Kaniatarķ:io Trivia Quiz

Answer: Fort George

Found at the edge of Ontario where the Niagara Peninsula overlooks the Niagara River and New York state across the way, the quaint vacation destination of Niagara-on-the-Lake is, nowadays, known for its main streets, boutiques, and comfortable accommodations, all of which act as starting points for local tours around the escarpment (and away from the main drag of Niagara Falls, twenty-five kilometres south, upriver).

It wasn't always a vacation destination though. Due to its spot along the border between Canada and the United States, it was at one time a valuable fort in the War of 1812. While Fort George, destroyed there in the 1820s, remains a historical site, it was superseded by the nearby Fort Mississauga, which is still found overlooking Lake Ontario to this day.

Answer: Port Dalhousie

Although the Welland Canal, which cuts cross the Niagara Escarpment between Port Colborne and Port Weller, used to run through St. Catharines and out to Port Dalhousie, changes to the Great Lakes waterway at the start of the twentieth century freed up this lakeside region for residential living, making it one of the quieter communities of the region. Split from most of the city by Martindale Pond, this neighbourhood is connected to Barnesdale to the west and skirts along Southern Lake Ontario. Home to the long-running Royal Canadian Henley Regatta, it also boasts one of the region's larger beachfronts, Lakeside Park, which is known for its historic carousel.

Answer: Grimsby

Over time, the Niagara Escarpment, curving around the southwest shoreline of Lake Ontario, has grown in popularity as one of Canada's leading wine regions. Best known for its ice wines, bed-and-breakfasts, and extensive tours, Niagara Wine Country is one of those Southern Ontario to-dos for anyone visiting the Toronto area, looking to get out of the city, especially since most of Canada's alternative wine trips are out on the west coast in British Columbia.

Grimsby, found along the Bruce Trail on Lake Ontario's shoreline, has been known for its cottages and quaint lakeside homes, the remainder of which are found around the Grimsby Park area. Over time, the town may have lost its orchards, but it became a gateway to the vineyards beyond, being an easy spot from which to reach Peller Estates and Jackson-Triggs, amongst other popular locations.

Answer: Steelworking

The image here shows Stelco, one of the many steelworks facilities on the far west edge of Lake Ontario in a location affectionately known as 'Steeltown': Hamilton, Ontario. Historically, Hamilton has best been known for its manufacturing capabilities. Built at an extremely important bend around the lake, Hamilton quickly grew in the 19th century and became a steel hub in the early 20th, being a pivotal spot for the rail lines and a convenient harbour for maritime shipping.

In the 21st century, as big steel businesses started amalgamating and shifting focus, Hamilton grew into a services city with a burgeoning independent art scene. It's home to botanical gardens, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the Dundern Castle estate, and the oldest long-distance road race in North America (the Around the Bay Road Race, which winds thirty kilometres around Hamilton Harbour).

Answer: The Golden Horseshoe

The Golden Horseshoe is a region that bends around the western side of Lake Ontario encompassing the majority of Ontario's population and largest city centres, and in extended versions, reaches all around the area covered by this quiz. Burlington is about as close as you can get to the middle of it though. This bedroom community, for Hamilton to the southwest and Toronto to the east, is across the Skyway Bridge that cuts across the mouth of Hamilton Harbour and it's formed by the amalgamation of several smaller villages formed in the 19th century (including Aldershot and Port Nelson).

The waterfront here, home to Burlington Bay Pier and its lighthouse, is split off from the rest of Lake Ontario by a sandbar that closes in the waterfront. At one time, locals referred to this bay as Lake Geneva.

Answer: Bronte

One of the largest towns in Ontario, Oakville is due west of Mississauga and makes up the wedge of waterfront land between it and Burlington. Originally purchased to be a site for shipbuilding-- an industry it held for much of its early life-- Oakville has since become a bit of a suburban expanse through which the highway brings travellers closer to the provincial capital or the rest of Southwestern Ontario.

Right through the middle of Oakville is Bronte Creek Provincial Park, known for its away-from-the-noise urban campgrounds, preserved farmhouses, and wildlife. Nearby Sixteen Mile Creek, which flows out into Lake Ontario, opens out to the lake a couple kilometres north of the harbourfront. The Bronte area, for which most of these locations are named, was given said moniker after the Duke of Bronte, Horatio Nelson, who died off the coast of Spain more than a decade before the Crown came in and purchased the land.

Answer: Port Credit

One of Canada's largest cities, Mississauga is considered part of the Greater Toronto Area, but it's a massive location on its own, spreading in all directions and abutting onto Metropolitan Toronto's western edge as far as it can go towards neighbourhoods like Etobicoke and Mimico. At its south, it stretches right to the water in Port Credit, named as such for the 90km-long Credit River that flows into Lake Ontario at that location.

Port Credit started, originally, as a trading post for the Mississaugas back in the 18th century, but in the modern era, it's a residential area known for its pricey condos, many of which have the ideal view of the Toronto skyline across the water. Because of its waterfront promenade, harbour, and boardwalks, it's often home to most of Mississauga's most popular outdoor events year-round.

Answer: Humber River

The Humber River winds a hundred kilometres through Toronto and the surrounding area before flowing out into Lake Ontario, and it's a particularly important waterway, having been home to many indigenous tribes and pioneer settlements in its watershed (Black Creek, for example). Today, it flows through Toronto's Old Mill and alongside High Park in Toronto's west end, coming out to the Great Lakes at the Humber Bay Arch Bridge where the Martin Goodman Trail navigates the Toronto Waterfront.

During high waters, the mouth of the Humber River is a popular spot for kayakers. A short paddle upstream takes boaters into a small bit of marshland in the middle of the city and it's not uncommon to spot wildlife (including turtles, deer, herons, and coyotes) throughout the reeds.

Answer: Tommy Thompson Park

While Tommy Thompson Park is in Toronto and nearly touches the Toronto Islands, it's actually on the mainland, across the Don River just east of the Toronto Port Lands. This part of the Leslie Street Spit, is protected bird sanctuary that stretches five kilometres into Lake Ontario.

The Toronto Islands, meanwhile, help form the harbour that is Toronto's waterfront, and whether you ferry out, take a private boat, or cross over to Billy Bishop Airport, you'll be in a unique sanctuary from the downtown core. While Centre Island contains a number of amusement park attractions, the outer islands contain a handful of isolated residences and quiet beaches, all facing outward towards Lake Ontario with the city skyline as a backdrop.

Answer: The Scarborough Bluffs

As the lake curves westward along Toronto's beaches and towards Scarborough, the sandy shores and pricey homes give way to the 90m high Scarborough Bluffs, an escarpment created during the last ice age which create a dramatic series of cliffs. Reaching from Victoria Park to the mouth of the Rouge River, the associated ravines are home to more than a dozen smaller parks and trails which abut the Rouge National Urban Park, forming the city's eastern border.

From west to east, the Bluffs stretch fifteen kilometres, and you can see the tallest amongst them, just a bit of a way across the water, from Bluffer's Park, a popular beach for locals.

Answer: Pickering

Originally a Huron settlement before European settlers made it into a colony, the City of Pickering has had a long history but is, today, more of a bedroom community for nearby Toronto. The then-town would grow much more substantially in the WWII era, eventually becoming an important city for infrastructure and services; it would become the home of an early Canadian nuclear plant in 1971.

On the waterfront, Frenchman's Bay was formed to serve what was, then, Port Liverpool, but it expanded to become a small site for local agricultural trade despite being surrounded by dense marshland (and, beyond that, grain fields). Now, it's a quaint lakeside harbour, wharf, and promenade.

Answer: Lake Huron

Starting in Trenton, Ontario at the Bay of Quinte, where Lake Ontario connects to the waterway, the Trent-Severn Canal takes travellers nearly four hundred kilometres through the province before spitting them out in Lake Huron at Port Severn and the Severn Sound. The trip, passing through the Great Lakes, would otherwise take them through the locks and waters connecting Lake Ontario, Lake Erie (in full), the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, the St. Clair River, and most of the rest of Lake Huron to get to the same spot.

There are forty-five locks along the Trent-Severn Waterway, and the trip routes through much of Southern Ontario's cottage country (including Peterborough and the Kawarthas) and towards the Lake Huron watershed in Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching. While it was used for commercial services and shipping until the 1930s (when the Welland Canal opened), it's now a recreational route managed by Canadian government oversight.

Answer: Prince Edward County

Sandbanks Provincial Park contains a lengthy stretch of barrier dune which, on any given summer day, becomes one of the more popular beach destinations in Southern Ontario, due in part to it being situated in Prince Edward County, of course. The bay-mouth barrier dune here, one of the world's longest, was formed by glaciers tens of thousands of years ago, and it sits facing the west, making it an extremely picturesque spot for Lake Ontario sunsets.

And you'd need to pass through Prince Edward County to visit it, and that's worth it in and of itself. Known for its wineries, quaint towns, cottages, and periodic music festivals, it's a unique spot that may, for some, be more accessible than the densely-forested vacation destinations found to the north.

Answer: Queen's University

A key settlement during the earliest days of colonized Canada, what is now Kingston was at one time Fort Cataraqui and Fort Frontenac before, after a short time, the French were pushed out and the British loyalists swooped in to give it its current name. At one time the capital of Canada, it took only three years before it shifted to Montreal...and then Toronto...and then Quebec City...and eventually Ottawa.

Nonetheless, Kingston remained a key city for all manner of things. A key military location because of its spot at the start of the Saint Lawrence River (with Fort Henry), it would also mark the start of the Rideau Canal as it flowed to Ottawa and beyond. Queen's University, based there, has long been considered one of Ontario's top schools.

Answer: Thousand Islands

The name of the Thousand Islands is actually putting it humbly as this region contains closer to two thousand small islands that dot the waters of the Saint Lawrence as it carves along the border between Canada and the United States and stretches for eighty kilometres of the key waterway. Starting its run at the corner of Lake Ontario with the Canadian-sided Wolfe Island, the end of the region can be found in Brockville, on former Iroquois land about a hundred kilometres due south of Ottawa.

And yes, the dressing was named after the region as it's believed to have originated from there and been brought to New York City, to be served at the Waldorf-Astoria, where it started to gain its popularity as a condiment.