The cultural history of what is now Ontario stretches back more than 10,000 years. Many Nations and many peoples have called this place home. MyOntario – A vision over time marks this long history by opening a conversation among Ontarians about our experiences, identities, values and aspirations.
We are asking people from across the province to share their stories – the places, memories, photos, artifacts, artworks and traditions that inspire you, that motivate you and help define who you are. Be the province's storytellers, record keepers, historians and visionaries!
Let's build a deeper understanding, showcase our diversity and create a lasting record that reflects the breadth, depth and complexity of our great province as we look to the future.
Georges Quirion (architect and former Ontario Heritage Trust Board member)
Ontario’s rich industrial history
Northern Ontario has unique structures, not familiar to many, spread out through small northern communities, reflecting its rich history and its vast wealth of precious resources sought after by many from around the world.
The mining industry in particular creat
Arlene Chan (historian and author)
Gateway to Ontario
Toronto’s Chinatown East has a beautiful gateway – a Chinese architectural tradition first introduced in British Columbia in the 1880s.
As a writer and Chinatown historian, I find inspiration in the many gateways that grace Chinatowns in Toronto, Ottawa and across Canada. They
Sylvia
I was born with the wanderlust genes (Ajala the traveler as I am still called). We moved to Canada in 2015, prior to that we have lived in 4 different countries and had travelled to about 20 countries and still counting. We didn’t know much about Canada before we decided to move, all we knew at that
James Raffan (author, speaker and consultant)
On Cranberry Lake
Afloat at dawn and inhaling the misty rays of rising late-summer sun. Other days, it might be a sunset paddle with a Thermos of coffee in Listening Bay, watching Venus chase the sun to China. Or maybe idling in star-speckled moonlight, howling with the coyotes, or startling with
The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell (29th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario)
The conscience of our province
Ontario’s Legislative Building, completed in 1893, is a magnificent structure filled with stories from the most significant moments in our province’s modern history. The place is replete with traditions. One of the more recent ones is the hosting of the Lieutenant Go
Jeremy Collins
A santuary for all seasons
When I think of My Ontario, my thoughts sometimes turn to those cold Canadian winter days in late January and early February when snow and ice prevail and the hope of spring is just a distant dream and yet I know that a sanctuary for the senses is not too far away. This
Laura Wickett
Industrial heritage in Jordan Harbour
To find your way to one of Niagara’s hidden gems, you first need to know which dead-end street in Jordan Station to park on, and then take an overgrown pathway through the bushes to a steel train trestle bridge. Follow it out over the mouth of Jordan Harbour,
Olivia Wallace
Emancipation Day. FREE AT LAST!
- Olivia Wallace, Emancipation Day celebration at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site, Dresden, August 5, 2017
R. Dennis Moore (Archivist, Multicultural History Society of Ontario)
This badge belonged to Bohdan Panchuk, one of the most influential Canadians involved in the effort to resettle thousands of Ukrainians who were displaced by the Second World War.
By the end of the conflict, countless refugees had been forcibly displaced from their homes and faced uncertain future
Karin Almuhtadi
Home ♥
- Karin Almuhtadi, Bay and Algoma Buskers Festival, Thunder Bay, July 30, 2017
Diane Denyes-Wenn, Curator
Rose House Museum
... a small Loyalist home that has survived since 1790's having housed 7 generations of the Rose Family, Quakers who fled from the United States after the American Revolution. The house features many artifacts that would have been used throughout the history of the house, for examp
Dawson Bridger
The photo of my great great grandfather, Frederick Allen Weir, on the cover of the 1913 Rod and Gun magazine connects me to a family member I never met. This image was captured near Rondeau Provincial Park, where my family lived at the time. Frederick Weir, his son, and my grandfather, hunted the Ca
Muhammad Qureshi (2014 recipient of a Lieutenant Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement)
Our natural fingerprint
The magic began on a cold autumn afternoon after a hockey game with friends. I was walking home through a trail and the leaves had turned bright yellow and deep red, and I came across a painted turtle scurrying to find its way back to a pond. A whole hour vanished as I expl
Kathy Stinson (author of books for young people)
When I first started going to the cottage that has been in my husband’s family for more than 100 years, I loved the sense of continuity I felt there, as five generations enjoyed the traditions that Grandfather Gordon established in the early 1900s. And the place. The gorgeous combinations of water,
Melanie Pledger (2015 recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement)
Learning from the past
I’m proud to be a Canadian. I’m also proud to be an Ontarian. Going one step further, I’m proud to be a Falcon.
In 2014, I graduated from one of the oldest high schools in Canada – the Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute (OSCVI). It was founded in 1856, making i
Diane
“I am proud to be Canadian. The small villages and towns are very friendly but I also loved Toronto. I loved the streetcar and the subway – it is easy to get anywhere.”
Diane was born in Orangeville, Ontario and lived there for much of her life.
She had a twin sister and is one of six children.
Kevin Mannara (Basilian scholastic, seminarian, Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Parish)
What was and what will be
The term symbolkirchen can roughly be translated as a “symbol bearing church.” Such churches point to living realities beyond ourselves and hold the potential to serve as bridges, transcending the present vision to bring together what was and what may yet be. Assumption C
Dr. Patrick Julig (Professor of Anthropology, School of Community and Northern Studies, Laurentian University, Sudbury)
Reflections on ancient quarry sites of northern Ontario
In the 1980s-90s, I excavated at Cummins and Sheguiandah National Historic Site quarry/workshops in northern Ontario – in addition to many neat places elsewhere around the world.
We archaeologists are inspired in our quests, seeking rare an
Scarlett Janusas (President, Scarlett Janusas Archaeology Inc. )
Underwater archaeology
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain, American author
I’ve always had a passion ab
Julie Dorsey
Diverse.
- Julie Dorsey, Emancipation Day celebration at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site, Dresden, August 5, 2017
Kendrick Doll
I’m so grateful to have experienced adventures across many of Ontario’s landscapes. Here are a few that stuck with me.
My Ontario is:
Feeling the splash of the waves on my face while kayaking the 1000 islands on the St-Lawrence RiverHearing the loons call as night settles in while sitting around