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.
Lynn Thompson
Thank you Turtle Island. Homeland of the Mississauga New Credit for your strength, resilience, knowledge!!
- Lynn Thompson - National Aboriginal Day at Fort York National Historic Site - June 21, 2017
Nathan Tidridge
Local residents in #Waterdown holding their spots for the annual #Flamborough Santa Claus Parade later that day. #MyOntario
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
#MyOntario
What's your favourite fall fair memory?
Was it going for a spin on the merry-go-round? Bringing home a ribbon? Enjoying harvest-time treats? Share your favourite fall fair moments with us!
Join the conversation on social media: Explore #MyOntario posts about fall fairs in Ontario and connect wit
John Steckley
My Brodie History
In 1835 a nine year old Scottish lad named Alexander Brodie came to southern Ontario by ships and boats from Peterhead in northeastern Scotland. He and his family spent their first year on Lot Street (now Queen Street) in Toronto then called York. He described seeing cows being
Waubageshig
Retrieving the Sleigh
It is mid-April. My three brothers, Michael, Tom and George, and I are outside playing catch in the warm afternoon spring sun. I’m 11 years old, Michael is 8, Tom 7 and George 6. The spring sun has been warm all week so the snow around our house has disappeared. We’re very ha
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
Jean-Luc Pilon (Curator of Central Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of History)
The gift of time travel
In the summer of 1982, I was carrying out archaeological research near the shores of Hudson Bay on the Severn River. One of the sites we were investigating had been used a number of times. The earliest evidence suggested that people camped at the Ouabouche site before Europ
Julie Dorsey
Diverse.
- Julie Dorsey, Emancipation Day celebration at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site, Dresden, August 5, 2017
Cades McKenna
Rainbow Falls, lakes, forests, swimming, roller blading, hiking.
- Cades McKenna, Bay and Algoma Buskers Festival, Thunder Bay, July 30, 2017
Sam Steiner (Managing Editor of the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online and retired archivist from the Mennonite Archives of Ontario)
The cloud of witnesses
As a historian of Mennonites in Ontario, I have always enjoyed wandering through Mennonite and Amish cemeteries. Whether plain Old Order Amish or Old Order Mennonite cemeteries with only simple markers, or assimilated Mennonite cemeteries with a greater variety of monuments,
From an interview with Josephine Mandamin (“Water Walker,” grandmother and a 2015 recipient of a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation)
Walking with the water
When we walk with the water, we pray for the water. The water that we carry, we pray for it, and we pray to it; we speak to it. Our minds and our hearts are with the water that we carry. The water is very precious. We have adopted it. We picked it up from where we walk from,
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
Sam
Gordon Lightfoot Records
Whenever I’m at a flea-market or garage sale, after sizing up the tattered sports equipment, I go directly to the milk crates full of musty old records. Flipping through the inevitable Perry Cuomo, Bee Gees and big band era compilations, I look for missing pieces of my Gor
Janet Haughton
Naturally beautiful!
- Janet Haughton, Canuck It Up Festival Amherstburg, downtown Amherstburg, August 6, 2017
The Royal Canadian Regiment Museum set of Colours (1901-06)
Once serving the practical purpose of a rallying point on a battlefield, today, Regimental Colours are exclusively ceremonial objects representing the history and spirit of a regiment.
Traditionally, Canadian infantry regiments hold two colours: The first is the reigning monarch’s Colour showing the royal cypher, and the second is the Regimental Colour, displaying the unit’s Battle Honours embroidered on scrolls. Battle Honours are an official acknowledgement of a regiment’s engagement in combat. They are awarded for both campaigns and individual battles.
The first Colours of The Royal Can
Atom Egoyan (film director, writer and producer)
R.C. Harris Water Filtration Plant
Whenever I have visitors to Toronto, I take them to the Harris Filtration Plant. This beautiful complex is one of the few remaining examples of industrial art deco design that has survived to this day, and its location on Lake Ontario makes it truly unique. It ha
CFCL Radio
The first French-language radio station in Ontario, CFCL-Timmins, began broadcasting in December 1951. The event was greeted with enthusiasm by Franco-Ontarians who until then had heard limited programming in French over the airwaves. The station reached listeners from Kirkland Lake to Hearst, showc
Lynne D. DiStefano
Tracking Ontario’s Thames
In the mid-1990s, George Kapelos and I began work on an exhibition about Ontario’s Thames River that was to be held at Museum London.
I don’t remember exactly when I became fascinated with the river. I think it had to do with how the river was depicted in 19th century t
Gabriela Iglecias
Chez moi, avec ma communauté!
- Gabriela Iglecias - National Aboriginal Day at Fort York National Historic Site - June 21, 2017
Mélanie-Rose Frappier (2014 Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement)
On the path to reconciliation
Education is key. It will lead to healing as well as social awareness about the Indigenous culture. My ancestors spent hundreds of years fighting for the right to practise their way of life and it is still a struggle for some people today.
The picture shown here r
Nathan Tidridge
Her Majesty's beautiful @MohawkChapel - the oldest Protestant church in #MyOntario. #ChapelRoyal
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, 1872-1918
The distinguished soldier, physician and poet was born and raised in Guelph, Ontario. John McCrae graduated from the University of Toronto in medicine, practised as a pathologist and taught medicine at McGill University in Montreal. In 1899, he served in the South African War as an officer with the
