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.
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
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
William R. Fitzgerald (archaeologist)
A divine intersection of history and archaeology
Suspicion, fear, and intimidation met Jesuit priests Jean de Brébeuf and Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot during their Mission of the Angels to “la Nation Neutre” between November 2, 1640 and March 19, 1641. This tribal confederacy – so named by Champl
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
Lorraine Watson
Big and beautiful.
- Lorraine Watson, Canuck It Up Festival Amherstburg, downtown Amherstburg, August 6, 2017
Adrienne Shadd (historian, curator and author)
Reflections on my hometown
In the year of the 150th birthday of Canada, I would like to pay tribute to my hometown. North Buxton started out in 1849 as a colony established by escaped slaves and free Blacks from the United States. One of the final stops on the Underground Railroad, Buxton occupies
Karolyn Smardz Frost (archaeologist, historian and award-winning author)
Digging for the Promised Land
In 1985, the Toronto school board and Ontario's culture ministry created the Archaeological Resource Centre. There, schoolchildren and volunteers could dig into their own city's past, and explore the multi-cultures that make Ontario's heritage so remarkably rich.
Un
Thomas H.B. Symons (former Chair of the Board of Directors, Ontario Heritage Trust, and Founding President and Vanier Professor Emeritus of Trent University)
Homer Watson: Ontario's pioneer artist
Homer Watson’s paintings and drawings captured the spirit of pioneer Ontario much as, in a later generation, the work of the Group of Seven captured the spirit of the more northerly parts of Canada.
Born in the village of Doon in the Grand River Valley, Wat
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
Kristen McLaughlin
I am not from Ontario. I moved here recently, in September of 2016. My home is in the west, having grown up in Alberta and gone to school in Vancouver, BC. This country has its pretty divisive lines between the two halves of east vs. west. I moved to Toronto expecting, somehow, an entirely different
Joëlle Roy (auteure, compositrice-interprète et animatrice communautaire)
Descendants de la Vallée du Saint-Laurent
This French poem pays homage to the residents of the St. Lawrence velley who moved to Ontario in search of a better life working in the mines.
Il est parti au chantierY avait à peine 15 ansY a moyen de s’en sortirPour ça, faut faire d’l’argentY en a en
Nathan Tidridge
#Waterdown's #Souharissen Canoe Garden - planted with medicine gifted by Elder Carolyn King of @MNCFN. #MyOntario
#MyOntario
Join the #MyOntario conversation!
From throwbacks to museum selfies to Instagram-worthy sights – share your stories and photos of the province by using the hashtag #MyOntario on social media.
Need inspiration? Explore posts tagged #MyOntario on Twitter and Instagram!
Pamela
The St. Lawrence River has always been an integral part of the Brockville community. For the Fulford Family, who lived in town from the mid-nineteenth century onward and saw their fortunes skyrocket after 1890 because of investment in the "Pink Pills for Pale People", having the means the entertain
David Rayside (Professor Emeritus of Political Science and founding Director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto)
Making history
At 6 p.m. on December 2, 1986, Ontario’s legislative assembly was scheduled to vote on adding “sexual orientation” to the province’s Human Rights Code. Ten minutes away, at University College, I ended a late-afternoon class and ran over to the public gallery.
The vote was the only
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
Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site
Manilla originally collected from the sunken ship S.S. Duoro, located in the Western Isles, Sicily. Manillas such as this were considered to be 'slave trade money', as they were used as currency during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade during the early 15th century. They were often constructed from cop
Jeanette Elliott, Collections Co-ordinator, Fanshawe Pioneer Village
This Farm Service Corps uniform is part of the permanent collection at Fanshawe Pioneer Village, and serves to remind us that men were not the only participants in World War One. While women were restricted from participating in direct combatant roles, they organized and outfitted themselves for hom
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
Niagara Historical Society & Museum
Niagara-on-the-Lake is one of the few towns in Ontario that has had black residents since the beginning of the province. However, it was in the years following the War of 1812 that Niagara saw an increase in black immigrants and runaway slaves. When the United States Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was p
Nathan Tidridge
Her Majesty's beautiful @MohawkChapel - the oldest Protestant church in #MyOntario. #ChapelRoyal
Pauline McGibbon 1910-2001
The first woman to hold a vice-regal office in Canada, Pauline Emily Mills, was born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1910. After local schooling and a degree at Victoria College, University of Toronto, she married Donald Walker McGibbon in 1935. A life-long volunteer and supporter of the arts, Mrs. McGibbon b
Don Pearson
One cannot think of Ontario without the backdrop image of water – from the Great Lakes, which define its southern border, to the magnificent rivers that drain its vast geography, to the thousands of lakes throughout the Canadian Shield. The name Ontario itself is taken from the Iroquoian language, m
Chloe Cooley and the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada
On March 14, 1793 Chloe Cooley, an enslaved Black woman in Queenston, was bound, thrown in a boat and sold across the river to a new owner in the United States. Her screams and violent resistance were brought to the attention of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe by Peter Martin, a free Black an
Patricia
An air of mystery surrounds Simone Rusu’s photo of 401 Richmond Street West - a heritage-designated, industrial building turned arts-and-culture hub - in Toronto, Ontario. The photo was taken during Luminato’s second Youth Photography Program workshop at the Doors Open Ontario Toronto 2017 event, wh
Sara Waxman
Saxe-Coburg Soup
The charming town of Cobourg, on Lake Ontario, has visitors all year round. It’s a lovely place to spend the day. In 1819, to honour the marriage of Princess Charlotte to Price Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the town, originally called Amhurst, changed its name to Cobourg.
2 tbsp. butt