The History

Ontario's first peoples arrived about 10 000 years ago, during the last ice age. The European explorers encountered the Iroquois and Algonquin descendants of those first migrants in the 17th century. Sailing into the large bay that bears his name, Henry Hudson became the first European to touch the shores of present-day Ontario in 1610; in 1613, Samuel de Champlain and Étienne Brûlé made the first contacts with the Aboriginal people in the southern part of the province.

In 1774, the British ruled over southern Ontario, then part of the British colony of Quebec. Under the Constitutional Act of 1791, Quebec was divided in two and Ontario renamed Upper Canada. This became necessary with the tremendous influx of Loyalist refugees after the American Revolution. In 1840, the Act of Union saw Upper and Lower Canada reunited, this time with the name Canada. The two regions, Canada West and Canada East, took part in the Confederation debate of the 1860's and, when the Dominion of Canada was created in 1867, became the separate provinces of Ontario and Quebec.