Over 800 years ago the people of the First Nations developed the canoe. It was so perfectly designed for its task that its shape remains the same today. In a vast country completely covered with forests, the lakes and rivers were the only sensible routes to travel. This delicate craft was adopted as the primary mode of transportation by the early French and English to explore, trade and settle throughout the continent.

Throughout the 20th century people flocked to Ontario's lakes to escape the summer heat of the cities. The cottage and camping experience has become a universal part of Ontario summers and the canoe has its place in it. Like the beaver and the maple leaf, the canoe has become an icon for Canada, universally recognized and loved.

Most of Ontario's population clusters around the lower Great Lakes at the southern tip of the province, leaving a vast area to the north with relatively few inhabitants. In fact, vast areas are so thinly populated you could travel for weeks without seeing another person. Ironically, this large northern region of Precambrian rocks, water and trees is also one of the world's most accessible wildernesses. From Toronto's International Airport you can be paddling on a remote lake or river in 4 hours.

Ontario may be a major commercial centre, but its population is compressed into a small, southern region. The north still contains a vast wilderness, where people are occasional visitors whose presence is as fleeting as the bow wave of a canoe. This wilderness is the core of the Province's psyche, and the experience of that wilderness is the gift that that Ontario gives the world.

See a map of Ontario's Paddling Regions!