Ontario (English core)

The province that Confederation was designed to suit, and that has dominated the country since. Upper Canada was created in 1791 for the Loyalists who had come north after the American Revolution, and its founding identity was explicitly counter-American: British institutions, the Crown, and a governing elite the reformers called the Family Compact. The American invasions of 1812 were repelled with British regulars and Indigenous allies under Tecumseh, and the memory hardened that identity further. Rebellion in 1837 and the union with Lower Canada that followed produced deadlock, which Confederation in 1867 was largely invented to resolve - and the terms favoured Ontario, which had the most people and got representation by population. Its economy was built behind tariff walls under the National Policy of 1879, and the Auto Pact of 1965 tied southern Ontario's manufacturing to Detroit so tightly that the two now function as one industrial region. Toronto passed Montreal as the country's financial and largest city in the 1970s, a shift Quebec's language politics accelerated. Northern Ontario is a different place entirely: mining, forestry, and a landscape of Canadian Shield rock and lakes with a sparse population and a long-standing sense of neglect. Indigenous treaties across the north, particularly Treaty 9, are the subject of active litigation over what was actually promised. Ottawa, the federal capital, was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1857 as a compromise between rival cities. Ontario holds roughly two-fifths of Canada's population. Toronto is Canada's largest city and among the most foreign-born in the world. The province borders four Great Lakes. Sudbury's nickel basin sits in an ancient impact crater. Niagara Falls powered the province's first public hydroelectric system.

• Existed: 1784 CE – present
• Type: Entity