Daily Archives: May 17, 2014

Ontario

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [+]

Ontario i/ntrio/ is one of the ten provinces of Canada, located in east-central Canada.[5][6] It is Canada's most populous province[7] by a large margin, accounting for nearly 40%[8] of all Canadians, and is the second largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included.[2] It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto.[9]

Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east, and to the south by the U.S. states of Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. All but a small part of Ontario's 2,700km (1,678mi) border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the west at Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. These are the Rainy River, the Pigeon River, Lake Superior, the St. Marys River, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, Ontario, to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall, Ontario.

Ontario is sometimes conceptually divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontario's population and its arable land is located in the south. In contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated.

The province is named after Lake Ontario, a term thought to be derived from Ontar:io, a Huron (Wyandot) word meaning "great lake",[10] or possibly skanadario, which means "beautiful water" in the Iroquoian languages.[11] Ontario contains about 250,000 freshwater lakes.[12]

The province consists of three main geographical regions:

Despite the absence of any mountainous terrain in the province, there are large areas of uplands, particularly within the Canadian Shield which traverses the province from northwest to southeast and also above the Niagara Escarpment which crosses the south. The highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres (2,274ft) above sea level located in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500m (1,640.42ft) are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands and in hilltops near the Madawaska River in Renfrew County.

The Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. The temperate and fertile Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Valley in the south is part of the Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests ecoregion where the forest has now been largely replaced by agriculture, industrial and urban development. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment. The Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87% of the surface area of the province; conversely Southern Ontario contains 94% of the population.

Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario (near Windsor and Detroit, Michigan) that is the southernmost extent of Canada's mainland. Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42N slightly farther south than the northern border of California.

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Ontario, Canada Bed Bug Registry Map Bed Bug ...