Ontario is Canada's second largest province, covering more than one million square kilometers (415,000 square miles). It is
bordered by Québec on the east, Manitoba on the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay on the north, and the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes on the south.
Ontario's population is more than 11 million (Statistics Canada, 2001), which makes it home to approximately one in three Canadians. Eighty per cent of the people live in urban centres, mainly in cities on the shores of the Great Lakes.
The capital of the province is Toronto. Ontario is also home to Ottawa, the capital of Canada.
Ontario’s most northern communities are close to the same latitude as London, England and Warsaw, Poland. Ontario’s southernmost point of land is Middle Island, in Lake Erie south of Point Pelee, roughly parallel to Barcelona, Spain or Rome, Italy.
There are over 250,000 lakes in Ontario - they make up about one-third of the world’s fresh water.
Ontario's industries range from cultivating crops, to mining minerals, to manufacturing automobiles, to designing software and leading-edge technology.
According to the 1996 census by Statistics Canada, the five languages most commonly spoken at home are English (almost nine million speakers), French (almost 540,000 speakers), Chinese (almost 275,000 speakers), Italian (almost 140,000 speakers) and Portuguese (about 92,000 speakers). Other significant languages include Polish, Spanish, Punjabi, German and Greek.
According to the same census, about 140,000 of Ontario’s people identified themselves as Aboriginal (North American Indian, Métis or Inuit). This represents about one per cent of the province’s population and about one-fifth of Canada's total Aboriginal population. They include Algonquian-speaking Cree, Oji-Cree, Algonquin, Ojibwa, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Delaware, and Iroquoian-speaking Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora).
(Some information taken from the Government of Ontario website.)
Forsiden |