Ontario [antikvár]

introduction Ontario is the second largest province of Canada, lying between the Hudson and James Bays to the north, Quebec to the east, the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes to the south and Manitoba to the west. It is also Canada's most populous province, with more than seven million inhabitants, over one third of the country's total, and its natural resources and industrial dEvelopment have also made it the wealthiest. Ontario's earliest known Indian dwellers included the Tobacco, Erie and Huron tribes in the south, whose existence was based on agriculture, and the hunting tribes, the Algonquin, Ojibwa and Cree in the harsher climes of the north. A French explorer, Etienne Brulé, is believed to have been the first white man to travel among the Indians, on an expedition to the Ottawa River in 1610-11. Before long he was followed by Samuel de Champlain, the acknowledged founder of Quebec, and in his wake came an assortment of other French explorers, fur traders and missionaries. In 1648-49, the southern Indian tribes were driven from their lands as France began to protect her rapidly expanding fur empire. More than 100 years later, in 1774, the Quebec Act established Ontario as part of an extended colony ruled from Quebec. The following year saw the start of the American War of Independence and Ontario became a base for Loyalist and Indian attacks upon the American frontier. At the end of the war the area was settled by 10,000 of those Loyalists and a number of Iroquois Indians who had fought for the British. A Constitutional Act of 1791 divided Quebec Colony into Lower Canada, with a French majority, and Upper Canada as a Loyalist province. Upper Canada-now Ontario-adopted the English local government and legal practices, established an Anglican church and chose York-later to be renamed Toronto-as its capital. Upper and Lower Canada were united in 1841, when Upper Canada became known as Canada West, but this name was changed to Ontario a few years later. Since those days the province has made enormous strides towards a thriving industrial economy, helped initially by the advent of the railways in the 1850's, which established Toronto as a serious commercial rival to the city of Montreal. Other advances were the harnessing of power from Niagara Falls in 1882 and the discovery of minerals such as gold, silver, copper, nickel and iron at the beginning of the 20th century. The expansion of lumbering in the province's extensive forests, and the subsequent paper and pulp industries also helped to put Ontario on a firm economic footing. The province can be divided into two distinct regions. Northern Ontario is composed of lakes and rivers, dense forests of spruce, pine, balsam and birch, with a band of tundra along Hudson Bay. Southern Ontario, virtually ten percent of the province, contains ninety percent of the population and is the major industrial region, not only of Ontario, but of the whole of Canada. Automobiles, textiles, food processing, aircraft and electrical goods are the main manufacturing industries. This part of the province has several beautiful lake districts and, of course, the spectacular Niagara Falls. Toronto, on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, is Canada's second city and the capital of Ontario. The first known settlement in the Toronto area is believed to have been called Teiaiagon, inhabited by the Seneca and later the Mississauge Indians. In time it became a trading post, and an important one, due to its position at the crossing of ancient Indian trails leading to the north and west; trails that were gratefully used by the early explorers and fur traders. The name Toronto was given to a small fort, one of three built by the French between 1720 and 1750 in order to defend their trade with the Indians against the English. In 1757 the French were defeated and the forts destroyed, although the settlement at Toronto continued as a trading post. After the massive influx of Loyalists into the province following the ending of the American War of Independence, Lord Dorchester, Governor in Chief of Canada, negotiated with three Indian Chiefs for the purchase of a site for a future Ontario capital. The land chosen was 250,000-acres adjoining Lake Ontario. It was eventually bought for L1,700, bales of cloth, axes and a variety of other goods. Ontario's first parliament, however, met at Niagara in 1792 but a year later the Lieutenant Governor chose the present site of Toronto, impressed by its strategic defensive position, excellent harbour and trading potential. Curiously, he changed its name from Toronto to York, which it remained until 1834, when the city, with a population of about 9,000, was incorporated. A serious tire in 1849 destroyed fifteen acres of the downtown area including the cathedral and St Lawrence market, but the city quickly recovered. The construction of the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railway in the next decade was responsible for the city's rapid development in industry, trading, distribution and population. In 1861 the population was 45,000; 1901 208,000 and 1921 522,000. However, like many other cities, Toronto suffered during the depression years of the 1930's and an increase in population after World War II only fuelled the problem of finding enough money to finance essential services. Toronto today is a cosmopolitan metropolis and the commercial powerhouse of the nation. It has expanded along the curving western shoreline of Lake Ontario, from Oshawa to St Catherines; an area known as the Golden Horseshoe. In the city centre clusters of gleaming skyscrapers house the offices of multinational corporations; concrete symbols of Toronto's affluence.