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.
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,
William "Liam" Wadsworth
Uncovering Our Forgotten Souls
For me, archaeology is not just a pathway to historical discovery. It may also be an instrument in the search for truth and, if necessary, justice for past and present peoples. This interest in uncovering unspoken stories brought me to the University of Toronto where
Excerpt taken from an interview with Louis Lesage, PhD (biologist and Director of the Bureau Nionwentsïo, at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Church at Wendake, Quebec)
Why is it important to preserve the Wendat language?
Culture has many aspects. One aspect is the language. When you lose your language, you lose a part of your culture. The language helps you to describe your environment, to clearly express what you think, to make some colour in your way of life
Ken Butland
Bon Echo
You see the sign—oh you’ve arrived;Bon Echo’s a sight for sore eyes.
Generations of families camp‘Round tended fire and propane lamp.They laugh and play, canoe and cook,Or lazily lounge with face in book.Parents nurture their children to feelNature’s gifts, her wonders real.
Animals r
Diana Yampolsky
The Royans Professional Vocal School (a.k.a, The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts) was founded in 1984 by my partner Ted Kowalczyk & myself. Prior to that, Ted and I performed as a duo around the Toronto area which was called Toronto Mini Caravan.
Both of us were involved in multi
The Honourable James Bartleman (27th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario)
My Muskoka – Winter 1949
Every evening when I was a kid in the 1940s, I’d manoeuvre rough logs up onto a sawhorse and use a small bucksaw to cut them into stove lengths, afterward splitting the larger pieces into smaller sizes. After carrying in armloads of wood to fill the box beside the stove, I
MyOntario is ...
We are bringing MyOntario – A vision over time to communities across the province to find out what Ontario means to you!
In 2017, our MyOntario roadshow and interactive kiosks are coming to community events, museums and more. It’s a unique chance to join a provincewide conversation about our expe
The Ontario Human Rights Code
The Ontario Human Rights Code came into effect on June 15, 1962 and established equal rights and freedom from discrimination as primary elements of provincial law. The first legislation of its kind in Canada, the Code was designed to affirm and uphold the “inherent dignity and the equal and inaliena
D’Arcy Jenish (author of The St. Lawrence Seaway: Fifty Years and Counting)
Making the voyage
Our voyage aboard the MV Algomarine began at the Port of Montreal
late on a Saturday afternoon in July 2007 and ended early the following
Thursday morning when the 730-foot laker docked at the Port of Thunder
Bay. In four-plus days, the ship had travelled some 3,000 kilomet
Lazzelle Gelias
My home on NATIVE LAND!!
Megweetch!
- Lazzelle Gelias - National Aboriginal Day at Fort York National Historic Site - June 21, 2017
Cameron Ylimaki
Pride & Happiness.
- Cameron Ylimaki, Bay and Algoma Buskers Festival, Thunder Bay, July 29, 2017
J.M. Rowe, Esquesing Historical Society
The Great War 1914-1918
The home front – Georgetown
This quilt was created through the efforts of the Georgetown Women’s Institute in 1915. The citizens were asked to pay 10 cents per name to have it embroidered onto a square for the quilt. It was completed in time for the 1915 Esquesing (George
Rozyur Rahman
I like Ontario because we can go hiking in many forests. I can play in parks and playgrounds.
- Rozyur Rahman, Ontario Science Centre, July 21, 2017
Lorraine Watson
Big and beautiful.
- Lorraine Watson, Canuck It Up Festival Amherstburg, downtown Amherstburg, August 6, 2017
Fool’s Paradise
This property sits on the ecologically sensitive, geologically significant Scarborough Bluffs that display sediments left by glaciers over 70,000 years ago during the last phase of the Pleistocene epoch. Aboriginal peoples may have inhabited this site as early as 8,000 B.C. Scottish immigrant James
Holly Martelle (principal at Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants Inc.)
Hopes for the future
My life as an archaeologist often consists of hour upon hour of painstaking analysis of small bits and pieces of everyday life. But last year, during an archaeological investigation in Toronto’s downtown, we made a remarkable discovery that not only got my archaeological heart
Olivia Wallace
Emancipation Day. FREE AT LAST!
- Olivia Wallace, Emancipation Day celebration at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site, Dresden, August 5, 2017
Olivia Wallace
Since digital cameras became popularized, one of my major hobbies has been taking photos of my family, friends, and natural and built environment around me. Now that I have a great camera on my phone, I snap and share photos on a daily basis. My greatest focus as of late has been capturing the art a
Michael Bliss, 1941-2017 (historian, award-winning author and Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto)
You can go home again
I first saw the Camp Ahmek waterfront on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in 1951. I saw it again last summer – 65 years later – and it was almost completely unchanged.
On the walls of Ahmek's great dining hall still hang plaques commemorating the highlights of each summer's ca
Jen Brennan
Many people are not aware that the Unitarian Universalism faith has been around in Canada since the late 1800s. The congregation in Ottawa began on Elgin Street in 1898.
To better serve the community, an award-winning building was erected on Cleary Avenue (Algonquin Avenue at the time) on five acr
Larry Wayne Richards (former Trust Board member, Professor Emeritus and former Dean, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto)
Ontario trains
My first views of Ontario were from a passenger train 45 years ago. In 1972, I crossed the border at Detroit and took a train from Windsor to Toronto. From my window, I experienced the southwestern Ontario landscape – rolling green farmland and orderly towns – unfolding like frames
Shruthi Dhananjaya
Being raised in Toronto, I have fond memories of the city’s harbourfront. Throughout the years, I would visit the harbourfront each summer with my family and it is a tradition which I still continue. I find it to be a calming oasis right in the heart of the city centre. I enjoy walking on the boardw
Christopher Wai
Archaeology has been an important part of my life since I was 16 when I participated in the TRCA's Boyd field school for high school students, though it has been around longer since my 5fth grade teacher first introduced it to me. I have had the privilege to have interned at the Ontario Heritage Tru
Safaa Zbib
My life is full of stories, and My Ontario is their latest...My heart travelled to Canada way before I physically did; back in the eighties, my brother immigrated to Montreal. I loved every photo he used to send. I fell in love with the greenery, I sensed peace and serenity. Life took me away from m