lakes Huron and Erie, is farming
terrain that's as flat as a Dutch
polder. Nevertheless, the
car-producing town of Windsor
is a lively place to spend a night,
and both Goderich and Bayfield
are charming little places tucked
against the bluffs along the Lake
Huron shoreline. For landscape, the
most attractive regions of southern
Ontario are the Bruce Peninsula
and the adjacent Georgian Bay
, whose Severn Sound is the
location of the beautiful Georgian
Bay Islands National Park as well as
a pair of top-notch historical
reconstructions, Discovery Harbour
and Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.
In central Ontario ,
inland from the coastal strip
bordering Georgian Bay, are the
myriad Muskoka Lakes - the
epicentre of what Canadians call cottage
country . Every summer, the
province's city folk arrive here in
their thousands for a spot of
fishing, boating and swimming,
hunkering down in their lakeside
cottages - though
"cottages" is something of
a misnomer as these second homes
range from humble timber chalets to
vast mansions. Locals swear this
summer jaunt is the best time of the
year, but touring the region as an
outsider is mostly disappointing.
For a start, and with the notable
exception of several superb hotels,
there is nowhere in particular to go
and the main towns - primarily Gravenhurst
and Bracebridge - are far
from inspiring. If you get an invite
to a cottage things may well seem
very different, but otherwise - if
you're after the great outdoors -
it's best to keep going north to Algonquin
Provincial Park , a vast tract
where beavers and black bears roam
and you can canoe for days without
seeing a soul. If that sounds too
daunting, head east instead for the
towns bordering the St Lawrence
River, primarily Kingston , a
handsome city with a clutch of fine
colonial buildings. North of here,
within easy striking distance, is Ottawa
, the nation's capital, but a
surprisingly small city of
impeccable streets and parks,
high-class museums and galleries,
plus - and this may be something of
a surprise if you're familiar with
the city's bureaucratic image - a
lively restaurant and bar scene.
Northern Ontario , beyond
Algonquin Provincial Park, offers a
natural environment stunning in its
extremes, but the travelling can be
hard and the specific sights too
widely separated for comfort. Two
main roads cross this sparsely
inhabited region, Hwy 11 in
the north and Hwy 17 to the
south. The former links a series of
mining towns and should be avoided,
while the latter passes near or cuts
through a string of parks, including
the extravagantly wild Lake
Superior Provincial Park . Hwy
17 also visits Sault Ste Marie
- terminus of the Agawa Canyon
train, which affords a glimpse of
the otherwise impenetrable
hinterland - as well as the gritty
grain port of Thunder Bay ,
an ideal stopping point on the long
journey west (or east). North of Hwy
11 lies a brutal country where
hunters are the only regular
visitors, though the passing tourist
can get a taste of the terrain on
board the Polar Bear Express, which
tracks across the Arctic tundra to
link Cochrane , on Hwy-11,
with Moosonee on the shores
of James Bay.
Toronto is at the heart of
Ontario's public transport
system, with regular bus and rail
services shuttling along the shore
of Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence
River to connect every major city
between Niagara Falls, Ottawa and
ultimately Montréal. Away from this
urban core, however, the picture is
far more sketchy. There are fairly
regular bus services on the
London-Windsor-Detroit route and
along the Trans-Canada and Hwy 17,
but connections between the
province's smaller towns are few and
far between - reckon on about one
per day even for prominent places,
though in some cases (for instance,
Goderich) there are no buses at all.
