Water, Water, Everywhere

• Ontario is an Iroquois word that describes a large body of water.
• Receding ice 10,000 years ago left huge holes in Ontario's landscape. They filled with lakes, rivers and waterfalls.
• Water covers about one-sixth of the province. Ontario has 250,000 lakes.
• The five Great Lakes, controlled jointly by Canada and the United States, are the world's biggest continuous body of fresh water.
• Southern Ontario's rivers flow into the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River system. Most northern Ontario rivers empty into James Bay and Hudson Bay.
• Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron is the world's largest freshwater island. It is a sacred island to central Canada's Aboriginal peoples.
• The Rideau Canal was built in 1832 with 47 locks from Ottawa to Kingston. It was an engineering wonder of its time.
• The water of Niagara Falls has been used as an energy source since the 1750s, and to produce electricity since 1905.
• In 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened, linking the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.