Ontario

Stretching between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay, Canada’s most populous province is at once cosmopolitan and provincial, industrial and undeveloped. Its capital, Toronto, is a diverse and sophisticated metropolis, which has retained the order and cleanliness of a smaller city. 

The Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Valley in the south is the province’s most fertile region and the center of agriculture and industry; farther north, the landscape becomes increasingly severe, but its stark beauty enchants travelers, who are treated to wooded cliffs and roaming caribou. The Algoma Central Railway’s trains traverse the northern wilderness. In the southwest, the Fathom Five National Marine Park on Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay is an underwater preserve where scuba divers and glass-bottom boaters gaze at shipwrecks. 

Canada’s capital, Ottawa, is a mosaic of French and English cultures, and it bustles with museums, cafés, music and theater; the city also benefits from a generous allowance of green space and riverfront walks.