ONTARIO

The one million square kilometres of Ontario 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 characteristically flat, lake-studded landscapes are a paradise for fishing and lovers of the remote outdoors.

With more than three million inhabitants, Toronto is Canada's biggest city, a financial and industrial centre. To the south of this metropolis, Lake Ontario is ringed by suburbs and Canada's premier tourist spot, Niagara Falls, best visited on a day-trip from Toronto or from colonial Niagara-on-the-Lake. In Eastern Ontario, on the border with the Province of Quebec, lies the Nation's Capital City, Ottawa, with the beautiful city of Kingston and the Thousand Islands regions lying in-between it and Toronto, just off Highway 401.

Ontario is derived from the Iroquois word "kanadario", meaning "sparkling water". The province is aptly named; lakes and rivers make up one-fifth of its area. In 1641, the word "Ontario" was used to describe the land along the north shore of the easternmost part of the Great Lakes. Later, the southern part of the province was referred to as "Old Ontario". The name was adapted for the new era that began in 1867, when the area became a province.

Ontario was first inhabited by the Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking tribes. The most important Algonquian tribe in Ontario was the Ojibwa, who lived in Northern Ontario. There were two major Iroquoian confederacies: the Iroquois and the Huron. The Five Nations of the Iroquois - Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Mohawk - lived near Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The five Huron tribes inhabited the area near Lake Simcoe. These tribes were highly developed politically and culturally by the time the Europeans penetrated the area.

In 1610, Henry Hudson was the first European to set foot in Ontario while Samuel de Champlain and Etienne Brule established contact with the Indians of southern Ontario in 1613. By 1774, the British controlled what is now Southern Ontario, then part of the British province of Quebec. The Constitutional Act of 1791, which split the province in two, renamed the area Upper Canada.

Rebellions against undemocratic government in both Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 prompted the British to send Lord Durham to report on the troubles. As a result of his recommendations, The Act of Union of 1840 joined Upper and Lower Canada once again, as the Province of Canada. The rest of Northern Ontario was annexed in 1912 when Ontario expanded to its current size.