Talk:Ontario

Disambiguation

So, there's a city in Southern California also named Ontario. But I figure that the we've got an exceptional case here, so Ontario (California) should possibly be disambiguated, and this one left without a disambiguator. -- (WT-en) Evan 09:01, 5 Nov 2003 (PST)

Why is it exceptional? I always think of the SoCal one when I see Ontario...(WT-en) Majnoona

So, the whole point of not having disambiguators is that for example everyone will expect Paris to be Paris, France. If there are going to be some people who think Ontario (California) when they see Ontario, then we should probably disambig now rather than wait. You're the existence proof that Ontario = Ontario (province) is not instantly obvious to everyone. So, I'm moving the article. -- (WT-en) Evan 13:04, 5 Nov 2003 (PST)

Ontario, California, is to Ontario, Canada, as Paris, Ontario, is to Paris, France. Really, does ANY tourist EVER go to Ontario, California?

I'll have to chime in on this. Ontario is Canada's most populous province by far, whereas before I read this talk page, I'd never even heard about the one in SoCal (and it doesn't have an article here either). (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:24, 8 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'd also be in favor of moving "Ontario (province)" to just "Ontario". Same for "Delaware (state)". -- (WT-en) Wrh2 22:04, 8 Sep 2005 (EDT)

OK, so, at least Maj seems to have some problems with the difference. Ontario (California) is mostly notable for its airport. --(WT-en) Evan 16:01, 19 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I live less than 30 miles from Ontario California and would have absolutely no problem with giving the province the Ontario page -- aside from the airport, Ontario California just isn't any big deal. It could be argued that someone will always have a problem with saying one city is a bigger deal than another -- if you live near Paris, Texas, the French city isn't such a big deal. A cop once told me I was going the wrong way when I told him I was heading north to Cleveland, despite having my Ohio license in his hand (we were 100 miles from Cleveland, Texas). If you go to Ohio State, you might first think of the Ohio city when you think of Delaware. My understanding is that the "most famous" rule applies when the vast majority of travelers would think of the major destination - Paris (France), Cleveland (Ohio), Delaware (state), or in this case Ontario (province). -- (WT-en) Wrh2 18:01, 19 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I'm adding my voice to the consensus that this article should be titled "Ontario" and given an "otheruses" tag. You know, I think of "Holland" as a city on Lake Michigan with a tourism niche, but billions of people think of it as a country in Europe and don't even know that my former home city exists, so I defer to that. Ontario is no Georgia or Washington or Birmingham, with significant general mindshare for both places; Ontario, California is a Paris, Texas or a London, Ontario or a Holland, Michigan (which also has an airport and a mall). - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 10:12, 24 March 2006 (EST)

(WT-en) Evan and (WT-en) Maj, would you guys be opposed to moving Ontario (province) back to just Ontario? Aside from Maj the consensus seems to be that it meets the "most famous" rule. -- (WT-en) Ryan 12:13, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Yes, I just talked to Maj about it and she's fine with it. --(WT-en) Evan 14:13, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Done. I think this makes sense, thanks Evan. -- (WT-en) Ryan 16:29, 24 March 2006 (EST)

I'm happy to see that the breadcrumb data seems to have been kind of easy to adjust. Nice job! --(WT-en) Evan 12:29, 26 March 2006 (EST)

Doh! I've updated isIn for the top-level regions for Ontario, so hopefully the next time pages are re-generated the children of those regions will have their breadcrumb updated properly. Sorry for the oversight. -- (WT-en) Ryan 12:51, 26 March 2006 (EST)

Regions

Update: April 30, 2010. Ontario's Travel regions have been divided into 13 (this will be a mess to clean up). The regions are found on the Ontario Tourism website. Any takers?

So, we need a more systematic breakdown of Ontario's regions. And the city list is getting quite long. Any takers? -- (WT-en) Evan 07:04, 12 Nov 2003 (PST)

Yeah, Ontario's usually broken down into somewhere between five and seven `unofficial' regions. With any luck, I'll pick it up over the next few weeks. (WT-en) RickScott 01:29, May 18, 2004 (EDT)

I'm going to take a poke at it. --(WT-en) Evan 12:38, 26 February 2006 (EST)

Thes are the old regions, for comparison/fixing up:

• Niagara Region
• Golden Horseshoe
• GTA -- the Greater Toronto Area
• Bruce Peninsula
• Ottawa Valley
• Muskoka
• Northern Ontario
• North of Superior
• Algonquin Provincial Park
• Haliburton Highlands

Round 2

Unfortunately, things in the Ontario hierarchy have only gotten more muddled. Our Ontario guide should be cleaner—from a travel perspective it is basically the majority of Canada. Here is my proposal for an Ontario hierarchy:

• North Ontario
  • Northwest Ontario
  • Northeast Ontario
• East Ontario
• Central Ontario
• Golden Horseshoe
  • Greater Toronto Area
  • Niagara Area
• West Ontario

I have not finished working out subregions, I'll add as I explore this more. Also, I will clean up this map into a real wikivoyage regions map, but I thought it useful to leave in the municipality borders for the purpose of working out the regions. Any thoughts, objections, advice? --(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald ^Talk 16:42, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Hi, Peter. I don't know a huge amount about Ontario regions & counties but from the sources I looked at (Wikipedia's entries on Ontario regions, Tourism Ontario and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs) these regions and the counties assigned to each seem reasonable. The only thing I'd note is the convention here in Ontario (on gov't websites, weather forecasts, etc.) is to refer to the regions as Northern Ontario as opposed to North Ontario, Eastern Ontario instead of East Ontario, etc. "Western Ontario" also seems to be more commonly called "Southwestern Ontario." Otherwise, it looks good to me so far. (WT-en) Titania 22:50, 10 August 2007 (EDT)

Great, I'll change the names according to the conventions you listed, and will get working on a regions map! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:46, 24 August 2007 (EDT)

Where would Hamilton (Ontario) fit under this grouping? It doesn't seem to be any mention of it in any of the articles on Greater Toronto Area, Niagara Region, or Southwestern Ontario. (WT-en) JYolkowski 16:27, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Hamilton would definitely fall under the Golden Horseshoe region. The problem is, though, that we haven't actually implemented the new scheme yet ;) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:55, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Actually, I'd put it in the Greater Toronto Area, and call Hamilton the border with Niagara Region. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:03, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

Scratch that, I put it in the Niagara Region. I think it could go either way, but the GTA article already leaves it out, so I did the same. But anyway, the regions overhaul is done! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:47, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

Cool, thanks. I think it makes more sense putting Hamilton in Niagara than in the GTA too. I wonder though whether it would make sense to rename Niagara Region to something more inclusive as Hamilton isn't part of Niagara Region. I've started a discussion at Talk:Niagara Region#Rename?. (WT-en) JYolkowski 23:18, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

Round 3

I live in Ontario and fell this map is very incorrect. Northern and Easrern Ontario are pretty good, but generally everything south of kingston is reffered to as southern ontario. living here I rarely hear the terms "the golden horseshoe" or "southwestern ontario". its all southern ontario.--(WT-en) Kanata Kid 17:02, 12 September 2008 (EDT)

As someone that lives in "Southern Ontario", I find that the terms "Southwestern Ontario" and "GTA" and the like are used quite a lot, so from my perspective they seem to be reasonable divisions. (WT-en) JYolkowski 17:50, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Also, regardless of whether they are all Southern Ontario, that area needs to be broken up into smaller regions to keep us from having one heck of a crowded region article. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:54, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Kitchener/Waterloo

Should Kitchener/Waterloo really be two seperate articles? Even for locals, they're usually referenced as the same city, and the Waterloo article is already making reference to Kitchener --(WT-en) Enki42 13:37, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

Possibly. Have you read Project:What is an article? If they are 2 cities that have merged or distinct parts (districts) of a larger Kitchener-Waterloo metropolitan area then they may deserve 2 separate articles. If the Waterloo article also sufficiently covers Kitchener as well then make Kitchener a redirect to Waterloo. -- (WT-en) Huttite 05:52, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)

They're more or less the same city, the distinction only exists because they used to be seperate cities. From a travel perspective, it seems bizarre to say that someone would visit Kitchener and not visit Waterloo, therefore I don't think there's any case for distinctness. Kitchener is empty anyway, so I'm going to change the links and update the page later today if no one has any objections. No data will be lost, so I can revert back if someone changes their mind here. --(WT-en) Enki42 07:26, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)

I'd rather we left them as two different cities. Can we maybe make a region article for Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, and have each city have its own article? --(WT-en) Evan 22:21, 10 March 2006 (EST)

Charter buses

I'm not sure we should be listing Toronto local charter bus companies at province level. Certainly they can go to (random list of other cities) if a group pays them to do so, but they have no permanent local or scheduled presence in any city other than their home base? K7L (talk) 14:10, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Split up Golden Horseshoe?

The Golden Horseshoe consists of two regions: Greater Toronto Area and Niagara Peninsula. Both are highly populated, and contain many attractions for visitors. The category tree goes very deep here; Toronto's districts are at level 7. One simple measure would be to eliminate the Golden Horseshoe article (which mainly consists of lists and trivial information anyway), and have Greater Toronto Area and Niagara Peninsula as regions of Ontario. /Yvwv (talk) 23:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I hate to lose the Horseshoe, and I worry if the Peninsula is big enough for a top-level region within Ontario, but overall I think your logic is probably correct. If we do this I would suggest keeping Golden Horseshoe as an extra-hierarchical region. Also, this discussion should be linked from Talk:Golden Horseshoe. Powers ^(talk) 02:02, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The Peninsula has a million inhabitants. /Yvwv (talk) 02:15, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Population is hardly the only, or even the most important, metric for regional divisions. Powers ^(talk) 03:07, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

A slightly amended quote from myself at Talk:Niagara Peninsula in 2014 on changing the Golden Horseshoe's regions breakdown:

"On second look, it appears we treat Hamilton as part of the Niagara Peninsula, which is only partially accurate in a strict geographic sense and completely inaccurate from a travellers' perspective. On top of restructuring Niagara Peninsula#Cities, what also should happen is that Golden Horseshoe's subdistricting scheme should be redone: there should be a Greater Toronto Area extending as far west as Oakville, a Niagara Peninsula that's coterminous with the Niagara Regional Municipality, and a third district centered on Hamilton and suburbs, including Burlington (Hamilton-Wentworth is a possible name, though it's been out of official use since 2001).

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:21, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

The historic Wentworth County didn't include Burlington (Ontario) (which IIRC is in Halton County). Invoking the former w:Regional Municipality of Hamilton–Wentworth just gets us Hamilton (Ontario) and a few points (like Stoney Creek) which are now within Hamilton's town line. K7L (talk) 23:57, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Okay, but that only addresses the name. I think otherwise the proposal is ideal. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:16, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I would agree with splitting out the GTA as its own region, and then renaming the rest of the Golden Horseshoe "Hamilton and the Niagara Peninsula". I don't think that Hamilton and its hinterland is enough of a draw for travellers to warrant being a top-level region. As many travellers will he starting out from Toronto, the Hamilton area would be something they might explore en route to Niagara. I find "Golden Horseshoe" to be somewhat archaic, by the way. I heard it much more often in my childhood ("hey, let's hitch up the horses and wagons and tour the Golden Horseshoe") than I do now. Ground Zero (talk) 18:07, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Yvwv just renamed Niagara Peninsula to Hamilton and the Niagara Peninsula, I undid the page move as premature. If we must have two regions rather than three, I think Hamilton has more in common with the GTA - an urbanized area to which it's well-connected via GO Transit and other transportation links - than the largely rural and fairly more isolated Niagara Peninsula. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:36, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I think GTA is big enough to stand on its own. It is the prime destination for travellers in Ontario. Niagara and Hamilton are the GTA's hinterland to a large degree, so grouping them makes sense. Ground Zero (talk) 11:35, 13 August

2018 (UTC)

2023 revisit

Either the Niagara Peninsula should be re-joined to the GTA as "Golden Horseshoe" or someone has to explain to me why it's a big and important enough region to be on it's own when it doesn't have any sub-regions and all the of the other regions of Ontario have multiple sub-regions. 67kevlar (talk) 15:52, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

We do have the Golden Horseshoe as an extra-region which is exactly Niagara and the GTA. Ontario isn't overloaded with regions (based on WV:7±2), and the GTA and Niagara are both heavily traveled. Niagara's hierarchy is flatter than other regions in Ontario, but it is quite rural despite one of having one of Canada's most famous destinations in a small city, and a few notable provincial destinations elsewhere, so it seems to work so far.

Are you proposing moving the Golden Horseshoe into the regional hierarchy? What would the new regions in the next level down be? Gregsmi11 (talk) 09:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Map on Ontario page doesn't match up with regional maps

On the main page, Quinte-Northumberland is with Central Ontario, but it's one of the listed and mapped subregions on the Eastern Ontario page. —The preceding comment was added by Docere1 (talk • contribs)

You're right; someone redefined the regions a bit. I see that Central Ontario doesn't even touch Lake Ontario anymore. Powers ^(talk) 00:09, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Beer in Ontario

The Beer section is getting pretty long; is it time to think about an "Ontario Beer" article? Unlike Ontario's wine regions which have some distinct local properties, every corner of Ontario now seems to have a local beer scene proportionate to its population, so I assume such an article would end up looking less like Wine regions of Ontario, and more like Breweries in Franconia (though Ontario might have far fewer listings). Gregsmi11 (talk) 20:17, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe, but then the Beer in Ontario article should really have some paragraphs of text. As of now the section is just a list of breweries. Ypsilon (talk) 20:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be created along the lines of German beer and wine. Ground Zero, given you created that article, any thoughts on this? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:09, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm from Ontario, fond of beer, & definitely do not like the long list here. However I am not certain a separate article is the solution. Just mention here that both local craft breweries & brew pubs are common, & leave the listings to city or rural region articles.

I also think some things should be added to Ontario#Beer, at least an explanation of "beer stores" and a warning for Americans that Canadian beer is significantly stronger than what they are used to. Pashley (talk) 23:46, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Even if we keep this section or create a separate article, the actual listings belong in city or region articles with links to them from the higher level. Pashley (talk) 23:58, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I put a warning at Canada#Beer. Pashley (talk) 00:34, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I was able to create the German beer and wine article because there was a lot of descriptive/explanatory text in the German cuisine article. I think a Beer in Ontario article would be a good thing to have, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about beer to write one. Although I do think that "Canadian beer is stronger than American beer is a myth we should not propagate. [1] [2] Ground Zero (talk) 05:48, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm in my 70s & grew up thinking Canadian beer was both better & stronger. Monty Python

There was a radar base near me with both USAF & RCAF staff & I was told both groups delighted in getting newly posted Americans ridiculously hammered by giving them Canadian beer. In about 2001 I was the only Canuck at a table at a dinner & was asked which beer from a limited selection was good. I suggested one & warned them it was 9%, but most of the group got quite drunk.

Today I'm still inclined to think there's some truth to what you call a myth. On the other hand, I've had some really excellent beer in American brew pubs. Pashley (talk) 06:26, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

"Myth" isn't my word: it's widely used to describe the phenomenon. I provide two sources; here are some more: 3, 4, 5 Ground Zero (talk) 11:23, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I recall that a Canadian pint is larger than an American pint (20 vs 16oz?), so even if you convert the ABW to ABV, a draught beer up here gives a few extra sips per glass. That said, the few Americans I spoke to ages ago in Toronto or Montreal were happy enough to be in a bar at 18-20 spending Canadian money, and I'm sure they weren't thinking about the numbers.

About the question at hand, I agree with the points above; the listings need to be moved (either way), but also that a beer article could be a good thing. I'm just not a beer expert, so I can't imagine yet what it would look like. I'm hoping an Ontario beer enthusiast will drop by...

I'll leave this link here for reference. It's out of date and a bit corporate, but there are a few points which might be helpful later: w:Beer_in_Canada#Ontario Gregsmi11 (talk) 10:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

@Gregsmi11, Pashley, SHB2000, Ypsilon: I've created a Beer in Ontario article. I'd welcome additions and copy edits. Ground Zero (talk) 12:45, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Looks great so far! I've been tied up offline recently, but I'll think about what I can add over the next little while. Gregsmi11 (talk) 08:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)