Ontario is the most populous and most prosperous province in Canada. One-third of the nation's population lives here. They produce more than one-half of Canada's manufactured goods, one-quarter of her output from mines and forests, and one-third of the farm income. Accompanying this economic pre-eminence is a majestic primeval geography. Ontario extends through sixteen degrees of latitude and a distance of over 1600 kilometres from barren tundra along a saltwater shoreline in the north to fertile lowlands bordering freshwater lakes in the south.

Productivity and size, two of the basic elements in the geography of the province, stand in contradiction to one another. The former is concentrated in a very small area with an identity and even a name of its own, 'Southern Ontario,' a portion of the province that is as overwhelming in its concentration of activity as the remainder is in its areal extent. The recognition of this distinction is a prerequisite to the further study of a subject which has been widely neglected, both in Ontario and in the rest of Canada. Writers and artists, historians and geographers have paid little attention to the province. It is a baffling region, one which 'has achieved a significant place in the Canadian sun, but no one quite knows what the place is, even though other areas would like to achieve the same position' (Warkentin 1966). The purpose of this short volume is to contribute to an understanding of Ontario, to point out something of what it is both to those who are already acquainted with the province and to those who are being introduced to it for the first time.