Ontario
Ontario, Canada's second-largest province, stretches 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 ancient Precambrian rocks were brought to the surface by the glaciers that gouged the continent during the last ice age.
Spread along the north shore of Lake Ontario is Canada's biggest city, Toronto, with a population of around four and a half million. To either side of this giant metropolis is the so-called "Golden Horseshoe" – named for its economic clout rather than its looks – comprised of sprawling suburbs and ugly industrial townships. The steel city of Hamilton, at the western end of the lake, has one or two interesting historic sights and is also near Canada's premier tourist spot, Niagara Falls – best visited on a day-trip from Toronto or from colonial Niagara-on-the-Lake nearby.
Most of the rest of southwest Ontario, sandwiched between lakes Huron and Erie, is farming terrain that's as flat as a Dutch polder. Nevertheless, the car-producing town of Windsor is a lively place to spend a night, and both Goderich and Bayfield are charming little places tucked against the bluffs along the Lake Huron shoreline. For landscape, the most attractive regions of southern Ontario are the Bruce Peninsula and the adjacent Georgian Bay, whose Severn Sound is the location of the beautiful Georgian Bay Islands National Park as well as a pair of top-notch historical reconstructions, Discovery Harbour and Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.
Toronto has its share of attention-grabbing sights and the majority are conveniently clustered in the city centre. The most celebrated of them is the CN Tower, the world's tallest freestanding structure, which stands next to the modern hump of the SkyDome sports stadium, now the Rogers Centre.
The city's other prestige attractions kick off with the Art Gallery of Ontario, which possesses a first-rate selection of Canadian painting, and the Royal Ontario Museum, where pride of place goes to the Chinese collection. Yet it's the pick of Toronto's smaller galleries that really add to the city's charm. There is a superb collection of ceramics at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, a fascinating range of footwear at the Bata Shoe Museum and the small but eclectic Gallery of Inuit Art owned by the Toronto Dominion Bank. There are fascinating period homes too, most memorably the mock-Gothic extravagances of Casa Loma and the Victorian gentility of Spadina House, not to mention the replica colonial fortress of Fort York, where Toronto began.
Spare time also for the good-looking buildings of the lively St Lawrence neighbourhood and the Distillery District, not actually a district at all but rather Toronto's brightest arts and entertainments complex, sited in a capacious former distillery.
Discover more to see and do in Ontario at Rough Guides.
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