Author Description

The image on the cover suggests many of the most prominent themes in Ontario's history: the landscape, natural resources, commercial activity, the railways that played such a central part in Confederation, the border that represents both separation from and links to the United States. What is not visible in the image is the human diversity that today may well be the province's most distinctive feature. In 1870, of course, such diversity would have been unimaginable to Ontarians, the majority of whom traced their roots to the British Isles. Nevertheless, as Peter Baskerville points out, Ontario was never the homogeneous entity that many Canadians have imagined. Ontario: Image, Identity, and Power is generously illustrated with roughly 150 paintings, drawings, and photographs that shed their own light on Ontario's social, economic, and political evolution.