Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it is home to over 14 million people, which is approximately 38.5% of the country's population. Ontario is the second-largest province by total area, after Quebec, and the fourth-largest jurisdiction of all the Canadian provinces and territories. Ontario's capital is Canada’s most populous city, Toronto. The province is additionally home to the country’s national capital, Ottawa.
Getting to Ontario
Most visitors arrive by way of Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ IATA) in Mississauga (just outside of Toronto). The airport is Canada's busiest and a major hub for most Canadian air carriers. If your destination is in Southern Ontario, you will likely pass through Pearson at some point.
Worth seeing
Niagara Falls will be at the top of the list for many travellers. More water goes over the three falls here per minute than over any other falls in the world. The city of Niagara Falls has many other places of interest, from beautiful gardens, to butterfly conservatories to ticky-tacky tourist traps. The Niagara region is the most important of the Wine Regions of Ontario.
Things to do
Ontario offers many outdoor activities every season of the year. In the northern part of the province, you can hike the Sleeping Giant, a series of mesas that resemble a human figure, near Thunder Bay, hike through Temagami's Old Growth Forest, or climb the Fire Tower and canoe Lake Temagami. At Fathom Five National Marine Park at Tobermory, you can dive around or take a boat tour of shipwrecks.
Where to eat
The Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Golden Horseshoe, and Niagara Falls/Niagara Peninsula each offer you a wide variety of Indian, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Latin American, Japanese, fast food, and French cuisines (all formal and informal). Toronto and Ottawa have large immigrant populations, and have an unusually high variety of quality specialty cuisines, that cater to Western, Asian, European palates.
Getting around Ontario the local way
- Get inIt is possible to cross by seasonal ferry to the Thousand Islands (Cape Vincent, New York to Wolfe Island, Ontario) with a bicycle; crossing on foot there makes little sense due to the rural distances involved.
From Wikivoyage: Ontario, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-07.
Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Chris Woodrich (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.