Gallery | Ontario

Chinese Lanterns, Ontario Place
Ward's Island ferry to downtown
Graffiti in Queen St.alleys

Writing
Russia - Among the Cossacks

Mikefolio | Writing and Photography | Ontario

ntario is a land of superlatives—richest province, biggest city (Toronto) and nation’s capital (Ottawa); A staggering amount of economic and political influence resides within Ontario’s borders. It is a cultural and entertainment hotspot, and the gateway to Niagara Falls, world’s biggest-hyped scenic wonder. Cottagers, including Americans from neighbouring states like Michigan, Ohio and New York arrive en masse every summer to enjoy a weekend of sport fishing or family holiday in ‘cottage country,’ a rugged land brimming with rock, forest, rivers and lakes. Some of the best camping in the world is found in super-sized Algonquin Park.

The Great Lakes—nearly the size of the UK and containing 20% of the world’s freshwater—separate Ontario, and Canada, from the United States. These watersheds are shipping routes for ocean-going freighters and feed fantastic spectacles like Niagara Falls and the Thousand Islands. Ontario is vast and stretches thousands of kilometres from the resource-rich north to the densely populated south. In the north, the glacially-formed Canadian Shield, some of the oldest rock on the planet, produces precious metals and minerals including gold, nickel, and copper. It is in the south that the visitor will likely first step foot—disembarking from a VIA train at historic Union Station in Toronto or landing at Pearson Airport in the city’s west-end.

Early explorers of Ontario, such as Frenchmen Etienne Brûlé and Samuel de Champlain, navigated the province from the confluence of rivers that gave Toronto its aboriginal name (“Meeting Place”), to the sub-arctic region that birthed the famed Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC was founded on the fur-trade in 1670 and is operator of ‘The Bay’ department stores). After the French colonized the lower stretches of the mighty St. Lawrence River, a mixture of English settlers and American loyalists planted themselves in British Upper Canada, on the fertile shores of Lake Ontario, in the area which became York and later, Toronto. Important battles of the American-Canadian War of 1812 took place here, and elsewhere in the Great Lakes, primarily in Niagara where Indian leaders and British commanders fought alongside one another. “First Nations” culture, has been mostly buried here, and the remnants that survive are manifested in place names distinctly “Indian”: Mississauga, Oshawa, Ottawa, and the provincial capital, Toronto, Ontario.

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Oakridges Moraine Trail - Stouffville-Whitchurch