Ontario
is the second largest province of Canada in area, after
Quebec, the most populous and the southernmost
province of Canada. It occupies the strip lying between Hudson and James bays to
the north and the Great Lakes to the
south. It is bordered to the east by the province of Quebec, to the south by the
United States, and to the west by the province
of Manitoba. Ontario has about 250 thousand
freshwater lakes. It is home to the nation's capital, Ottawa, and its most
populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario's provincial capital.
The first known mention of the name Ontario, believed to have Indigenous origins, was in 1641, when "Ontario" was used to describe the land on the north shore of the easternmost part of the Great Lakes. It was adopted as the official name of the new province at Confederation in 1867.
Southern
Ontario is divided into four sub-regions: Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario,
Golden Horseshoe and Southwestern Ontario.
There are large areas of uplands in the province, but not much mountainous terrain. The highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 meters above sea level in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario.
An extensive part of land along the south and west shores of James Bay and Hudson Bay is low and covered with wetlands. To the north is the Boreal Shield, the largest provincial ecozone, extending from south-central Ontario to cover most of northern Ontario, where it abuts the Hudson Plains. The Northwestern Ontario portion of this area is part of the Midwestern Canadian Shield forests ecoregion of boreal forest that spreads west through Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The Ontario Peninsula is the southernmost part of the province. It is bounded by Lake Huron (west), Lake Ontario (east), and Lake Erie (south). It is separated from Michigan by the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, as well as Lake St. Clair. The peninsula also includes the Bruce and Niagara peninsulas, one projecting into Lake Huron and the other projecting towards New York, from which it is separated by the Niagara River.
