Province of Ontario

Ontario is an Iroquoian word often interpreted as "beautiful lake" or "glittering waters." It's an apt name for a province whose vastness (more than a million square km, or 412,582 square mi) contains 177,388 square km (68,490 square mi) of freshwater—one-fourth of all there is in the world.

More than half of this huge province's population lives in a small fraction of its geographical area: the four cities of the "Golden Horseshoe," at the western end of Lake Ontario. Dominant is the megacity of Toronto, with more than 4.5 million people. Of Ontario's 11.3 million people, 90% live within a narrow strip just north of the U.S. border.

The towns and cities of northern Ontario, on the other hand, are farther apart, strung along the railway lines that first brought them into being. The discovery of gold, silver, uranium, and other minerals by railroad construction gangs sparked mining booms that established such communities as Sudbury, Cobalt, and Timmins.

Ontario has the most varied landscape of any Canadian province. Its most conspicuous topographical feature is the Niagara Escarpment, which runs from Niagara to Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula in Lake Huron. The northern 90% of Ontario is part of the Canadian Shield—worn-down mountain ranges of the world's oldest rock, pitted with lakes and cloaked in boreal forest.

The province's climate ranges from subarctic along Hudson and James bays, to humid-continental in its most southerly latitudes. Toward Niagara Falls, in a partial rain shadow of the Escarpment, the gentle climate allows the growing of tender fruits and grapes, making it Canada's largest wine-producing region.

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