Ontario is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Located in Central Canada, it is Canada’s most populous province, with 38.3 percent of the country’s population, and is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec). Ontario is Canada’s fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation’s capital city, Ottawa, and the nation’s most populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario’s provincial capital.
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 northeast, and to the south by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Almost all of Ontario’s 2,700 km (1,678 mi) border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the westerly Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. There is only about 1 km (0.6 mi) of actual land border, made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.
The great majority of Ontario’s population and arable land is in Southern Ontario. In contrast, Northern Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation. These amazing photos from
Archives Of Ontario captured life of Ontario in the 1950s.
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| Mrs. George Baxter lacing a beaver pelt into a drying frame. Overhead hangs half of a tanned moosehide, Washi Lake, Ontario, 1951 |
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| 51 St. Cyril’s and St. Methodius’ Ukrainian Catholic Church, on the Queen Elizabeth Way, near St. Catharines, Ontario, 1951 |
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| Canoe lessons, Ontario, 1952 |
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| Garden in front of Queen’s Park, Toronto, Ontario, 1952 |
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| Picnickers at Aubrey Falls, Ontario, 1952 |
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| Chief Jeremiah Sainawap of the Big Trout Lake band raising flag at the council house to announce a meeting of trappers with government wildlife officers, Big Trout Lake, Ontario, 1953 |
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| A Cree boy at Weenusk with a caribou skull, Ontario, February 20, 1955 |
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| A dance at Fort Severn, Ontario, circa 1955 |
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| Moses Koostachin at a noon stop while en route from Weenusk to Hawley Lake, Ontario, February 1955 |
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| Mrs. Duncan Gray and her daughter untangling a gillnet, Fort Severn, Ontario, 1955 |
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| Smoke house, Waweagama Lake (Round Lake), Patricia District, Round Lake, Ontario, circa 1955 |
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| Sphagnum moss is drying as stuffing for an infants moss bag or tikinagan, Lansdowne House (now Neskantaga First Nation), Ontario, 1956 |
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| Woman with a child in a tikinagan, Sandy Lake, Ontario, 1956 |
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| Blue Water Bridge, Sarnia, Ontario, 1958 |
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| Skyway Bridge, Burlington, Ontario, 1958 |
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| Stanley Naveau with a moosehide that has been de-haired, and hung to cure before being cut into “babiche”. Babiche is rawhide lacing such as used for snowshoe webbing, Mattagami Reserve, Gogama, Ontario, 1958 |
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| Woman plucking geese, Ontario, 1958 |
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| York Mills Collegiate, York Mills, Ontario, 1958 |
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| Battlefield House, Stoney Creek, Ontario, 1959 |
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| City Hall, Barrie, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Fort Malden, Amherstburg, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Hurontario Street, Collingwood, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Main Street, Barrie, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Main Street, Orillia, Ontario, 1959 |
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| McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Monument to Joseph Brant, Brantford, Ontario, 1959 |
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| New City Hall, Ottawa, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Old St. Paul’s Church, Woodstock, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Pioneer Village, Fanshawe Park, London, Ontario, 1959 |
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| The Bell Homestead, home of Alexander Graham Bell, Brantford, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Woman of the Echum family fleshing a beaver pelt and scraping it during the “frost drying” process, near Gogoma, Ontario, 1959 |
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| Woodstock City Hall, Woodstock, Ontario, 1959 |
