What is Lake Ontario?
Answer
The smallest and easternmost of the Great Lakes, bordered by Ontario to the north and New York State to the south, with the Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara region on its Canadian shore.
Explanation
Lake Ontario is the smallest of the five Great Lakes by surface area (18,960 square kilometres) and the easternmost. It is also the lowest in elevation of the Great Lakes at 74 metres above sea level. Lake Ontario is bordered by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north, west, and southwest, and by the United States state of New York to the south and east. The Canadian side accounts for about 53 per cent of the lake's surface area.
Lake Ontario receives most of its water from the upper Great Lakes (Lake Erie via the Niagara River, including Niagara Falls) and drains to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River. The Welland Canal, opened in 1932, allows ships to bypass Niagara Falls between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The St. Lawrence Seaway, opened by Queen Elizabeth II and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 26, 1959, allows ocean-going vessels to reach Lake Ontario from the Atlantic. The lake's maximum depth is 244 metres, and its volume is about 1,640 cubic kilometres.
The Canadian shore of Lake Ontario is the most densely populated region in Canada. The Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara metropolitan corridor (commonly called the Golden Horseshoe) extends from Oshawa east of Toronto around the western end of the lake to St. Catharines and Niagara Falls, and is home to about 9.5 million people, more than 23 per cent of the Canadian population. Major Canadian centres on the lake include Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Mississauga, Burlington, Oakville, Pickering, Whitby, Oshawa, Cobourg, Trenton, Belleville, and Kingston.
Kingston, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario where the lake drains into the St. Lawrence River, was the capital of the Province of Canada from 1841 to 1843 and is the home of Queen's University (founded 1841) and the Royal Military College of Canada. The Thousand Islands archipelago at the head of the St. Lawrence (more than 1,800 small islands) is shared between Canada and the United States and is protected on the Canadian side by Thousand Islands National Park. Lake Ontario's water quality has improved significantly since the 1972 Canada-US Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (renewed several times, most recently in 2012), though invasive species (zebra and quagga mussels, Asian carp, sea lamprey) and climate change continue to challenge the ecosystem. The lake supports a Canadian commercial fishery for lake whitefish, lake trout, walleye, and alewife.
Why this matters for your test
Lake Ontario anchors the most populous region in Canada and is the easternmost of the Great Lakes. Recognising the lake's role as the drainage to the St. Lawrence and the Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara Golden Horseshoe shoreline gives candidates two specific anchors.
Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada; Great Lakes Commission
