Is French spoken in Ontario?

The principal language of Ontario is English, the province's de facto official language, which is spoken natively by about 70% of the province's population, according to the 2011 census. There is also a French-speaking population concentrated in the northeastern, eastern, and extreme Southern parts of the province, where under the "French Language Services Act", provincial government services are required to be available in French if at least 10% of a designated area's population report French as their native language. Roughly 4% of Ontarians speak French as their mother tongue, and 11% are bilingual, speaking both English and French, according to the 2011 census. Other languages spoken by residents include Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Dutch, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Malayalam, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Sinhalese, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Tibetan, Urdu and Vietnamese.

Ontario

Ontario (; ) is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.

Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east and northeast, and to the south by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Almost all of Ontario's border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the west at Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. These are the Rainy River, the Pigeon River, Lake Superior, the St. Marys River, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, Ontario, to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall, Ontario. There is only about of land border made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.

Ontario is sometimes conceptually divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontario's population and arable land is in the south. In contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation.

The province is named after Lake Ontario, a term thought to be derived from ', a Huron (Wyandot) word meaning "great lake", or possibly ', which means "beautiful water" in the Iroquoian languages. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes.

The province consists of three main geographical regions:

Despite the absence of any mountainous terrain in the province, there are large areas of uplands, particularly within the Canadian Shield which traverses the province from northwest to southeast and also above the Niagara Escarpment which crosses the south. The highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at above sea level in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands and in hilltops near the Madawaska River in Renfrew County.

The Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. The temperate and fertile Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Valley in the south is part of the Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests ecoregion where the forest has now been largely replaced by agriculture, industrial and urban development. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment. The Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87 percent of the surface area of the province; conversely Southern Ontario contains 94 percent of the population.

Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario (near Windsor and Detroit, Michigan) that is the southernmost extent of Canada's mainland. Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the northern border of California.

The climate of Ontario varies by season and location. It is affected by three air sources: cold, dry, arctic air from the north (dominant factor during the winter months, and for a longer part of the year in far northern Ontario); Pacific polar air crossing in from the western Canadian Prairies/US Northern Plains; and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontario's climate is classified as humid continental. Ontario has three main climatic regions.

The surrounding Great Lakes greatly influence the climatic region of southern Ontario. During the fall and winter months, heat stored from the lakes is released, moderating the climate near the shores of the lakes. This gives some parts of southern Ontario milder winters than mid-continental areas at lower latitudes. Parts of Southwestern Ontario (generally south of a line from Sarnia-Toronto) have a moderate humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification "Dfa"), similar to that of the inland Mid-Atlantic states and the Great Lakes portion of the Midwestern United States. The region has warm to hot, humid summers and cold winters. Annual precipitation ranges from and is well distributed throughout the year. Most of this region lies in the lee of the Great Lakes, making for abundant snow in some areas. In December 2010, the snowbelt set a new record when it was hit by more than a metre of snow within 48 hours. The next climatic region is Central and Eastern Ontario which has a moderate humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfb"). This region has warm and sometimes hot summers with colder, longer winters, ample snowfall (even in regions not directly in the snowbelts) and annual precipitation similar to the rest of Southern Ontario.
In the northeastern parts of Ontario, extending far as south as Kirkland Lake, the cold waters of Hudson Bay depress summer temperatures, making it cooler than other locations at similar latitudes. The same is true on the northern shore of Lake Superior, which cools hot humid air from the south, leading to cooler summer temperatures. Along the eastern shores of Lake Superior and Lake Huron winter temperatures are slightly moderated but come with frequent heavy lake-effect snow squalls that increase seasonal snowfall totals upwards of in some places. These regions have higher annual precipitation in some case over.
The northernmost parts of Ontario – primarily north of 50°N – have a subarctic climate (Köppen "Dfc") with long, severely cold winters and short, cool to warm summers with dramatic temperature changes possible in all seasons. With no major mountain ranges blocking sinking Arctic air masses, temperatures of are not uncommon; snowfall remains on the ground for sometimes over half the year. Snowfall accumulation can be high in some areas. Precipitation is generally less than and peaks in the summer months in the form of rain or thunderstorms.

Severe thunderstorms peak in summer. London, situated in Southern (Southwestern) Ontario, has the most lightning strikes per year in Canada, averaging 34 days of thunderstorm activity per year. In a typical year, Ontario averages 11 confirmed tornado touchdowns. However, over the last 4 years, it has had upwards of 20 tornado touchdowns per year, with the highest frequency occurring in the Windsor-Essex – Chatham Kent area, though few are very destructive (the majority between F0 to F2 on the Fujita scale). Ontario had a record 29 tornadoes in both 2006 and 2009. Tropical depression remnants occasionally bring heavy rains and winds in the south, but are rarely deadly. A notable exception was Hurricane Hazel which struck Southern Ontario centred on Toronto, in October 1954.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the region was inhabited by Algonquian (Ojibwe, Cree and Algonquin) in the northern/western portions, and Iroquois and Wyandot (Huron) people more in the south/east. During the 17th century, the Algonquians and Hurons fought the Beaver Wars against the Iroquois.

The French explorer Étienne Brûlé explored part of the area in 1610–12. The English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson Bay in 1611 and claimed the area for England.

Samuel de Champlain reached Lake Huron in 1615, and French missionaries began to establish posts along the Great Lakes. French settlement was hampered by their hostilities with the Iroquois, who allied themselves with the British. From 1634 to 1640, Hurons were devastated by European infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no immunity. By 1700, the Iroquois had seceded from Ontario and the Mississaugas of the Ojibwa had settled the north shore of Lake Ontario. The remaining Huron settled north of Quebec.

The British established trading posts on Hudson Bay in the late 17th century and began a struggle for domination of Ontario with the French. After the French of New France were defeated during the Seven Years' War, the two powers awarded nearly all of France's North American possessions (New France) to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, including those lands of Ontario not already claimed by Britain. The British annexed the Ontario region to Quebec in 1774. The first European settlements were in 1782–1784 when 5,000 American loyalists entered what is now Ontario following the American Revolution. The Kingdom of Great Britain granted them land and other items with which to rebuild their lives. The British also set up reservations in Ontario for the Mohawks who had fought for the British and had lost their land in New York state. Other Iroquois, also displaced from New York were resettled in 1784 at the Six Nations reserve at the west end of Lake Ontario. The Mississaugas, displaced by European settlements, would later move to Six Nations also.

The population of Canada west of the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River confluence substantially increased during this period, a fact recognized by the "Constitutional Act" of 1791, which split Quebec into the Canadas: Upper Canada southwest of the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River confluence, and Lower Canada east of it. John Graves Simcoe was appointed Upper Canada's first Lieutenant governor in 1793.

American troops in the War of 1812 invaded Upper Canada across the Niagara River and the Detroit River, but were defeated and pushed back by the British, Canadian fencibles and militias, and First Nations warriors. However, eventually, the Americans gained control of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The 1813 Battle of York saw American troops defeat the garrison at the Upper Canada capital of York. The Americans looted the town and burned the Upper Canada Parliament Buildings during the brief occupation. The British would burn the American capital of Washington, D.C. in 1814.

After the War of 1812, relative stability allowed for increasing numbers of immigrants to arrive from Europe rather than from the United States. As was the case in the previous decades, this immigration shift was encouraged by the colonial leaders. Despite affordable and often free land, many arriving newcomers, mostly from Britain and Ireland, found frontier life with the harsh climate difficult, and some of those with the means eventually returned home or went south. However, population growth far exceeded emigration in the decades that followed. It was a mostly agrarian-based society, but canal projects and a new network of plank roads spurred greater trade within the colony and with the United States, thereby improving previously damaged relations over time.

Meanwhile, Ontario's numerous waterways aided travel and transportation into the interior and supplied water power for development. As the population increased, so did the industries and transportation networks, which in turn led to further development. By the end of the century, Ontario vied with Quebec as the nation's leader in terms of growth in population, industry, arts and communications.
Unrest in the colony began to chafe against the aristocratic Family Compact who governed while benefiting economically from the region's resources, and who did not allow elected bodies power. This resentment spurred republican ideals and sowed the seeds for early Canadian nationalism. Accordingly, rebellion in favour of responsible government rose in both regions; Louis-Joseph Papineau led the Lower Canada Rebellion and William Lyon Mackenzie, first Toronto mayor, led the Upper Canada Rebellion. In Upper Canada, the rebellion was quickly a failure. William Lyon Mackenzie escaped to the United States, where he declared the Provisional Republic of Canada on Navy Island on the Niagara River.

Although both rebellions were put down in short order, the British government sent Lord Durham to investigate the causes of the unrest. He recommended that self-government be granted and that Lower and Upper Canada be re-joined in an attempt to assimilate the French Canadians. Accordingly, the two colonies were merged into the Province of Canada by the "Act of Union 1840", with the capital at Kingston, and Upper Canada becoming known as Canada West. Parliamentary self-government was granted in 1848. There were heavy waves of immigration in the 1840s, and the population of Canada West more than doubled by 1851 over the previous decade. As a result, for the first time, the English-speaking population of Canada West surpassed the French-speaking population of Canada East, tilting the representative balance of power.

An economic boom in the 1850s coincided with railway expansion across the province, further increasing the economic strength of Central Canada. With the repeal of the Corn Laws and a reciprocity agreement in place with the United States, various industries such as timber, mining, farming and alcohol distilling benefited tremendously.

A political stalemate between the French- and English-speaking legislators, as well as fear of aggression from the United States during and immediately after the American Civil War, led the political elite to hold a series of conferences in the 1860s to effect a broader federal union of all British North American colonies. The "British North America Act" took effect on July 1, 1867, establishing the Dominion of Canada, initially with four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The Province of Canada was divided into Ontario and Quebec so that each linguistic group would have its own province. Both Quebec and Ontario were required by section 93 of the "British North America Act" to safeguard existing educational rights and privileges of Protestant and the Catholic minority. Thus, separate Catholic schools and school boards were permitted in Ontario. However, neither province had a constitutional requirement to protect its French- or English-speaking minority. Toronto was formally established as Ontario's provincial capital.

Once constituted as a province, Ontario proceeded to assert its economic and legislative power. In 1872, the lawyer Oliver Mowat became Premier of Ontario and remained as premier until 1896. He fought for provincial rights, weakening the power of the federal government in provincial matters, usually through well-argued appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. His battles with the federal government greatly decentralized Canada, giving the provinces far more power than John A. Macdonald had intended. He consolidated and expanded Ontario's educational and provincial institutions, created districts in Northern Ontario, and fought to ensure that those parts of Northwestern Ontario not historically part of Upper Canada (the vast areas north and west of the Lake Superior-Hudson Bay watershed, known as the District of Keewatin) would become part of Ontario, a victory embodied in the "Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889". He also presided over the emergence of the province into the economic powerhouse of Canada. Mowat was the creator of what is often called "Empire Ontario".

Beginning with Sir John A. Macdonald's National Policy (1879) and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1875–1885) through Northern Ontario and the Canadian Prairies to British Columbia, Ontario manufacturing and industry flourished. However, population increase slowed after a large recession hit the province in 1893, thus slowing growth drastically but for only a few years. Many newly arrived immigrants and others moved west along the railway to the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia, sparsely settling Northern Ontario.

Mineral exploitation accelerated in the late 19th century, leading to the rise of important mining centres in the northeast, such as Sudbury, Cobalt and Timmins. The province harnessed its water power to generate hydro-electric power and created the state-controlled Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, later Ontario Hydro. The availability of cheap electric power further facilitated the development of industry. The Ford Motor Company of Canada was established in 1904. General Motors Canada was formed in 1918. The motor vehicle industry became the most lucrative industry for the Ontario economy during the 20th century.

In July 1912, the Conservative government of Sir James Whitney issued Regulation 17 which severely limited the availability of French-language schooling to the province's French-speaking minority. French Canadians reacted with outrage, journalist Henri Bourassa denouncing the "Prussians of Ontario". The regulation was eventually repealed in 1927.

Influenced by events in the United States, the government of Sir William Hearst introduced prohibition of alcoholic drinks in 1916 with the passing of the "Ontario Temperance Act". However, residents could distill and retain their own personal supply, and liquor producers could continue distillation and export for sale, allowing this already sizeable industry to strengthen further. Ontario became a hotbed for the illegal smuggling of liquor and the biggest supplier into the United States, which was under complete prohibition. Prohibition in Ontario came to an end in 1927 with the establishment of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario under the government of Howard Ferguson. The sale and consumption of liquor, wine, and beer are still controlled by some of the most extreme laws in North America to ensure that strict community standards and revenue generation from the alcohol retail monopoly are upheld. In April 2007, Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Kim Craitor suggested that local brewers should be able to sell their beer in local corner stores; however, the motion was quickly rejected by Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The post-World War II period was one of exceptional prosperity and growth. Ontario has been the recipients of most immigration to Canada, largely immigrants from war-torn Europe in the 1950s and 1960s and following changes in federal immigration law, a massive influx of non-Europeans since the 1970s. From a largely ethnically British province, Ontario has rapidly become culturally very diverse.

The nationalist movement in Quebec, particularly after the election of the "Parti Québécois" in 1976, contributed to driving many businesses and English-speaking people out of Quebec to Ontario, and as a result, Toronto surpassed Montreal as the largest city and economic centre of Canada. Depressed economic conditions in the Maritime Provinces have also resulted in de-population of those provinces in the 20th century, with heavy migration into Ontario.

Ontario's official language is English. Numerous French-language services are available under the "French Language Services Act of 1990 in designated areas where sizeable francophone populations exist.

Until 1763, most of Ontario was considered part of New France by French claim. Rupert's Land, defined as the drainage basin of Hudson Bay, was claimed by Britain, and included much of today's Northern Ontario. The British defeated the armies of the French colony and its indigenous allies in the French and Indian War, part of the Seven Years' War global conflict. Concluding the war, the peace treaty between the European powers, known as the Treaty of Paris 1763, assigned almost all of France's possessions in North America to Britain, including parts that would later become Ontario not already part of Rupert's Land. Britain established the first Province of Quebec, encompassing contemporary Quebec and southern Ontario.

After the American War of Independence, the first reserves for First Nations were established. These are situated at Six Nations (1784), Tyendinaga (1793) and Akwesasne (1795). Six Nations and Tyendinaga were established by the British for those indigenous groups who had fought on the side of the British, and were expelled from the new United States. Akwesasne was a pre-existing Mohawk community and its borders were formalized under the 1795 Jay Treaty.

In 1788, while part of the Province of Quebec, southern Ontario was divided into four districts: Hesse, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, and Nassau. In 1792, the four districts were renamed: Hesse became the Western District, Lunenburg became the Eastern District, Mecklenburg became the Midland District, and Nassau became the Home District. Counties were created within the districts.

By 1798, there were eight districts: Eastern, Home, Johnstown, London, Midland, Newcastle, Niagara, and Western. By 1826, there were eleven districts: Bathurst, Eastern, Gore, Home, Johnstown, London, Midland, Newcastle, Niagara, Ottawa, and Western. By 1838, there were twenty districts: Bathurst, Brock, Colbourne, Dalhousie, Eastern, Gore, Home, Huron, Johnstown, London, Midland, Newcastle, Niagara, Ottawa, Prince Edward, Simcoe, Talbot, Victoria, Wellington, and Western.

In 1849, the districts of southern Ontario were abolished by the Province of Canada, and county governments took over certain municipal responsibilities. The Province of Canada also began creating "districts" in sparsely populated Northern Ontario with the establishment of Algoma District and Nipissing District in 1858.

The borders of Ontario, its new name in 1867, were provisionally expanded north and west. When the Province of Canada was formed, its borders were not entirely clear, and Ontario claimed eventually to reach all the way to the Rocky Mountains and Arctic Ocean. With Canada's acquisition of Rupert's Land, Ontario was interested in clearly defining its borders, especially since some of the new areas in which it was interested were rapidly growing. After the federal government asked Ontario to pay for construction in the new disputed area, the province asked for an elaboration on its limits, and its boundary was moved north to the 51st parallel north.

The northern and western boundaries of Ontario were in dispute after Canadian Confederation. Ontario's right to Northwestern Ontario was determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1884 and confirmed by the "Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889" of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. By 1899, there were seven northern districts: Algoma, Manitoulin, Muskoka, Nipissing, Parry Sound, Rainy River, and Thunder Bay. Four more northern districts were created between 1907 and 1912: Cochrane, Kenora, Sudbury and Timiskaming.

In the 2016 census, Ontario had a population of 13,448,494 living in 5,169,174 of its 5,598,391 total dwellings, a 4.6 percent change from its 2011 population of 12,851,821. With a land area of, it had a population density of in 2016.

The percentages given below add to more than 100 per cent because of dual responses (e.g., "French and Canadian" response generates an entry both in the category "French Canadian" and in the category "Canadian").

The majority of Ontarians are of English or other European descent including large Scottish, Irish and Italian communities. Slightly less than 5 per cent of the population of Ontario is Franco-Ontarian, that is those whose native tongue is French, although those with French ancestry account for 11 per cent of the population. In relation to natural increase or inter-provincial migration, immigration is a huge population growth force in Ontario, as it has been over the last two centuries. More recent sources of immigrants with large or growing communities in Ontario include South Asians, Caribbeans, Latin Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Most populations have settled in the larger urban centres.

In 2011, 25.9 per cent of the population consisted of visible minorities and 2.4 per cent of the population was Indigenous, mostly of First Nations and Métis descent. There was also a small number of Inuit people in the province. The number of Aboriginal people and visible minorities has been increasing at a faster rate than the general population of Ontario.

In 2011, the largest religious denominations in Ontario were the Roman Catholic Church (with 31.4% of the population), the United Church of Canada (7.5%), and the Anglican Church (6.1%). 23.1% of Ontarians had no religious affiliation, making it the second-largest religious grouping in the province after Roman Catholics.

The major religious groups in Ontario in 2011 were:
In Ontario, Catholics are represented by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario and the Anglican Protestants by the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario. The Ecclesiastical Province covers most of the geographical province of Ontario

Ontario is Canada's leading manufacturing province, accounting for 52% of the total national manufacturing shipments in 2004. Ontario's largest trading partner is the American state of Michigan., Moody's bond-rating agency rated Ontario debt at AA2/stable, while S&P rated it AA-. Dominion Bond Rating Service rated it AA(low) in January 2013. Long known as a bastion of Canadian manufacturing and financial solvency, Ontario's public debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to be 37.2% in fiscal year 2019–2020, compared to 26% in 2007–2008.

Ontario's rivers make it rich in hydroelectric energy. In 2009, Ontario Power Generation generated 70 percent of the electricity of the province, of which 51 percent is nuclear, 39% is hydroelectric and 10% is fossil-fuel derived. By 2025, nuclear power is projected to supply 42%, while fossil-fuel-derived generation is projected to decrease slightly over the next 20 years. Much of the newer power generation coming online in the last few years is natural gas or combined-cycle natural gas plants. OPG is not, however, responsible for the transmission of power, which is under the control of Hydro One. Despite its diverse range of power options, problems related to increasing consumption, lack of energy efficiency and aging nuclear reactors, Ontario has been forced in recent years to purchase power from its neighbours Quebec and Michigan to supplement its power needs during peak consumption periods. Ontario's basic domestic rate in 2010 was 11.17 cents per kWH; by contrast. Quebec's was 6.81. In December 2013, the government projected a 42 percent hike by 2018, and 68 percent by 2033.
Industrial rates are projected to rise by 33% by 2018, and 55% in 2033.

An abundance of natural resources, excellent transportation links to the American heartland and the inland Great Lakes making ocean access possible via container ships, have all contributed to making manufacturing the principal industry of the province, found mainly in the Golden Horseshoe region, which is the largest industrialized area in Canada, the southern end of the region being part of the North American Rust Belt. Important products include motor vehicles, iron, steel, food, electrical appliances, machinery, chemicals, and paper.

Ontario surpassed Michigan in car production, assembling 2.696 million vehicles in 2004. Ontario has Chrysler plants in Windsor and Bramalea, two GM plants in Oshawa and one in Ingersoll, a Honda assembly plant in Alliston, Ford plants in Oakville and St. Thomas and Toyota assembly plants in Cambridge and Woodstock. However, as a result of steeply declining sales, in 2005, General Motors announced massive layoffs at production facilities across North America including two large GM plants in Oshawa and a drive train facility in St. Catharines resulting in 8,000 job losses in Ontario alone. In 2006, Ford Motor Company announced between 25,000 and 30,000 layoffs phased until 2012; Ontario was spared the worst, but job losses were announced for the St Thomas facility and the Windsor Casting plant. However, these losses will be offset by Ford's recent announcement of a hybrid vehicle facility slated to begin production in 2007 at its Oakville plant and GM's re-introduction of the Camaro which will be produced in Oshawa. On December 4, 2008 Toyota announced the grand opening of the RAV4 plant in Woodstock, and Honda also has plans to add an engine plant at its facility in Alliston. Despite these new plants coming online, Ontario has not yet fully recovered following massive layoffs caused by the global recession; its unemployment rate was 7.3% in May 2013, compared to 8.7 percent in January 2010 and approximately 6% in 2007. In September 2013, the Ontario government committed CAD$70.9 million to the Ford plant in Oakville, while the federal government committed CAD$71.1mn, to secure 2,800 jobs. The province has lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the decade from 2003, and the Bank of Canada noted that "while the energy and mining industries have benefitted from these movements, the pressure on the manufacturing sector has intensified, since many firms in this sector were already dealing with growing competition from low-cost economies such as China."

Ontario's steel industry once centred on Hamilton. Hamilton harbour, which can be seen as one drives the QEW Skyway bridge, is an industrial wasteland; U.S. Steel-owned Stelco announced in the autumn of 2013 that it would close in 2014, with the loss of 875 jobs. The move flummoxed a union representative, who seemed puzzled why a plant with capacity of 2 million tons per annum would be shut while Canada imported 8 million tons of steel the year before. Algoma Steel maintains a plant in Sault Ste Marie.
Toronto, the capital of Ontario, is the centre of Canada's financial services and banking industry. Neighbouring cities are home to product distribution, IT centres, and various manufacturing industries. Canada's Federal Government is the largest single employer in the National Capital Region, which centres on the border cities of Ontario's Ottawa and Quebec's Gatineau.
The information technology sector is important, particularly in the "Silicon Valley North" section of Ottawa, as well as the Waterloo Region, where the world headquarters of Research in Motion (the developers of the BlackBerry smartphone) is located. BlackBerry once provided more than 19 percent of the local jobs and employed more than 13% of the entire local population before it supplied 9,500 layoffs in 2013. OpenText and ATS Automation Tooling Systems of Cambridge make their homes in the area too. Mike Lazaridis, one of the founders of RIM, founded in 1999 the Perimeter Institute, then in 2002 the Institute for Quantum Computing, then in 2013 Quantum Valley Investments, to plow a portion of the benefits of RIM back into research and development.

In 2014, the section of Highway 401 between Toronto and Waterloo became the world's second-largest innovation corridor after California's Silicon Valley, employing nearly 280,000 tech workers from around the world and containing over 60% of Canada's high tech industry.

Hamilton is the largest steel manufacturing city in Canada followed closely by Sault Ste. Marie, and Sarnia is the centre for petrochemical production. Construction employed more than 6.5% of the province's work force in June 2011.

Mining and the forest products industry, notably pulp and paper, are vital to the economy of Northern Ontario. There has been controversy over the Ring of Fire mineral deposit, and whether the province can afford to spend CAD$2.25 billion on a road from the Trans-Canada Highway near Kenora to the deposit, currently valued at CAD$60 billions.

Tourism contributes heavily to the economy of Central Ontario, peaking during the summer months owing to the abundance of fresh water recreation and wilderness found there in reasonable proximity to the major urban centres. At other times of the year, hunting, skiing and snowmobiling are popular. This region has some of the most vibrant fall colour displays anywhere on the continent, and tours directed at overseas visitors are organized to see them. Tourism also plays a key role in border cities with large casinos, among them Windsor, Cornwall, Sarnia and Niagara Falls, the latter of which attracts millions of US and other international visitors.

Once the dominant industry, agriculture occupies a small percentage of the population. However, much of the land in southern Ontario is given over to agriculture. As the following table shows, while the number of individual farms has steadily decreased and their overall size has shrunk at a lower rate, greater mechanization has supported increased supply to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of a growing population base; this has also meant a gradual increase in the total amount of land used for growing crops.
Common types of farms reported in the 2001 census include those for cattle, small grains and dairy. The fruit- and grape-growing industry is primarily on the Niagara Peninsula and along Lake Erie, where tobacco farms are also situated. Market vegetables grow in the rich soils of the Holland Marsh near Newmarket. The area near Windsor is also very fertile. The Heinz plant in Leamington was taken over in these autumn of 2013 by Warren Buffett and a Brazilian partner, following which it put 740 people out of work. Government subsidies followed shortly; Premier Kathleen Wynne offered CAD$200,000 to cushion the blow, and promised that another processed-food operator would soon be found. On December 10, 2013, Kellogg's announced layoffs for more than 509 workers at a cereal manufacture plant in London. Kellogg's plans to relocate jobs to Thailand.

The area defined as the Corn Belt covers much of the southwestern area of the province, extending as far north as close to Goderich, but corn and soy are grown throughout the southern portion of the province. Apple orchards are a common sight along the southern shore of Nottawasaga Bay (part of Georgian Bay) near Collingwood and along the northern shore of Lake Ontario near Cobourg. Tobacco production, centred in Norfolk County, has decreased, allowing an increase in alternative crops such as hazelnuts and ginseng. The Ontario origins of Massey Ferguson, once one of the largest farm-implement manufacturers in the world, indicate the importance agriculture once had to the Canadian economy.

Southern Ontario's limited supply of agricultural land is going out of production at an increasing rate. Urban sprawl and farmland severances contribute to the loss of thousands of acres of productive agricultural land in Ontario each year. Over 2,000 farms and of farmland in the GTA alone were lost to production in the two decades between 1976 and 1996. This loss represented approximately 18%". of Ontario's Class 1 farmland being converted to urban purposes. In addition, increasing rural severances provide ever-greater interference with agricultural production.

The Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009 (GEA), takes a two-pronged approach to commercializing renewable energy:The bill envisaged appointing a Renewable Energy Facilitator to provide "one-window" assistance and support to project developers to facilitate project approvals.

The approvals process for transmission projects would also be streamlined and (for the first time in Ontario) the bill would enact standards for renewable energy projects. Homeowners would have access to incentives to develop small-scale renewables such as low- or no-interest loans to finance the capital cost of renewable energy generating facilities like solar panels.

Ontario is home to Niagara Falls, which supplies a large amount of electricity to the province. The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the largest operational nuclear power plant in the world, is also in Ontario and uses 8 CANDU reactors to generate electricity for the province.

Ontario had the most wind energy capacity of the country with 4,900 MW of power (41% of Canada capacity).

The "British North America Act 1867" section 69 stipulated "There shall be a Legislature for Ontario consisting of the Lieutenant Governor and of One House, styled the Legislative Assembly of Ontario." The assembly currently has 124 seats (increased from 107 as of the 42nd Ontario general election) representing ridings elected in a first-past-the-post system across the province.

The legislative buildings at Queen's Park are the seat of government. Following the Westminster system, the leader of the party holding the most seats in the assembly is known as the "Premier and President of the Council" (Executive Council Act R.S.O. 1990). The Premier chooses the cabinet or Executive Council whose members are deemed ministers of the Crown.

Although the "Legislative Assembly Act (R.S.O. 1990)" refers to "members of the assembly", the legislators are now commonly called MPPs (Members of the Provincial Parliament) in English and "députés de l'Assemblée législative" in French, but they have also been called MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly), and both are acceptable. The title of Prime Minister of Ontario, correct in French ("le Premier ministre"), is permissible in English but now generally avoided in favour of the title "Premier" to avoid confusion with the Prime Minister of Canada.

Ontario has grown, from its roots in Upper Canada, into a modern jurisdiction. The old titles of the chief law officers, the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, remain in use. They both are responsible to the Legislature. The Attorney-General drafts the laws and is responsible for criminal prosecutions and the administration of justice, while the Solicitor-General is responsible for law enforcement and the police services of the province.

Ontario has numerous political parties which run for election. The four main parties are the centre-right Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP), the centrist Ontario Liberal Party and the centre-left Ontario Green Party. The Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats have each governed the province, while the Greens elected their first-ever member to the Legislative Assembly in 2018.

The 2018 provincial election resulted in a Progressive Conservative majority under Doug Ford, who was sworn in to office on June 29.

Statistics Canada's measure of a "metro area", the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), roughly bundles together population figures from the core municipality with those from "commuter" municipalities.

*Parts of Quebec (including Gatineau) are included in the Ottawa CMA. The population of the Ottawa CMA, in both provinces, is shown.

In Canada, education falls under provincial jurisdiction. Publicly funded elementary and secondary schools are administered by the Ontario Ministry of Education, while colleges and universities are administered by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. The Minister of Education is Lisa Thompson, and the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities is Merrilee Fullerton.

Higher education in Ontario includes postsecondary education and skills training regulated by the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities and provided by universities, colleges of applied arts and technology, and private career colleges. The minister is Reza Moridi. The ministry administers laws covering 22 public universities, 24 public colleges (21 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) and three Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITALs)), 17 privately funded religious universities, and over 500 private career colleges. The Canadian constitution provides each province with the responsibility for higher education and there is no corresponding national federal ministry of higher education. Within Canadian federalism the division of responsibilities and taxing powers between the Ontario and Canadian governments creates the need for co-operation to fund and deliver higher education to students. Each higher education system aims to improve participation, access, and mobility for students. There are two central organizations that assist with the process of applying to Ontario universities and colleges: the Ontario Universities' Application Centre and Ontario College Application Service. While application services are centralized, admission and selection processes vary and are the purview of each institution independently. Admission to many Ontario postsecondary institutions can be highly competitive. Upon admission, students may get involved with regional student representation with the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, or through the College Student Alliance in Ontario.

In 1973 the first slogan to appear on licence plates in Ontario was "Keep It Beautiful". This was replaced by "Yours to Discover" in 1982, apparently inspired by a tourism slogan, "Discover Ontario", dating back to 1927. Plates with the French equivalent, "Tant à découvrir", were made available to the public beginning in May 2008. (From 1988 to 1990, "Ontario Incredible" gave "Yours to Discover" a brief respite.)

In 2007, a new song replaced "A Place to Stand" after four decades. "There's No Place Like This" is featured in television advertising, performed by Ontario artists including Molly Johnson, Brian Byrne, Keshia Chanté, as well as Tomi Swick and Arkells.

The province has professional sports teams in baseball, basketball, Canadian football, ice hockey, lacrosse, rugby and soccer.

Transportation routes in Ontario evolved from early waterway travel and First Nations paths followed by European explorers. Ontario has two major east-west routes, both starting from Montreal in the neighbouring province of Quebec. The northerly route, which was a major fur trade route, travels west from Montreal along the Ottawa River, then continues northwestward towards Manitoba. Major cities on or near the route include Ottawa, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, and Thunder Bay. The southerly route, which was driven by growth in settlements originated by the United Empire Loyalists and later other European immigrants, travels southwest from Montreal along the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie before entering the United States in Michigan. Major cities on or near the route include Kingston, Belleville, Peterborough, Oshawa, Toronto, Mississauga, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, London, Sarnia, and Windsor. This route was also heavily used by immigrants to the Midwestern US particularly in the late 19th century.

400-series highways make up the primary vehicular network in the south of province, and they connect to numerous border crossings with the US, the busiest being the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel and Ambassador Bridge and the Blue Water Bridge (via Highway 402). Some of the primary highways along the southern route are Highway 401, Highway 417, and Highway 400, while other provincial highways and regional roads inter-connect the remainder of the province.

The Saint Lawrence Seaway, which extends across most of the southern portion of the province and connects to the Atlantic Ocean, is the primary water transportation route for cargo, particularly iron ore and grain. In the past, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River were also a major passenger transportation route, but over the past half century passenger travel has been reduced to ferry services and sightseeing cruises.

Via Rail operates the inter-regional passenger train service on the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, along with "The Canadian", a transcontinental rail service from Southern Ontario to Vancouver, and the Sudbury–White River train. Additionally, Amtrak rail connects Ontario with key New York cities including Buffalo, Albany, and New York City. Ontario Northland provides rail service to destinations as far north as Moosonee near James Bay, connecting them with the south.

Freight rail is dominated by the founding cross-country Canadian National Railway and CP Rail companies, which during the 1990s sold many short rail lines from their vast network to private companies operating mostly in the south.

Regional commuter rail is limited to the provincially owned GO Transit, and serves a train-bus network spanning the Golden Horseshoe region, with Union Station in Toronto serving as the transport hub.

The Toronto Transit Commission operates the province's only subway and streetcar system, one of the busiest in North America. OC Transpo operates, in addition to bus service, Ontario's only light rail transit line, the O-Train in Ottawa.

A light-rail metro called the Confederation Line is under construction in Ottawa. It will have 13 stations on and part of it will run under the city's Downtown and feature three underground stations. In addition, the Ion light rail and bus rapid transit system is under construction in the province's Waterloo region.
Important airports in the province include Toronto Pearson International Airport, which is the busiest airport in Canada, handling over 47 million passengers in 2017. Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport is Ontario's second largest airport. Toronto/Pearson and Ottawa/Macdonald-Cartier form two of the three points in Canada's busiest set of air routes (the third point being Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport).

Most Ontario cities have regional airports, many of which have scheduled commuter flights from Air Canada Jazz or smaller airlines and charter companies – flights from the mid-size cities such as Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins, Windsor, London, and Kingston feed directly into larger airports in Toronto and Ottawa. Bearskin Airlines also runs flights along the northerly east-west route, connecting Ottawa, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Kitchener and Thunder Bay directly.

Isolated towns and settlements in the northern areas of the province rely partly or entirely on air service for travel, goods, and even ambulance services (MEDIVAC), since much of the far northern area of the province cannot be reached by road or rail.

"Quebec French" is spoken in Quebec. Closely related varieties are spoken by francophone communities in Ontario, Western Canada, Labrador and in the New England region of the United States and differ from Quebec French primarily by their greater conservatism. The term "Laurentian French" has limited application as a collective label for all these varieties, and "Quebec French" has also been used for the entire dialect group. The overwhelming majority of francophone Canadians speak this dialect.

French language in Canada

French is the mother tongue of about 7.2 million Canadians (20.6% of the Canadian population, second to English at 56%) according to Census Canada 2016. Most native speakers of the French language in Canada live in Quebec, where French is the majority official language. 77% of Quebec's population are native francophones, and 95% of the population speak French as their first or second language. Additionally, about one million native francophones live in other provinces, forming a sizable minority in New Brunswick, which is officially a bilingual province, where about one-third of the population are francophone. There are also French-speaking communities in Manitoba and Ontario, where francophones make up about 4 percent of the population, as well as significantly smaller communities in Alberta, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan – around 1–2%. Many, but not all of these communities are supported by French-language institutions.

By the Official Languages Act in 1969, Canada recognized English and French as having equal status in the government of Canada. While French, with no specification as to dialect or variety, has the status of one of Canada's two official languages at the federal government level, English is the native language of the majority of Canadians. The federal government provides services and operates in both languages. French is the sole official language in Quebec at the provincial level and is co-official with English in New Brunswick. The provincial governments of Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba are required to provide services in French where justified by the number of francophones (those whose mother tongue is French or who use French on a daily basis). However, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires all provinces to provide primary and secondary education to their official-language minorities.

In 1524, the Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano, working for Italian bankers in France, explored the American coast from Florida to Cape Breton. In 1529, Verrazzano mapped a part of the coastal region of the North American continent under the name Nova Gallia (New France). In 1534, Francis I, King of France, sent Jacques Cartier to discover new lands. He discovered the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, sealed an alliance with the local people and obtained passage to go farther. During his second expedition (1535–1536), Cartier discovered the Saint Lawrence River, a path into the heart of the continent. However, Cartier failed to establish a permanent colony in the area, and war in Europe kept France from further colonization through the end of the 16th century.

At the beginning of the 17th century, French settlements and private companies were established in the area which is now eastern Canada. In 1605 Samuel de Champlain founded Port Royal (Acadia) and in 1608 he founded Quebec City. In 1642 the foundation of Ville Marie, the settlement which would eventually become Montreal, completed the occupation of the territory.

In 1634, Quebec contained two hundred settlers, who were principally involved in the fur trade. The trade was profit-making and the city was on the point of becoming more than a mere temporary trading post.

In 1635, Jesuits founded the secondary school of Quebec for the education of children. Ten years later, in 1645, the Compagnie des Habitants was created, uniting the political and economic leaders of the colony. French was the language of all the non-native people.

In 1685, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV (1654–1715), which had legalized freedom of religion of the Reformed Church, caused the emigration from France of 300,000 Huguenots (French Calvinists), to other countries of Europe and to North America.

With the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the British began their domination of eastern North America, some parts of which had been controlled by the French. The British took mainland Nova Scotia in 1713. Present-day Maine fell to the British during Father Rale's War, while present-day New Brunswick fell after Father Le Loutre's War. In 1755 the majority of the French-speaking inhabitants of Nova Scotia were deported to the Thirteen Colonies. After 1758, they were deported to England and France. The Treaty of Paris (1763) completed the British takeover, removing France from Canadian territory, except for Saint Pierre and Miquelon at the entrance of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

The French language was relegated to second rank as far as trade and state communications were concerned. Out of necessity, the educated class learned the English language and became progressively bilingual, but the great majority of the French-speaking inhabitants continued to speak only French, and their population increased. Anglicization of the French population failed, and it became obvious that coexistence was required. In 1774, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, restoring French civil laws and abrogating the Test Act, which had been used to suppress Catholicism.

In 1791, Parliament repealed the Quebec Act and gave the king authority to divide the Canadian colony into two new provinces: Upper Canada, which later became Ontario, and Lower Canada, which became Quebec.
In 1867, three colonies of British North America agreed to form a federal state which was named Canada. It was composed of four provinces:

In Quebec, French became again the official language; until then it was the vernacular language but with no legal status.

The term "Canadian French" was formerly used to refer specifically to Quebec French and the closely related varieties of Ontario and Western Canada descended from it. This is presumably because Canada and Acadia were distinct parts of New France, and also of British North America, until 1867. However, today the term "Canadian French" is not usually deemed to exclude Acadian French.

Phylogenetically, Quebec French, Métis French and Brayon French are representatives of koiné French in the Americas whereas Acadian French, Cajun French, and Newfoundland French are derivatives of non-koinesized local dialects in France.

As a consequence of geographical seclusion and, due to the British conquest, the French language in Canada presents three different but related main dialects. They share certain features which distinguish them from European French. The name "Canadian French" has been used as an umbrella term for all of these varieties.

All of these dialects mix to varying degrees elements from regional languages and folk dialects spoken in France at the time of colonization. For instance, the origins of Quebec French lie in 17th- and 18th-century Parisian French influenced by folk dialects of the early modern period and other regional languages (such as Norman, Picard, and Poitevin-Saintongeais) which French colonists brought to New France. It has been asserted that the influence of these dialects has been stronger on Acadian French than on French spoken in Quebec. The three dialects can also be historically and geographically associated with three of the five former colonies of New France, respectively Canada, Acadia, and Terre-Neuve (Newfoundland).

In addition, there is a mixed language known as Michif which is based on Cree and French. It is spoken by Métis communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan as well as adjacent areas of the United States.

Finally, more recent immigration (post–World War II) has brought francophone immigrants from around the world, and with them other French dialects.

"Quebec French" is spoken in Quebec. Closely related varieties are spoken by francophone communities in Ontario, Western Canada, Labrador and in the New England region of the United States and differ from Quebec French primarily by their greater conservatism. The term "Laurentian French" has limited application as a collective label for all these varieties, and "Quebec French" has also been used for the entire dialect group. The overwhelming majority of francophone Canadians speak this dialect.

"Acadian French" is spoken by over 350,000 Acadians in parts of the Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, and the Gaspé peninsula.

"Métis French" is spoken in Manitoba and Western Canada by the Métis, descendants of First Nations mothers and voyageur fathers during the fur trade. Many Métis spoke Cree in addition to French, and over the years they developed a unique mixed language called Michif by combining Métis French nouns, numerals, articles and adjectives with Cree verbs, demonstratives, postpositions, interrogatives and pronouns. Both the Michif language and the Métis dialect of French are severely endangered.

"Newfoundland French" is spoken by a small population on the Port-au-Port Peninsula of Newfoundland. It is endangered — both Quebec French and Acadian French are now more widely spoken among Newfoundland francophones than the distinctive peninsular dialect.

"Brayon French" is spoken in the Beauce of Quebec; Edmundston, New Brunswick; and Madawaska, Maine. Although superficially a phonological descendant of Acadian French, analysis reveals it is morphosyntactically identical to Quebec French. It is believed to have resulted from a localized levelling of contact dialects between Québécois and Acadian settlers.

"New England French" is spoken in parts of New England in the United States. Essentially a local variant of Quebec French, it is one of three major forms of French that developed in what is now the U.S., the others being Louisiana French and the nearly-extinct Missouri French. It is endangered, though its use is supported by bilingual education programs in place since 1987.

Two main sub-varieties of Canadian French have been named: "Joual" is an informal variety of French spoken in working-class neighbourhoods in the province of Quebec. "Chiac" is a blending of Acadian French syntax and vocabulary with numerous lexical borrowings from English.

Quebec is the only province whose sole official language is French. Today, 81.4 percent of Quebecers are first language francophones. About 95 percent of Quebecers speak French. However, many of the services the provincial government provides are available in English for the sizeable anglophone population of the province (notably in Montreal). For native French speakers, Quebec French is noticeably different in pronunciation and vocabulary from the French of France, sometimes called "Metropolitan French", but they are easily mutually intelligible in their formal varieties, and after moderate exposure, in most of their informal ones as well. The differences are primarily due to changes that have occurred in Quebec French and Parisian French since the 18th century, when Britain gained possession of Canada.
Different regions of Quebec have their own varieties: Gaspé Peninsula, Côte-Nord, Quebec City, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Outaouais, and Abitibi-Témiscamingue have differences in pronunciation as well as in vocabulary. For example, depending on one's region, the ordinary word for "kettle" can be or.

In Quebec, the French language is of paramount importance. For example, the stop signs on the roads are written (which has the literal meaning of "stop" in French), even if other French-speaking countries, like France, use "STOP". On a similar note, movies originally made in other languages than French (mostly movies originally made in English) are more literally named in Quebec than they are in France (e.g. The movie "The Love Guru" is called in France, but in Quebec it is called ). Also, Québécois do not always use the same words as the French. Here are some examples:

The term anglicism (Anglicisme) is related to the linguistic concepts of loanwords, barbarism, diglossia or the macaronic mixture of the French (français) and English (anglais) languages

According to some, French spoken in Canada includes many anglicisms.
The Quebec Office of the French Language’s "Banque de dépannage linguistique" (Language Troubleshooting Bank) distinguishes different kinds of anglicisms:

Academic, colloquial and pejorative terms are used in Canada (such as des "sabirisation" (from "sabir", "pidgin"), Franglais, Français québécois, Canadian French) to refer to the vernacular.
Robert Dubuc's article "Régionalismes et communication" ("Regionalisms and communication"), for the French-speaking community of Quebec, "il n'y a de salut hors de la maîtrise de ses moyens linguistiques dont le français commun constitue l’armature essentielle et efficace" ("there is no salvation beyond the mastery of its [the community's] linguistic means, of which common French constitutes the essential and effective weapon").

In general, the same norms as in common French are applied. Only certain words have a different gender.
Notable from a semantic point of view are the use of the word "pis" for the conjunction "and", where "et" would be used in Metropolitan French; the word "là" to punctuate the end of a sentence or after a word; and the use of "à" instead of the possessive "de", for instance, "la maison à Jacques" for "Jacques's house".

French is a language with a T–V distinction, where different pronouns are used for polite and familiar address. Quebecers use the familiar form more than other dialects. This use is often qualified as the imitation of the English-speaking use of "you", which is the only pronoun referring to the second person, but only in spoken language.

The colonists living in what are now the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were principally constituted of Bretons, Normans, Basques, and Portuguese. Conquered by the English, they suffered massive deportations to the United States and France. Others went into exile to Canada or to nearby islands. Those who stayed were persecuted. At the end of the 18th century, more liberal measures granted new lands to those who had stayed, and measures were taken to promote the return of numerous exiled people from Canada and Miquelon.
The number of Acadians rose rapidly, to the point of gaining representation in the Legislative Assembly.

French is one of the official languages, with English, of the province of New Brunswick. Apart from Quebec, this is the only other Canadian province that recognizes French as an official language. Approximately one-third of New Brunswickers are francophone, by far the largest Acadian population in Canada.

This feeling of identity is also present in Louisiana due to the historical relationship with Cajun French. The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODFIL) aims is to develop, to use, and to preserve the French language as it exists in Louisiana.

The Acadian community is concentrated in primarily rural areas along the border with Quebec and the eastern coast of the province. Francophones in the Madawaska area may also be identified as Brayon, although sociologists have disputed whether the Brayons represent a distinct francophone community, a subgroup of the Acadians or an extraprovincial community of Québécois. The only major Acadian population centre is Moncton, home to the main campus of the Université de Moncton. Francophones are, however, in the minority in Moncton.

In addition to New Brunswick, Acadian French has speakers in portions of mainland Quebec and in the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. In these provinces, the percentage of francophones is much smaller than in New Brunswick. In some communities, French is an endangered language.

Linguists do not agree about the origin of Acadian French. Acadian French is influenced by the "langues d'oïl". The dialect contains, among other features, the alveolar "r" and the pronunciation of the final syllable in the plural form of the verb in the third person.
But Acadia is the only place outside Jersey (a Channel Island close to mainland Normandy) where Jèrriais speakers can be found.

The variety of French spoken in Atlantic Canada possesses features that differ from Quebec French.

According to Wiesmath (2006), some characteristics of Acadian are:
These features typically occur in older speech.

Yves Cormier's "Dictionnaire du français acadien" (ComiersAcad) includes the majority of Acadian regionalisms.
From a syntactic point of view, a major feature is the use of "je" both for the first person singular and for the third plural; the same phenomenon takes place with "i" for the third persons. Acadian still differentiates the "vous" form from the "tu" form.

However, because of contact with francophones from other parts of Canada, the distinctive characteristics of Acadian French have been progressively weakened.

In addition, English has influenced Acadian French through the borrowing of words, many of which used to be French words used in the English language.

Although French is the native language of just over half a million Canadians in Ontario, francophone Ontarians represent only 4.4 percent of the province's population. They are concentrated primarily in the Eastern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario regions, near the border with Quebec, although they are also present in smaller numbers throughout the province. Forty percent of Franco-Ontarians no longer speak the language at home. However, Ottawa is the city which counts the biggest number of Franco-Ontarians.
The Franco-Ontarians are originally from a first wave of immigration from France, from a second wave from Quebec. The third wave comes from Quebec, but also from Haiti, Europe, Africa, Vietnam, etc.

The province has no official language defined in law, although it is a largely English-speaking province. Ontario law requires that the provincial Legislative Assembly operate in both English and French (individuals can speak in the Assembly in the official language of their choice), and requires that all provincial statutes and bills be made available in both English and French. Furthermore, under the French Language Services Act, individuals are entitled to communicate with the head or central office of any provincial government department or agency in French, as well as to receive all government services in French in 25 designated areas in the province, selected according to minority population criteria. The provincial government of Ontario's website is bilingual. Residents of Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Sudbury and Timmins can receive services from their municipal government in the official language of their choice.

There are also several French-speaking communities on military bases in Ontario, such as the one at CFB Trenton. These communities have been founded by francophone Canadians in the Canadian Forces who live together in military residences.

The term Franco-Ontarian accepts two interpretations. According to the first one, it includes all French speakers of Ontario, wherever they come from. According to second one, it includes all French Canadians born in Ontario, whatever their level of French is.

The modern Franco-Ontarian language is close to Quebec French with some rare exceptions of expressions and pronunciations. Once again, the influence of English can be noted, with a big recourse to tonic stresses, but nevertheless a French vocabulary is still used.
According to Michel Laurier (1989), the semantic and stylistic value of the use of the subjunctive is progressively disappearing.
In the article «Le français canadien parlé hors Québec : aperçu sociolinguistique » (1989), Edward Berniak and Raymond Mougeon underline some characteristics:

The use of French among Franco-Ontarians is in decline due to the omnipresence of the English language in a lot of fields.

The island is discovered by Jean Cabot in 1497. Newfoundland is annexed by England in 1583. It is the first British possession in North America.
In 1610, the Frenchmen become established in the peninsula of Avalon and go to war against the Englishmen.
In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht acknowledges the sovereignty of the Englishmen.
The origin of Franco-Newfoundlanders is double: the first ones to arrive are especially of Breton origin, attracted by the fishing possibilities. Then, from the 19th century, the Acadians who came from the Cape Breton Island and from the Magdalen Islands, an archipelago of nine small islands belonging to Quebec, become established.
Up to the middle of the 20th century, Breton fishers, who had Breton as their mother tongue, but who had been educated in French came to settle. This Breton presence can explain differences between the Newfoundland French and the Acadian French.
In the 1970s, the French language appears in the school of Cape St. George in the form of a bilingual education.
In the 1980s, classes of French for native French speakers are organized there.

According to Patrice Brasseur's articles « Les Représentations linguistiques des francophones de la péninsule de Port-au-Port » (2007) and « Quelques aspects de la situation linguistique dans la communauté franco-terreneuvienne » (1995) as well as according to the French Academy, some characteristics of French in Newfoundland can be kept in mind:

Manitoba also has a significant Franco-Manitoban community, centred especially in the St. Boniface area of Winnipeg, but also in numerous surrounding towns. The provincial government of Manitoba boasts the only bilingual website of the Prairies; the Canadian constitution makes French an official language in Manitoba for the legislature and courts. Saskatchewan also has a Fransaskois community, as does Alberta with its Franco-Albertans, and British Columbia hosts the Franco-Columbians.

Michif, a dialect of French originating in Western Canada, is a unique mixed language derived from Cree and French. It is spoken by a small number of Métis living mostly in Manitoba and in North Dakota.

French is an official language in each of the three northern territories: the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Francophones in the Yukon are called Franco-Yukonnais, those from the Northwest Territories, Franco-Ténois (from the French acronym for the Northwest Territories, "T.N.-O."), and those in Nunavut, Franco-Nunavois.

"Quebec French" is spoken in Quebec. Closely related varieties are spoken by francophone communities in Ontario, Western Canada and the New England region of the United States, differing only from Quebec French primarily by their greater conservatism. The term "Laurentian French" has limited applications as a collective label for all these varieties, and "Quebec French" has also been used for the entire dialect group. The overwhelming majority of francophone Canadians speak this dialect.

Canadian French

Canadian French () is a term that refers to French language spoken in Canada.

It is used as an umbrella term for the French used in Canada including Quebec French Formerly it was used to refer solely to Quebec French and the closely related varieties of Ontario (Franco-Ontarian) and Western Canada, in contrast with Acadian French, which is spoken in some areas of eastern Quebec (Gaspé Peninsula). New Brunswick has Chiac dialect, Nova Scotia has St. Marys Bay French, PEI and Newfoundland & Labrador have Newfoundland French.

In 2011, the total number of native French speakers in Canada was around 7.3 million (22% of the entire population), while another 2 million spoke it as a second language. At the federal level, it has official status alongside English. At the provincial level, French is the sole official language of Quebec as well as one of two official languages of New Brunswick, and jointly official (derived from its federal legal status) in Nunavut, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Government services are offered in French at select localities in Manitoba and Ontario (through the French Language Services Act), and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the country, depending largely on the proximity to Quebec and/or Québécois influence on any given region.

New England French, a dialect spoken in northern New England is essentially a variety of Canadian French and exhibits no particular differences from the Canadian dialects, unlike Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole.

"Acadian French" is spoken by over 350,000 Acadians in parts of the Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, the Lower North Shore and the Gaspé peninsula. St. Mary's Bay French is a variety of Acadian French spoken in Nova Scotia.

"Métis French" is spoken in Manitoba and Western Canada by the Métis, descendants of First Nations mothers and voyageur fathers during the fur trade. Many Métis spoke Cree in addition to French, and over the years they developed a unique mixed language called Michif by combining Métis French nouns, numerals, articles and adjectives with Cree verbs, demonstratives, postpositions, interrogatives and pronouns. Both the Michif language and the Métis dialect of French are severely endangered.

"Newfoundland French" is spoken by a small population on the Port-au-Port Peninsula of Newfoundland. It is endangered — both Quebec French and Acadian French are now more widely spoken among Newfoundland francophones than the distinctive peninsular dialect.

"Brayon French" is spoken in the Beauce of Quebec; Edmundston, New Brunswick; and Madawaska, Maine. Although superficially a phonological descendant of Acadian French, analysis reveals it is morphosyntactically identical to Quebec French. It is believed to have resulted from a localized levelling of contact dialects between Québécois and Acadian settlers.

"New England French" is spoken in parts of New England in the United States. Essentially a local variant of Quebec French, it is one of three major forms of French that developed in what is now the U.S., the others being Louisiana French and the nearly-extinct Missouri French. It is endangered, though its use is supported by bilingual education programs in place since 1987.

There are two main sub-varieties of Canadian French. "Joual" is an informal variety of French spoken in working-class neighbourhoods in the province of Quebec. "Chiac" is a blending of Acadian French syntax and vocabulary with numerous lexical borrowings from English.

The term "Canadian French" was formerly used to refer specifically to Quebec French and the closely related varieties of Ontario and Western Canada descended from it. This is presumably because Canada and Acadia were distinct parts of New France, and also of British North America, until 1867. However, today the term "Canadian French" is not usually deemed to exclude Acadian French.

Phylogenetically, Quebec French, Métis French and Brayon French are representatives of koiné French in the Americas whereas Acadian French, Cajun French, and Newfoundland French are derivatives of non-koinesized local dialects in France.

The mining boom of the early twentieth century attracted many francophones to Northeastern Ontario, and French is still widely spoken there. While the Canadian constitution never required the province of Ontario to recognize French as an official language, the government provides full services in the French language to any citizen, resident, or visitor wishing it including communications, schools, hospitals, social services, and in the courts, under the French Language Services Act of 1986. Bilingualism is higher than the Canadian average – in 2011, 180,020 people, or 24.6% of the population, spoke both English and French. There were also 8,910 people, or 1.2% of the population, who only spoke French. All of Northeastern Ontario, with the technical exception of Manitoulin Island, is designated as a French language service area, as are a few individual municipalities in the Northwest; Manitoulin Island, while not officially designated as a French language service area, effectively functions as one anyway since it receives most provincial government services from the designated Sudbury District seat in Espanola rather than functioning as its own jurisdictional area.

Northern Ontario

Northern Ontario is a primary geographic and administrative region of the Canadian province of Ontario; the other primary region being Southern Ontario. Most of the core geographic region is located on part of the Superior Geological Province of the Canadian Shield, a vast rocky plateau located mainly north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River, Lake Nipissing, and the Mattawa River. The statistical region extends south of the Mattawa River to include all of the District of Nipissing. The southern section of this district lies on part of the Grenville Geological Province of the Shield which occupies the transitional area between Northern and Southern Ontario. The extended federal and provincial administrative regions of Northern Ontario have their own boundaries even further south in the transitional area that vary according to their respective government policies and requirements. Ontario government departments and agencies such as the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation define Northern Ontario as all areas north of, and including, the districts of Parry Sound and Nipissing for political purposes, while the federal government, but not the provincial, also includes the district of Muskoka.

The statistical region has a land area of 806,000 km (310,000 mi) and constitutes 88 per cent of the land area of Ontario, but with just 780,000 people it contains only about six per cent of the province's population. The climate is characterized by extremes of temperature, extremely cold in winter and hot in summer. The principal industries are mining, forestry, and hydroelectricity.

For some purposes, Northern Ontario is further subdivided into Northeastern and Northwestern Ontario. When the region is divided in this way, the three westernmost districts (Rainy River, Kenora and Thunder Bay) constitute "Northwestern Ontario" and the other districts constitute "Northeastern Ontario." Northeastern Ontario contains two thirds of Northern Ontario's population.

In the early 20th century, Northern Ontario was often called "New Ontario", although this name fell into disuse because of its colonial connotations. (In French, however, the region may still be referred to as "Nouvel Ontario", although "le Nord de l'Ontario" and "Ontario-Nord" are now more commonly used.)

Those areas which formed part of New France in the "pays d'en haut", essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River, Lake Huron and Lake Superior, had been acquired by the British by the Treaty of Paris (1763) and became part of Upper Canada in 1791, and then the Province of Canada between 1840 and 1867.

At the time of Canadian Confederation in 1867, the portion of Northern Ontario lying south of the Laurentian Divide was part of Ontario, while the portion north of the divide was part of the separate British territory of Rupert's Land. The province's boundaries were provisionally expanded northward and westward in 1874, while the Lake of the Woods region remained subject to a boundary dispute between Ontario and Manitoba. The region was confirmed as belonging to Ontario by decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1884, and confirmed by the Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which set the province's new northern boundary at the Albany River.

The remaining northernmost portion of the province, from the Albany River to Hudson Bay, was transferred to the province from the Northwest Territories by the Parliament of Canada in the Ontario Boundaries Extension Act, 1912. This region was originally established as the District of Patricia, but was merged into the Kenora District in 1927.

The Province of Canada began creating judicial districts in sparsely populated Northern Ontario with the establishment of Algoma District and Nipissing District in 1858. These districts had no municipal function; they were created for the provision of judicial and administrative services from the district seat. Nipissing had no district seat until 1895. Up until that date, registry office and higher court services were available at Pembroke in Renfrew County. Nipissing Stipendiary Magistrate and land registrar William Doran established his residence at North Bay in 1885. Following the hotly contested district town election in 1895, North Bay earned the right to become the district seat in the new Provisional District of Nipissing. After the creation of the province of Ontario in 1867, the first district to be established was Thunder Bay in 1871 which until then had formed part of Algoma District. The Ontario government was reluctant to establish new districts in the north, partly because the northern and western boundaries of Ontario were in dispute after Confederation. Ontario's right to Northwestern Ontario was determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1884 and confirmed by the Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. By 1899 there were seven northern districts: Algoma, Manitoulin, Muskoka, Nipissing, Parry Sound, Rainy River, and Thunder Bay. Five more northern districts were created between 1907 and 1922: Cochrane, Kenora, Sudbury, Temiskaming and Patricia. The Patricia District was then merged into the Kenora District in 1927.

Unlike the counties and regional municipalities of Southern Ontario, which have a government and administrative structure and jurisdiction over specified government services, a district lacks that level of administration. Districts are too sparsely populated to maintain a county government system, so many district-based services are provided directly by the provincial government. For example, districts have provincially maintained secondary highways instead of county roads.

Statistically, the districts in Northern Ontario (which appear in red on the location map) are Rainy River, Kenora, Thunder Bay, Cochrane, Timiskaming, Algoma, Sudbury, Nipissing and Manitoulin. The "single-tier municipality" of Greater Sudbury — which is not politically part of the District of Sudbury — is the only census division in Northern Ontario where county-level services are offered by a local government rather than the province.

A portion of the Nipissing District which lies south of the geographic dividing line between Northern and Southern Ontario is considered administratively and statistically part of Northern Ontario because of its status as part of Nipissing. As well, for administrative purposes, the districts of Muskoka and Parry Sound are treated as part of Northern Ontario even though they are geographically in Southern or Central Ontario. In 2004, finance minister Greg Sorbara removed Muskoka from the jurisdictional area of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, to which it had been added in 2000 by his predecessor Ernie Eves, but the province continues to treat Parry Sound as a Northern Ontario division under both programs. The federal government continues to retain both more southerly districts in the service area of FedNor.

All of Northeastern Ontario is within the Eastern (UTC −5) time zone; Northwestern Ontario is split between the Eastern and Central (UTC −6) time zones.

Northern Ontario has nine cities. In alphabetical order (2016), they are:
Until the City of Greater Sudbury was created in 2001, Thunder Bay had a larger population than the old city of Sudbury, but the Regional Municipality of Sudbury was the larger Census Metropolitan Area as Sudbury had a much more populous suburban belt (including the city of Valley East, formerly the region's sixth-largest city.) However, as the former Regional Municipality of Sudbury is now governed as a single city, it is both the region's largest city and the region's largest CMA.

Smaller municipalities in Northern Ontario include:

Sudbury is the dominant city in Northeastern Ontario, and Thunder Bay is the dominant city in Northwestern Ontario. These two regions are quite distinct from each other economically and culturally, and also quite distant from each other geographically. As a result, Sudbury and Thunder Bay are each the primary city in their part of the region, but neither city can be said to outrank the other as the principal economic centre of Northern Ontario as a whole.

In fact, each city has a couple of distinct advantages that the other city lacks—Sudbury is at the centre of a larger economic sphere due to the city's, and Northeastern Ontario's, larger population, but Thunder Bay is advantaged by air, rail and shipping traffic due to its prime location along major continental transportation routes. The Thunder Bay International Airport is the third busiest airport in Ontario after Toronto Pearson International Airport and Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport, carrying some 600,000 passengers in 2004 with over 100 flights and four international flights daily. Sudbury's economy, in which the largest sectors of employment are government-related fields such as education and health care, is somewhat more diversified than Thunder Bay's, which is still based primarily on natural resources and manufacturing. Yet in the era of government cutbacks, Thunder Bay's economy has been less prone to recession and unemployment.

Under the staples thesis of Canadian economic history, Northern Ontario is a "hinterland" or "periphery" region, whose economic development has been defined primarily by providing raw natural resource materials to larger and more powerful business interests from elsewhere in Canada or the world.

Northern Ontario has had difficulty in recent years maintaining both its economy and its population. All of the region's cities declined in population between the censuses of 1996 and 2001. (This coincides with the discontinuation of the operation of the subsidized government airline norOntair in March 1996.) Although the cities have tried with mixed results to diversify their economies in recent years, most communities in the region are resource-based economies, whose economic health is very dependent on "boom and bust" resource cycles. Mining and forestry are the two major industries in the region, although manufacturing, transportation, public services and tourism are represented as well. After 2001 the major cities returned to patterns of modest growth in the censuses of 2006, 2011 and 2016, although many of the smaller towns saw further declines.

The cities have, by and large, been very dependent on government-related employment and investment for their economic diversification. The Liberal government of David Peterson in the 1980s moved several provincial agencies and ministries to Northern Ontario, including the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (which maintains a large office in Sault Ste. Marie) and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (whose head office is in Greater Sudbury).

As well, many of Northern Ontario's major tourist attractions (e.g. Science North, Dynamic Earth, the Sault Locks, etc.) are agencies of the provincial or federal governments. Further, much of the funding available for economic development in Northern Ontario comes from government initiatives such as the federal government's Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario (FedNor) and the provincial Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.

Over the past several years, there has been a renewed interest in mining exploration. McFaulds Lake in the James Bay Lowlands has attracted the attention of junior mining exploration companies. Since the 2003 investigation of the area for diamonds, some 20 companies have staked claims in the area, forming joint ventures. While still in the exploration phase, there have been some exciting finds that could bring prosperity to the region and the First Nations communities in that area. New mining sites have also been investigated and explored in Sudbury, Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Elliot Lake and the Temagami area. In Chapleau Probe Mines Limited is in the advanced stage of exploration and was recognized in 2013 with the Ontario Prospectors Association 2013 Ontario Prospector Award.

Northern Ontario has generally been one of the weakest areas in all of Canada for both the federal Progressive Conservative and Conservative parties, as well as one of the weakest areas for the provincial Progressive Conservatives. Instead, partly due to the region's significant dependence on government investment, the Liberal Party has traditionally taken the majority of the region's seats at both the federal and provincial levels. The New Democrats also have a significant base of support, thanks to Northern Ontario's history of labour unionism, support from First Nations communities, and the personal popularity of local NDP figures.

Two Premiers of Ontario, William Hearst (1914–1919) and Mike Harris (1995–2002), represented Northern Ontario constituencies in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. However, Harris himself was the only Conservative candidate elected in a true Northern Ontario riding in either the 1995 or 1999 elections (if the definition of Northern Ontario includes the Parry Sound District, then Harris was joined by Ernie Eves in Parry Sound—Muskoka). Following Eves' retirement from politics, Norm Miller – currently the Official Opposition critic for Northern Development and Mines – was also elected in Parry Sound—Muskoka in a by-election in 2001, and was re-elected in the 2003 and 2007 elections.
Former Ontario New Democratic Party leader Howard Hampton and former Ontario Liberal Party leader Lyn McLeod also represented Northern Ontario ridings in the provincial legislature; the six months in 1996 between Hampton's accession to the NDP leadership in June and McLeod's departure as Liberal leader in December marked the first and only time in Ontario's history that all three parties in the legislature were simultaneously led by Northern Ontario MPPs.

The riding of Algoma East was represented federally by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson from 1948 to 1968. Pearson was not from the district, however, but represented the district because it had been chosen as a safe seat for him to run in a 1948 by-election following the appointment of Thomas Farquhar to the Senate of Canada.

In the 2008 federal election, the New Democratic Party won nearly every seat in the region, with the exception of Nipissing—Timiskaming, which was retained by its Liberal incumbent Anthony Rota, and Kenora, which was won by Conservative Greg Rickford. This sweep included several seats which were formerly seen as Liberal strongholds, including Sudbury, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, Thunder Bay—Rainy River and Thunder Bay—Superior North. In the 2011 election, the NDP retained nearly all of these seats with the exception of Sault Ste. Marie, where longtime incumbent MP Tony Martin was defeated despite that election's historic increase in NDP support nationwide; in the 2015 election, however, a resurgence of Liberal support under Justin Trudeau resulted in the Liberals regaining all of the region's seats except Timmins—James Bay and Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, where the NDP incumbents were successfully re-elected.

Major political issues in recent years have included the economic health of the region, the extension of Highway 400 from Parry Sound to Sudbury, issues pertaining to the quality and availability of health care services, mining development in the Ring of Fire region around McFaulds Lake, the closure of Ontario Northland, the Algo Centre Mall roof collapse of 2012, and a controversial but now-defunct plan to ship Toronto's garbage to the Adams Mine, an abandoned open pit mine in Kirkland Lake.

In the redistribution of provincial electoral districts before the 2007 election, the province retained the existing electoral district boundaries in Northern Ontario, rather than adjusting them to correspond to federal electoral district boundaries as was done in the southern part of the province. Without this change, the region would have "lost" one Member of Provincial Parliament. For the 2018 election, the province further diverged from the federal electoral districts in the region, creating the special districts of Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk—James Bay to accommodate the unique political concerns of the rural far north.

Due to the region's relatively sparse population, federal and provincial electoral districts in the region are almost all extremely large geographically. The federal electoral district of Sudbury and the provincial electoral districts of Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie are the only ones that are comparable in size to an electoral district in Southern Ontario, while at the other extreme the districts of Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk—James Bay are both geographically larger than the entire United Kingdom. One consequence of this, for example, is that a politician who represents a Northern Ontario riding in the House of Commons of Canada or the Legislative Assembly of Ontario must typically maintain a much higher budget for travel and office expenses than one who represents a small urban district does.

On-going high unemployment, lack of awareness of or concern for Northern Ontario's problems, and difficulties in achieving economic diversification have led to discontent amongst Northern Ontarians; throughout the region's history, there have been various movements proposing that the region secede from Ontario to form its own separate province or territory within Canada. The first such movement emerged in Sudbury in the 1890s, when the provincial government began taxing mines; a second movement emerged following the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905. In the 1940s, an organization called the New Province League formed to lobby for the creation of a new territory of "Aurora".

In 1966, a committee of mayors from the region, comprising Max Silverman of Sudbury, G. W. Maybury of Kapuskasing, Ernest Reid of Fort William, Leo Del Villano of Timmins, Merle Dickerson of North Bay and Leo Foucault of Espanola, formed to study the feasibility of Northern Ontario forming a new province.

In the late 1970s, North Bay businessman and city councillor Ed Deibel formed the Northern Ontario Heritage Party to lobby for the formation of a separate province of Northern Ontario. The party attracted only modest support and folded in 1984, but was reestablished in 2010. Both the party's original and revived forms have varied their platforms at different times, sometimes advocating for full independence of the region and other times lobbying for measures to increase the region's power over its own affairs within the province, including increasing the number of Northern Ontario electoral districts in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and the creation of a special district for the region's First Nations voters.

In 1999 the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association, a committee consisting of the mayors of 14 Northern Ontario municipalities, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien asking him to outline the necessary conditions for the region to secede from Ontario to form a new province. This movement emerged as a reaction to the government of Mike Harris, whose policies were widely unpopular in the region even though Harris himself represented the Northern Ontario riding of Nipissing in the legislature.

More recently, some residents of the city of Kenora have called for the city or the wider region to secede from Ontario and join Manitoba. A few residents throughout the region continue to suggest splitting all or part of the region into a separate province. The latter movement, known as the Northern Ontario Secession Movement, has begun to attract attention and support; most notably by the mayors of Kenora and Fort Frances. The crisis in the Ontario forest industry, and the perceived inaction by the provincial government, has in particular spurred support for the idea of secession. In particular, many residents feel that the industrial energy rate is too high to allow the industry to remain competitive.

While also stopping short of advocating for full independence, Sudbury's "Northern Life" community newspaper has published a number of editorials in recent years calling on the province to create a new level of supraregional government that would give the Northern Ontario region significantly more autonomy over its own affairs within the province. In the 2013 Ontario Liberal Party leadership race, candidate Glen Murray similarly proposed a distinct level of supraregional government for Northern Ontario.

The region is home to four universities: Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Laurentian University in Sudbury, Nipissing University in North Bay and Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie. Algoma, which was previously a federated school of Laurentian, became an independent university in 2008. Laurentian University also has a federated school with campuses in Hearst, Kapuskasing and Timmins, the francophone Université de Hearst.

The region also has six colleges: Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Sault College in Sault Ste. Marie, Northern College in Timmins, Canadore College in North Bay, and the anglophone Cambrian College and francophone Collège Boréal in Sudbury. Several of the colleges also have satellite campuses in smaller Northern Ontario communities.

A large distance education network, Contact North, also operates from Sudbury and Thunder Bay to provide educational services to small and remote Northern Ontario communities.

In the early 2000s, the provincial government announced funding for the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which opened in 2005. This school, a joint faculty of Laurentian and Lakehead universities, has a special research focus on rural medicine. In 2011, Laurentian University was granted a charter to launch the McEwen School of Architecture in Sudbury, and Lakehead University was granted approval to launch the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law in Thunder Bay. As with the Northern Ontario School Medicine, each was the first school of its type ever established in the region, as well as the first new school of its type launched in Ontario since the 1960s.

Outdoor recreation is popular in the region year-round. In summer, fishing, boating, canoeing, ATVing, and camping are enjoyed by residents. Hunting remains popular in autumn, especially for moose, whitetail deer, and grouse, although goose hunting is exceptionally popular near James Bay. Group hunting for moose is a favourite social outing. In winter, snowmobiling, ice fishing, outdoor shinny, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing are popular activities. The region boasts extensive snowmobiling trails and many lakes are dotted with ice hut villages throughout the winter.

The region is home to numerous major cultural events, including Sudbury's La Nuit sur l'étang, Northern Lights Festival Boréal and Cinéfest, the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound and the Red Rock Folk Festival in Red Rock. Many communities host festivals celebrating local ethnic groups such as French, Métis, First Nations, Finnish, and Italian. Other communities have celebrations of unique local heritage such as Kapuskasing's Lumberjack Days, Mattawa's Voyageur Days, Sioux Lookout's Blueberry Festival, Elliot Lake's Uranium Heritage Days, and Red Lake's Norseman Festival. Even the smallest First Nations in the region will have an annual pow wow, which bring in many people from outside the community as well, although by far the largest and most famous powwow in the region is held in Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin Island. In winter, many towns will host a winter carnival celebrating the cold weather; the largest of these is Sault Ste. Marie's Bon Soo Winter Carnival.

As of 2017, LGBT pride events take place in Sudbury (Sudbury Pride), Thunder Bay (Thunder Pride), Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay, Timmins, Elliot Lake and Kenora.

There is no single regional culinary dish. Fish and wild game, such as walleye (pickerel) and moose, can be considered regional favourites. Roadside chip trucks are popular choices for meals for locals and tourists alike, and almost every community has at least one. Italian cuisine has had an influence on the culture of Northeastern Ontario, with porchetta considered a culinary signature of Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, while Thunder Bay's food culture is distinctively Finnish, with the Hoito restaurant known internationally for its Finnish-style pancakes and other traditional Finnish dishes.

Although maple syrup is not produced in most of Northern Ontario, it is still made in some areas near North Bay, Sudbury, Manitoulin Island, and Sault Ste. Marie. St. Joseph Island near Sault Ste. Marie is noted for the large quantity of maple syrup produced there.

Since the demise of Northern Breweries, formerly the region's primary local brewery, in 2006, several new local craft brewers have emerged in the region, including Stack Brewing in Sudbury, OutSpoken Brewing in Sault Ste. Marie, Sleeping Giant Brewing in Thunder Bay, Lake of the Woods Brewing in Kenora, Manitoulin Brewing in Little Current, New Ontario Brewing Company in North Bay and Dawson Trail Craft Brewery in Thunder Bay.

Although many sports are played in the region, ice hockey and curling are the most popular. Almost every community is home to both a hockey and curling rink. In fact, Northern Ontario is the only provincial or territorial subregion in Canada that sends its own teams to the Brier and the Tournament of Hearts separately from its province. Hockey is often played on artificial outdoor rinks, and sometimes on frozen lakes.

The North Bay Battalion, Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and Sudbury Wolves play in the Ontario Hockey League.

The Algoma Thunderbirds, Lakehead Thunderwolves, Laurentian Voyageurs, and Nipissing Lakers compete in U Sports as members of Ontario University Athletics.

Also, the Thunder Bay Chill soccer teams play in North America's USL League Two.

Northern Ontario has hosted the 1981 Canada Summer Games, 1988 World Junior Championships in Athletics, FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1995 and 2003 Continental Cup of Curling.

In 2018, the Sudbury Five were launched in the National Basketball League of Canada.

As of 2017, only the CTV and Global networks have comprehensive terrestrial coverage in Northern Ontario, while services such as CBC Television, City, CTV Two, TVOntario, TFO and Ici Radio-Canada Télé are available almost exclusively via cable carriage of stations from Toronto. In the northeast, the four CTV Northern Ontario stations are the only television stations with locally based studios, while the region receives Global and CHCH-TV via rebroadcast transmitters; in Thunder Bay, where Dougall Media's two television stations are the only locally owned twinstick operation remaining in English Canada, one station operates as a Global affiliate while the other switched its affiliation from CBC to CTV on September 1, 2014.

Daily newspapers in the region include the "Sudbury Star", the "Chronicle-Journal" in Thunder Bay, the "Sault Star" in Sault Ste. Marie, the "North Bay Nugget", the "Timmins Daily Press" and the "Kenora Daily Miner and News". "The Chronicle-Journal" is owned by Continental Newspapers, and all of the other daily newspapers are owned by Postmedia. Community newspapers include "Northern Life" and Snap in Sudbury, "Northern News" in Kirkland Lake, "Thunder Bay's Source" and the "Dryden Observer".

Noted magazines published in the region include "HighGrader", "Northern Ontario Business" and "Sudbury Living".

Most commercial radio stations in Northern Ontario are owned by the national radio groups Rogers Communications, Vista Broadcast Group, Bell Media or Newcap Radio, although a few independent and community broadcasters are represented as well. CBC Radio One has stations in Sudbury (CBCS), with rebroadcasters throughout Northeastern Ontario, and in Thunder Bay (CBQT), with rebroadcasters in the Northwest. The French Ici Radio-Canada Première has a station in Sudbury (CBON), with rebroadcasters throughout Northern Ontario. CBC Music is currently heard "only" in Sudbury (CBBS) and Thunder Bay (CBQ), and the French Ici Musique is currently heard only in Sudbury (CBBX).

Cable television service is provided by Shaw Cable in Sault Ste. Marie and virtually all of Northwestern Ontario, by Cogeco in North Bay, and by EastLink in Northeastern Ontario apart from North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

The government of Canada provides French and English equally in all matters. In 2011, 10.2% of people in Northern Ontario spoke French most often at home, mostly in Northeastern Ontario.

The 2016 Canadian Census found that the population of Northern Ontario was 780,140. During the Canada 2011 Census, data was not included from 17 incompletely enumerated Indian Reserves across the region. Four reserves were not counted due to permission not being given, and another 13 in Northwestern Ontario were not counted due to evacuations caused by forest fires. The census was later adjusted with the figures for these reserves showing a total population of 11,435. The median age for Northern Ontario in 2011 was 43.9. There were 43,670 immigrants in 2011, representing 5.8% of the population, down from 6.8% in 2006.

The region also has a significant First Nations population, primarily of the Ojibwe, Cree and Oji-Cree nations, with smaller communities of Nipissing, Algonquin, Odawa and Saulteaux.

The languages that had at least 1,000 native speakers (single mother-tongue response) in Northern Ontario in 2006 were:

Religion in Northern Ontario at the 2001 census
Note: Other religions mostly native spirituality
North Bay inventor Troy Hurtubise was the subject of the documentary film "Project Grizzly" (1996).Television series "The Red Green Show" (1991–2005) and its spinoff theatrical film "Duct Tape Forever" (2002) are set in the fictional town of Possum Lake. The animated sitcom "Chilly Beach" (2003–2008, CBC), set in a fictional town of unspecified location in Northern Canada, was produced in Sudbury.

In the comic strip "For Better or For Worse", Elizabeth Patterson attended North Bay's Nipissing University, and subsequently taught school in the fictional reserve of Mtigwaki on Lake Nipigon. Lynn Johnston, the strip's cartoonist, lives in Corbeil, near North Bay in real life, although the strip is set primarily in Southern Ontario.

There are more than 600,000 francophones residing in Ontario. According to the 2016 Canadian census, there were 550,600 people living in Ontario who declared French their first official language spoken, 490,715 people who declared French their mother tongue, and 277,045 Ontarians who declared French as the language they speak most often at home. Over 1.4 million Ontarians reported themselves as bilingual, and 1.3 million Ontarians reported partial or full French ethnic origins. French-speaking Ontarians constitute the largest French-speaking community in Canada outside Quebec, as well as the largest minority language group within Ontario, and French is the fourth most common ethnic background in the province after English, Scottish and Irish.

Franco-Ontarian

Franco-Ontarians ( or "Franco-Ontariennes" if female) are French Canadian or francophone residents of the Canadian province of Ontario. They are sometimes known as ""Ontarois"".

The francophone population is concentrated primarily in Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa, Cornwall and many rural farming communities, and in Northeastern Ontario, in the cities of Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins and a number of smaller towns, but can also be found in smaller numbers throughout the province. Other communities with notable francophone populations are Hamilton, London, St. Catharines, Lakeshore, Windsor, Penetanguishene and Welland.

Ottawa, with 128,620 francophones, has the province's largest Franco-Ontarian community by size. Among the province's major cities, Greater Sudbury has the largest proportion of Franco-Ontarians to the general population at 29 per cent, and Timmins has the largest proportion among the smaller sized cities at 41 per cent. Prescott and Russell United Counties has the highest proportion of Franco-Ontarians to the general population among the province's census divisions, with about two-thirds of the population being francophone.

Some smaller communities in Ontario have a francophone majority. These include Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Embrun, St. Charles, Sturgeon Falls, Rockland, Casselman, Dubreuilville, Vankleek Hill and Hawkesbury.

The French presence in Ontario dates from the mid-17th century. Early settlements in the region include the Mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons at Midland in 1649, Sault Sainte Marie in 1668, and Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701. Southern Ontario was part of the "Pays d'en-haut" (Upper Country) of New France and was later part of the province of Quebec until Quebec was split into The Canadas in 1791. However, prior to the Articles of Capitulation of Quebec, which handed control of New France from France to Great Britain, modern-day Ontario had only very limited European settlement, apart from a few military forts. Modern Franco-Ontarians are instead descended primarily from people who moved to Ontario from Quebec or New Brunswick in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The concept of Franco-Ontarian as a distinct cultural identity emerged primarily in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prior to this time, virtually all French Canadians were understood as a single unified cultural group regardless of which province they lived in; however, the Estates General of French Canada of 1966 to 1969 radically reshaped the landscape of French Canadian identity, pushing those in Quebec toward the new concept of a uniquely "québécois" identity. This caused what is sometimes labelled as a "rupture" with French Canadian minority communities elsewhere in Canada, who perceived Quebec's shift as an abandonment of the shared French Canadian identity, and were then forced to reconceptualize their own cultural identities in new ways.

Given that Quebec continues to exert a strong cultural influence on francophone minority communities in the rest of Canada, the actual depth of this "rupture" has been questioned by academics; however, it remains a prominent theme in contemporary cultural analysis of French Canadian identities, and in any case it was clearly in the early 1970s that a uniquely Franco-Ontarian cultural space began to emerge with the creation of new institutions and symbols.
The term "Franco-Ontarian" has two related usages, which overlap closely but are not identical: it may refer to francophone residents of Ontario, regardless of their place of birth, or to people of French Canadian ancestry "born" in Ontario, regardless of their primary language or current place of residence.

In popular usage, the first meaning predominates and the second is poorly understood. Although most Franco-Ontarians meet both definitions, there are notable exceptions. For example, although Louise Charron was the first native-born Franco-Ontarian appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, she was preceded as a francophone judge from Ontario by Louise Arbour, a Quebecer who worked in Ontario for much of her professional career as a lawyer and judge. As a result, both women have been referred to as "the first Franco-Ontarian Supreme Court justice", although the technically correct practice is to credit Charron, Franco-Ontarian in both senses, with that distinction.

Conversely, two of the most famous rock musicians from Ontario, Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette, are Franco-Ontarian by the second definition but not by the first, since they were born to Franco-Ontarian parents but currently live outside Ontario and work primarily in English. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin was born in Windsor to a Franco-Ontarian father from Pembroke and an anglophone mother, although many Canadians consider him a Quebecer as he represented a Montreal riding in Parliament.

Both meanings can be politically charged. Using the second to the exclusion of the first may be considered offensive to some in that it excludes francophones born in or with ethnic origins from other countries, such as Haiti, Vietnam or Tunisia, from the Franco-Ontarian community. Using the first to the exclusion of the second obscures the very real ethno-cultural distinctions that exist between Franco-Ontarians, Québécois, Acadians, Métis and other Canadian francophone communities, and the pressures toward assimilation into the English Canadian majority that the community faces. As a result, the complex political and sociological context of "Franco-Ontarian" can only be fully understood by recognizing both meanings and understanding the distinctions between the two.

The Franco-Ontarian identity is further split into three groups according to historical waves of settlement and immigration. The first wave of settlement in the Detroit/Windsor area came in the 18th century, under French rule. Most settlers then came from what is now Quebec, including both full French and Métis. A second wave came in the 19th and early 20th centuries to the areas of Eastern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. This was an immigration wave, in the sense that Ontario was primarily British and mainly English-speaking, but the migrants can also be considered settlers, because they founded many villages or settled within already existing francophone communities. In the Ottawa Valley, in particular, some families have moved back and forth across the Ottawa river for generations (the river is the border between Ontario and Quebec), which results in a complex borderland identity. In the city of Ottawa some areas such as Vanier and Orleans have a rich francophone heritage, with families often having members on both sides of the Ottawa River.

The third and most recent wave consists of Quebecers and other francophones (Haitians, Maghrebans, Europeans, etc.) who move to the larger cities and often preserve their original identity (Québécois, Haitian, etc.) as their primary cultural affiliation. Franco-Ontarians may also have historical ties to more than one of these three groups, which blurs the lines between these distinctions. Intermarriage between Franco-Ontarians and people of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds is also quite common.

The term "Ontarois", following the convention that a francophone minority is referred to with ending of -ois, is sometimes used to distinguish French-speaking Ontarians, while the general term for Ontarian in French is "Ontarien".

Although Ontario as a whole is not officially bilingual, the Ontario government's French Language Services Act designates 25 areas of the province where provincial ministries and agencies are required to provide local French-language services to the public. An area is designated as a French service area if the francophone population is greater than 5,000 people "or" 10% of the community's total population. Due to the 5,000 population threshold, large cities that are actually overwhelmingly anglophone (and may also have several widely-spoken immigrant languages) with virtually no obvious francophone element due to very low percentages, such as Toronto (population 2,731,571) or Brampton (population 593,638) are nevertheless still subject to the Act.

The French Language Services Act applies to provincial government services only. It does not require municipal governments to provide bilingual services. Municipal governments may, however, provide French language services at their own discretion.

The following census divisions (denoted in dark blue on the map) are designated areas in their entirety:

The following census divisions (denoted in light blue on the map) are not fully designated areas, but have communities within their borders which are designated for bilingual services:The most recent addition to the list of designated areas is the city of Kingston. It was named in May 2006, and after the three-year implementation period provided for by the French Language Services Act, officially became a bilingual service centre in 2009.

The Ministry of Francophone Affairs is the government department responsible for ensuring that French language services are provided. Francophones who live in non-designated areas can also receive French language services by directly contacting the Office of Francophone Affairs in Toronto, or in the nearest designated community. The cabinet minister currently responsible for the Office of Francophone Affairs is Caroline Mulroney.

The judicial system in Ontario is officially bilingual in all areas, although in some parts of the province a legal matter involving francophones may have to be transferred to another region where francophone services are more readily available. A francophone who wishes to be served in French by the judicial system cannot be refused this transfer if he or she cannot be served locally in French.

There are 44 municipalities in Ontario which are officially or functionally bilingual at the municipal level. Most of these are members of the Francophone Association of Municipalities of Ontario, or "AFMO".

On April 26, 2010, the Ontario government designated September 25 as Franco-Ontarian Day. This date was chosen as it represented the anniversary of the official raising of the Franco-Ontarian flag in 1975.

In the past, the Ontario government was often much less supportive of and often openly hostile toward the Franco-Ontarian community. Regulation 17, passed in 1912, forbade French-language instruction in Ontario schools. Although the regulation itself was rescinded in 1927, the government continued to refuse funding for French language high schools until the latter half of the 1960s. As a result, francophones had to pursue high school education in English, pay tuition to private high schools (which few Franco-Ontarian families could afford), or simply stop attending school after Grade 9.

As a result, several generations of Franco-Ontarians grew up without formal education since the dropout rate for francophones was quite high during this period. Franco-Ontarians thus opted for jobs which did not require reading and mathematical skills, such as mining and forestry, and were virtually absent from white collar jobs. Sociologically, it meant that education was not a value transmitted to younger Franco-Ontarians. Although this has changed dramatically since the advent of funding for francophone high schools in the 1960s, according to the 2001 census, francophones in Ontario still tend to have a lower level of education than the general population.

Further, those who do have higher levels of education often pursue job opportunities in larger cities, particularly Ottawa or even Montreal, which can create a barrier to economic development in their home communities. As well, even today many students of Franco-Ontarian background are still educated in anglophone schools. This has the effect of reducing the use of French as a first language in the province, and thereby limiting the growth of the Franco-Ontarian community; in the Canada 2006 Census, for example, 40 per cent of residents of Sudbury reported themselves as able to speak or understand French, but only 16 per cent of the city's population reported actually using the French language in their daily lives and barely one per cent of the city's population reported themselves as being exclusively francophone.

Ontario now has eight French-language Roman Catholic school boards and four French-language public school boards. Each of these school boards serves a significantly larger catchment area than an English-language school board in the province, due to the smaller francophone population.

Currently, Ontario has two exclusively francophone community colleges, La Cité collégiale in Ottawa, with a second campus in Hawkesbury, and Collège Boréal in Sudbury, with additional campuses in several Northern Ontario communities, and one in Toronto. Collège Boréal also operates a network of student access centres throughout the province to promote its programs and services. A third college, Collège des Grands-Lacs in Toronto, ceased operations in 2002, and its programs and services are now the Toronto campus of Collège Boréal. The Ontario Agricultural College has a francophone campus in Alfred.

Ontario has four universities which offer instruction in both English and French: Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Laurentian University in Sudbury, the Dominican University College in Ottawa, and the University of Ottawa. York University in Toronto has a bilingual federated college, Glendon College, although the university is otherwise an anglophone institution. Laurentian University has a federated college, Université de Hearst, which, although not a fully independent university, is the only exclusively francophone university-level institution in the province.

In 2015, MPP France Gélinas introduced a private member's bill to mandate the creation of a fully independent French-language university. Although her bill did not pass, the government of Kathleen Wynne announced the creation of a French-language university in 2017; although following the 2018 election the project was cancelled by the new government of Doug Ford.

The primary cultural organization of the Franco-Ontarian community is the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, or AFO, which coordinates many of the community's cultural and political activities.

The Franco-Ontarian flag consists of two bands of green and white. The left portion has a solid light green background with a white fleur-de-lys in the middle, while the right portion has a solid white background with a stylized green trillium in the middle. The green represents the summer months, while the white represents the winter months. The trillium is the floral symbol of Ontario, while the fleur-de-lys represents the French-Canadian heritage of the Franco-Ontarian community. The green color on the flag is Pantone 349.

The flag was created in 1975 by Gaétan Gervais, history professor and Michel Dupuis, first year political science student, both from Laurentian University. It was officially recognized by the Ontario PC government as the emblem of the Franco-Ontarian community in the Franco-Ontarian Emblem Act of 2001.

The historical park, also known as Les Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa, was built by the francophone community to commemorate francophone contribution in the development and well being of the City of Ottawa. The first of six Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa designed by Edward J. Cuhaci represents the first homes and the founding of Bytown. The next five monuments, each progressing uphill, highlight business achievements that were crucial to the prosperity of Ottawa economy. The seventh monument, an unfinished granite block, symbolizes future developments. The flag is 5 x 10 m and was raised on a 27 m pole.

The dialects of French spoken in Ontario are similar to, but distinct from, Quebec French and constitute part of the greater Canadian French dialect. Due to the large English majority in the province, English loanwords are sometimes used in the informal or slang registers of Franco-Ontarian French. While English loanwords occur to a large extent in many varieties of French in Canada and Europe, there has been more of a conscious effort in Quebec to eliminate anglicisms.

In addition, the majority of Franco-Ontarians are, out of necessity, functionally or fluently bilingual in English, a fact that encourages borrowing, as does the fact that the English language has a greater prestige in the province from its being a majority language. Franco-Ontarian communities with a small francophone population tend to have more English-influenced French, and some younger speakers there may feel more comfortable using English than French. On the other hand, the French spoken in French-dominant Ontarian communities (such as Hearst and Hawkesbury), or in those communities near the Quebec border (such as Ottawa), is virtually indistinguishable from Quebec French.

Furthermore, improved access to publicly funded French-language schools and the establishment of bilingual universities and French language community colleges has improved French-language proficiency in younger populations.

Franco-Ontarians retain many cultural traditions from their French Canadian ancestry. For example, unmarried elder siblings "dansent sur leurs bas" (dance on their socks) when their younger siblings get married. Catholic Franco-Ontarians attend "messe de minuit" (midnight mass) on Christmas Eve. Many Franco-Ontarians also enjoy late night feasts/parties on Christmas Eve, called "réveillon", at which tourtière is a common dish.

Ontario has one francophone daily newspaper, "Le Droit" in Ottawa. However, several other communities in Ontario are served by francophone community weekly papers, including "L'Express" and "Le Métropolitain" in Toronto, "Le Voyageur" in Sudbury, "L'Action" in London/Sarnia, "Le Rempart" in Windsor, "Le Régional" in Hamilton-Niagara and "Le Journal de Cornwall" in Cornwall. Important historical publications include Ottawa's "Le Progrès", which was launched in 1858 as the province's first francophone newspaper, and Sudbury's "L'Ami du peuple", which was published from 1942 to 1968.

The province has two Ici Radio-Canada Télé (SRC) stations, CBOFT-DT in Ottawa and CBLFT-DT in Toronto, which previously had rebroadcast transmitters throughout the province but remain available provincewide on basic cable. Both stations carry identical programming directed from SRC's master control in Montreal, except for local news and advertisements. CBOFT produces a newscast for broadcast only in the Ottawa area, while CBLFT produces another serving the rest of the province. The network formerly also operated CBEFT in Windsor, which was shut down in 2012.

The provincial government operates TFO, a sister channel to TVOntario, which is available provincewide via mandatory carriage on basic cable or satellite packages and via online streaming. In 2003, TFO produced and aired "Francoeur", the first Franco-Ontarian "téléroman". In 2008, TFO also began airing the first Franco-Ontarian sitcom, "Météo+" — itself, in part, a satire of the Franco-Ontarian community's relative lack of access to local French-language media. In 2012, the production team behind "Météo+" launched "Les Bleus de Ramville".

The Quebec-based francophone network TVA as well as specialty channels TV5 Québec Canada and Ici RDI are available on all Ontario cable systems, as these channels are mandated by the CRTC for carriage by all Canadian cable operators. Where there is sufficient local demand for French-language television, Ontario cable systems may also offer French-language channels such as V, Ici ARTV, MusiquePlus and RDS, although these channels only have discretionary status outside Quebec and are typically offered only on a digital cable tier rather than in basic cable packages.

On radio, the Franco-Ontarian community is served primarily by Radio-Canada's Ici Radio-Canada Première network, which has originating stations in Ottawa (CBOF), Toronto (CJBC), Sudbury (CBON) and Windsor (CBEF), with rebroadcasters throughout Ontario. "Ici Musique", Radio-Canada's arts and culture network, currently broadcasts only in Ottawa (CBOX), Toronto (CJBC-FM), Sudbury (CBBX), Kitchener-Waterloo (CJBC-FM-1) and Windsor (CJBC-FM-2), with an additional transmitter licensed but not yet launched in Timmins.

Non-profit francophone community stations exist in several communities, including Penetanguishene (CFRH), Hearst (CINN), Kapuskasing (CKGN), Cornwall (CHOD), Ottawa (CJFO) and Toronto (CHOQ). Many campus radio stations air one or two hours per week of French-language programming as well, although only CHUO at the University of Ottawa and CKLU at Laurentian University are officially bilingual stations.

Francophone commercial radio stations exist in Sudbury (CHYC), Timmins (CHYK) and Sturgeon Falls/North Bay (CHYQ); all three stations are owned and operated by Le5 Communications, and air distinct locally-targeted morning shows while operating for the remainder of the day as a shared region-wide simulcast with each station originating some of the common programming. Ottawa francophones are served by the commercial radio stations licensed to Gatineau, and many other Eastern Ontario communities are within the broadcast range of the Gatineau and Montreal media markets. One station in Hawkesbury (CHPR) airs a few hours per week of locally oriented programming, but otherwise simulcasts a commercial station from Montreal.

Through their proximity to Gatineau or Montreal, Ottawa and the communities east of it toward Montreal are the only regions in Ontario which have consistent access throughout the year to French-language theatrical films. However, Cinéfest in Sudbury and the Toronto International Film Festival include francophone films in their annual festival programs, the Toronto-based Cinéfranco festival programs a lineup consisting entirely of francophone films, and community groups in many smaller communities offer French film screenings from time to time. Francophone films also air on TFO and Radio-Canada.

Nine professional theatre companies offer French language theatrical productions, including five companies in Ottawa (Théâtre du Trillium, Théâtre de la Vieille 17, Vox Théâtre, Théâtre la Catapulte and Créations In Vivo), one in Sudbury (Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario) and three in Toronto (Théâtre Corpus, Théâtre La Tangente and Théâtre Franglais de Toronto). There are also numerous community theatre groups and school theatre groups.

Annual music festivals include La Nuit sur l'étang in Sudbury and the Festival Franco-Ontarien in Ottawa. Notable figures in Franco-Ontarian music include Robert Paquette, Marcel Aymar, En Bref, Chuck Labelle, Les Chaizes Muzikales, Brasse-Camarade, Swing, Konflit Dramatik, Stéphane Paquette, Damien Robitaille and CANO.

The song "Notre Place" by Paul Demers and François Dubé, long considered an unofficial anthem of the Franco-Ontarian community after it was written for a gala to celebrate the passage of the French Language Services Act in 1986, was legally designated as the community's official anthem by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 2017.

Ontario has seven francophone publishing companies, including Sudbury's Prise de parole, Ottawa's Editions Le Nordir and Les Éditions David.

Notable Franco-Ontarian writers include Lola Lemire Tostevin, Daniel Poliquin, Robert Dickson, Jean-Marc Dalpé, François Paré, Gaston Tremblay, Michel Bock, Doric Germain, Fernand Dorais and Hédi Bouraoui. The French-language scholar Joseph Médard Carrière was Franco-Ontarian.

See also List of French Canadian writers from outside Quebec.

In the late 1980s, several Ontario towns and cities, most famously Sault Ste. Marie, were persuaded by the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada to declare themselves "English-only" in the wake of the "French Language Services Act" and the Meech Lake Accord debate. This was considered by many observers to be a direct contributor to the resurgence of the Quebec sovereignty movement in the 1990s, and consequently to the 1995 Quebec referendum. (See also Sault Ste. Marie language resolution.)

Quebec writer Yves Beauchemin once controversially referred to the Franco-Ontarian community as ""warm corpses"" (« cadavres encore chauds ») who had no chance of surviving as a community. In a similar vein, former Quebec Premier René Lévesque referred to them as "dead ducks".

On October 19, 2004, a Toronto lawyer successfully challenged a "no left turn" traffic ticket on the basis that the sign was not bilingual in accordance with the 1986 "French Language Services Act". The judge in "R. v. Myers" ruled that the traffic sign was not a municipal service, but instead was regulated under the provincial "Highway Traffic Act" and therefore subject to the bilingual requirements of the "French Language Services Act". As this was a lower court ruling, it did not affect any other court. However the implication of the decision was that many traffic signs in bilingually designated areas of Ontario would be invalid. It was feared that the ruling would have a similar effect as the Manitoba Language Rights ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada, in this case forcing municipalities to erect new bilingual road signs at great expense and invalidating millions of dollars in existing tickets before the courts. The City of Toronto appealed the ruling. At the appeal hearing both parties asked the court to enter a plea of guilty. A guilty verdict was entered even though no arguments were made by either side on the merits of the case. The situation created a legal vacuum for several years, during which numerous defendants used the bilingual signage argument to fight traffic tickets. The precedent was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal in a 2011 case, "R. v. Petruzzo", on the grounds that the "French Language Services Act" specifically states that municipalities are not required to offer services in French, even in provincially regulated areas such as traffic signage, if the municipality has not specifically passed its own bylaw governing its own provision of bilingual services.

Ontario's Minister of Francophone Affairs, Madeleine Meilleur, became the province's first cabinet minister to attend a Francophonie summit in 2004, travelling to Ouagadougou with counterparts from Quebec, New Brunswick and the federal government. Meilleur also expressed the hope that Ontario would someday become a permanent member of the organization. On November 26, 2016, Ontario was granted observer status by La Francophonie.

On January 10, 2005, Clarence-Rockland became the first Ontario city to pass a bylaw requiring all new businesses to post signs in both official languages. Clarence-Rockland is 60 per cent francophone, and the city council noted that the bylaw was intended to address the existence of both English-only and French-only commercial signage in the municipality.

In 2008, the provincial government officially introduced a French licence plate, with the French slogan "Tant à découvrir" in place of "Yours to Discover", as an optional feature for drivers who wished to use it.

In 2009, the government faced controversy during the H1N1 flu pandemic, when it sent out a health information flyer in English only, with no French version published or distributed for the province's francophone residents. In response, MPP France Gélinas introduced a private member's bill in May 2011 to have the provincial Commissioner of French Language Services report to the full Legislative Assembly of Ontario rather than exclusively to the Minister of Francophone Affairs.

In 2018, the provincial government of Doug Ford announced several government cutbacks that impacted the Franco-Ontarian community, including ending the position of the French Language Services Commissioner and transferring its responsibilities to the office of the Ontario Ombudsman, reducing the status of the Ministry of Francophone Affairs from a full ministry to a government office, and cancelling funding announced by the prior government of Kathleen Wynne for the creation of the French-language university. After extensive backlash to the announcement, Ford reversed course, announcing that the commissioner position would be retained and that the office of francophone affairs would be restored to a full government ministry, although he did not restore funding for the university. The actions led to one franco-Ontarian MPP, Amanda Simard, leaving his caucus to sit as an independent.

During this period, governments in Quebec began to fly the Franco-Ontarian flag as a gesture of solidarity. The flag was hoisted at Montreal City Hall on November 23, and at the National Assembly of Quebec on December 1.

Although Ontario as a whole is not officially bilingual, the Ontario government's French Language Services Act designates 25 areas of the province where provincial ministries and agencies are required to provide local French-language services to the public. An area is designated as a French service area if the francophone population is greater than 5,000 people "or" 10% of the community's total population. Due to the 5,000 population threshold, large cities that are actually overwhelmingly anglophone (and may also have several widely-spoken immigrant languages) with virtually no obvious francophone element due to very low percentages, such as Toronto (population 2,731,571) or Brampton (population 593,638) are nevertheless still subject to the Act.

Franco-Ontarian

Franco-Ontarians ( or "Franco-Ontariennes" if female) are French Canadian or francophone residents of the Canadian province of Ontario. They are sometimes known as ""Ontarois"".

There are more than 600,000 francophones residing in Ontario. According to the 2016 Canadian census, there were 550,600 people living in Ontario who declared French their first official language spoken, 490,715 people who declared French their mother tongue, and 277,045 Ontarians who declared French as the language they speak most often at home. Over 1.4 million Ontarians reported themselves as bilingual, and 1.3 million Ontarians reported partial or full French ethnic origins. French-speaking Ontarians constitute the largest French-speaking community in Canada outside Quebec, as well as the largest minority language group within Ontario, and French is the fourth most common ethnic background in the province after English, Scottish and Irish.

The francophone population is concentrated primarily in Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa, Cornwall and many rural farming communities, and in Northeastern Ontario, in the cities of Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins and a number of smaller towns, but can also be found in smaller numbers throughout the province. Other communities with notable francophone populations are Hamilton, London, St. Catharines, Lakeshore, Windsor, Penetanguishene and Welland.

Ottawa, with 128,620 francophones, has the province's largest Franco-Ontarian community by size. Among the province's major cities, Greater Sudbury has the largest proportion of Franco-Ontarians to the general population at 29 per cent, and Timmins has the largest proportion among the smaller sized cities at 41 per cent. Prescott and Russell United Counties has the highest proportion of Franco-Ontarians to the general population among the province's census divisions, with about two-thirds of the population being francophone.

Some smaller communities in Ontario have a francophone majority. These include Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Embrun, St. Charles, Sturgeon Falls, Rockland, Casselman, Dubreuilville, Vankleek Hill and Hawkesbury.

The concept of Franco-Ontarian as a distinct cultural identity emerged primarily in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prior to this time, virtually all French Canadians were understood as a single unified cultural group regardless of which province they lived in; however, the Estates General of French Canada of 1966 to 1969 radically reshaped the landscape of French Canadian identity, pushing those in Quebec toward the new concept of a uniquely "québécois" identity. This caused what is sometimes labelled as a "rupture" with French Canadian minority communities elsewhere in Canada, who perceived Quebec's shift as an abandonment of the shared French Canadian identity, and were then forced to reconceptualize their own cultural identities in new ways.

In popular usage, the first meaning predominates and the second is poorly understood. Although most Franco-Ontarians meet both definitions, there are notable exceptions. For example, although Louise Charron was the first native-born Franco-Ontarian appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, she was preceded as a francophone judge from Ontario by Louise Arbour, a Quebecer who worked in Ontario for much of her professional career as a lawyer and judge. As a result, both women have been referred to as "the first Franco-Ontarian Supreme Court justice", although the technically correct practice is to credit Charron, Franco-Ontarian in both senses, with that distinction.

Conversely, two of the most famous rock musicians from Ontario, Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette, are Franco-Ontarian by the second definition but not by the first, since they were born to Franco-Ontarian parents but currently live outside Ontario and work primarily in English. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin was born in Windsor to a Franco-Ontarian father from Pembroke and an anglophone mother, although many Canadians consider him a Quebecer as he represented a Montreal riding in Parliament.

The third and most recent wave consists of Quebecers and other francophones (Haitians, Maghrebans, Europeans, etc.) who move to the larger cities and often preserve their original identity (Québécois, Haitian, etc.) as their primary cultural affiliation. Franco-Ontarians may also have historical ties to more than one of these three groups, which blurs the lines between these distinctions. Intermarriage between Franco-Ontarians and people of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds is also quite common.

The term "Ontarois", following the convention that a francophone minority is referred to with ending of -ois, is sometimes used to distinguish French-speaking Ontarians, while the general term for Ontarian in French is "Ontarien".

The French Language Services Act applies to provincial government services only. It does not require municipal governments to provide bilingual services. Municipal governments may, however, provide French language services at their own discretion.

The following census divisions (denoted in dark blue on the map) are designated areas in their entirety:

The following census divisions (denoted in light blue on the map) are not fully designated areas, but have communities within their borders which are designated for bilingual services:The most recent addition to the list of designated areas is the city of Kingston. It was named in May 2006, and after the three-year implementation period provided for by the French Language Services Act, officially became a bilingual service centre in 2009.

The Ministry of Francophone Affairs is the government department responsible for ensuring that French language services are provided. Francophones who live in non-designated areas can also receive French language services by directly contacting the Office of Francophone Affairs in Toronto, or in the nearest designated community. The cabinet minister currently responsible for the Office of Francophone Affairs is Caroline Mulroney.

The judicial system in Ontario is officially bilingual in all areas, although in some parts of the province a legal matter involving francophones may have to be transferred to another region where francophone services are more readily available. A francophone who wishes to be served in French by the judicial system cannot be refused this transfer if he or she cannot be served locally in French.

There are 44 municipalities in Ontario which are officially or functionally bilingual at the municipal level. Most of these are members of the Francophone Association of Municipalities of Ontario, or "AFMO".

On April 26, 2010, the Ontario government designated September 25 as Franco-Ontarian Day. This date was chosen as it represented the anniversary of the official raising of the Franco-Ontarian flag in 1975.

In the past, the Ontario government was often much less supportive of and often openly hostile toward the Franco-Ontarian community. Regulation 17, passed in 1912, forbade French-language instruction in Ontario schools. Although the regulation itself was rescinded in 1927, the government continued to refuse funding for French language high schools until the latter half of the 1960s. As a result, francophones had to pursue high school education in English, pay tuition to private high schools (which few Franco-Ontarian families could afford), or simply stop attending school after Grade 9.

As a result, several generations of Franco-Ontarians grew up without formal education since the dropout rate for francophones was quite high during this period. Franco-Ontarians thus opted for jobs which did not require reading and mathematical skills, such as mining and forestry, and were virtually absent from white collar jobs. Sociologically, it meant that education was not a value transmitted to younger Franco-Ontarians. Although this has changed dramatically since the advent of funding for francophone high schools in the 1960s, according to the 2001 census, francophones in Ontario still tend to have a lower level of education than the general population.

Ontario now has eight French-language Roman Catholic school boards and four French-language public school boards. Each of these school boards serves a significantly larger catchment area than an English-language school board in the province, due to the smaller francophone population.

Currently, Ontario has two exclusively francophone community colleges, La Cité collégiale in Ottawa, with a second campus in Hawkesbury, and Collège Boréal in Sudbury, with additional campuses in several Northern Ontario communities, and one in Toronto. Collège Boréal also operates a network of student access centres throughout the province to promote its programs and services. A third college, Collège des Grands-Lacs in Toronto, ceased operations in 2002, and its programs and services are now the Toronto campus of Collège Boréal. The Ontario Agricultural College has a francophone campus in Alfred.

Ontario has four universities which offer instruction in both English and French: Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Laurentian University in Sudbury, the Dominican University College in Ottawa, and the University of Ottawa. York University in Toronto has a bilingual federated college, Glendon College, although the university is otherwise an anglophone institution. Laurentian University has a federated college, Université de Hearst, which, although not a fully independent university, is the only exclusively francophone university-level institution in the province.

In 2015, MPP France Gélinas introduced a private member's bill to mandate the creation of a fully independent French-language university. Although her bill did not pass, the government of Kathleen Wynne announced the creation of a French-language university in 2017; although following the 2018 election the project was cancelled by the new government of Doug Ford.

The primary cultural organization of the Franco-Ontarian community is the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, or AFO, which coordinates many of the community's cultural and political activities.

The Franco-Ontarian flag consists of two bands of green and white. The left portion has a solid light green background with a white fleur-de-lys in the middle, while the right portion has a solid white background with a stylized green trillium in the middle. The green represents the summer months, while the white represents the winter months. The trillium is the floral symbol of Ontario, while the fleur-de-lys represents the French-Canadian heritage of the Franco-Ontarian community. The green color on the flag is Pantone 349.

The flag was created in 1975 by Gaétan Gervais, history professor and Michel Dupuis, first year political science student, both from Laurentian University. It was officially recognized by the Ontario PC government as the emblem of the Franco-Ontarian community in the Franco-Ontarian Emblem Act of 2001.

The historical park, also known as Les Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa, was built by the francophone community to commemorate francophone contribution in the development and well being of the City of Ottawa. The first of six Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa designed by Edward J. Cuhaci represents the first homes and the founding of Bytown. The next five monuments, each progressing uphill, highlight business achievements that were crucial to the prosperity of Ottawa economy. The seventh monument, an unfinished granite block, symbolizes future developments. The flag is 5 x 10 m and was raised on a 27 m pole.

The dialects of French spoken in Ontario are similar to, but distinct from, Quebec French and constitute part of the greater Canadian French dialect. Due to the large English majority in the province, English loanwords are sometimes used in the informal or slang registers of Franco-Ontarian French. While English loanwords occur to a large extent in many varieties of French in Canada and Europe, there has been more of a conscious effort in Quebec to eliminate anglicisms.

In addition, the majority of Franco-Ontarians are, out of necessity, functionally or fluently bilingual in English, a fact that encourages borrowing, as does the fact that the English language has a greater prestige in the province from its being a majority language. Franco-Ontarian communities with a small francophone population tend to have more English-influenced French, and some younger speakers there may feel more comfortable using English than French. On the other hand, the French spoken in French-dominant Ontarian communities (such as Hearst and Hawkesbury), or in those communities near the Quebec border (such as Ottawa), is virtually indistinguishable from Quebec French.

Furthermore, improved access to publicly funded French-language schools and the establishment of bilingual universities and French language community colleges has improved French-language proficiency in younger populations.

Franco-Ontarians retain many cultural traditions from their French Canadian ancestry. For example, unmarried elder siblings "dansent sur leurs bas" (dance on their socks) when their younger siblings get married. Catholic Franco-Ontarians attend "messe de minuit" (midnight mass) on Christmas Eve. Many Franco-Ontarians also enjoy late night feasts/parties on Christmas Eve, called "réveillon", at which tourtière is a common dish.

Ontario has one francophone daily newspaper, "Le Droit" in Ottawa. However, several other communities in Ontario are served by francophone community weekly papers, including "L'Express" and "Le Métropolitain" in Toronto, "Le Voyageur" in Sudbury, "L'Action" in London/Sarnia, "Le Rempart" in Windsor, "Le Régional" in Hamilton-Niagara and "Le Journal de Cornwall" in Cornwall. Important historical publications include Ottawa's "Le Progrès", which was launched in 1858 as the province's first francophone newspaper, and Sudbury's "L'Ami du peuple", which was published from 1942 to 1968.

The province has two Ici Radio-Canada Télé (SRC) stations, CBOFT-DT in Ottawa and CBLFT-DT in Toronto, which previously had rebroadcast transmitters throughout the province but remain available provincewide on basic cable. Both stations carry identical programming directed from SRC's master control in Montreal, except for local news and advertisements. CBOFT produces a newscast for broadcast only in the Ottawa area, while CBLFT produces another serving the rest of the province. The network formerly also operated CBEFT in Windsor, which was shut down in 2012.

The provincial government operates TFO, a sister channel to TVOntario, which is available provincewide via mandatory carriage on basic cable or satellite packages and via online streaming. In 2003, TFO produced and aired "Francoeur", the first Franco-Ontarian "téléroman". In 2008, TFO also began airing the first Franco-Ontarian sitcom, "Météo+" — itself, in part, a satire of the Franco-Ontarian community's relative lack of access to local French-language media. In 2012, the production team behind "Météo+" launched "Les Bleus de Ramville".

The Quebec-based francophone network TVA as well as specialty channels TV5 Québec Canada and Ici RDI are available on all Ontario cable systems, as these channels are mandated by the CRTC for carriage by all Canadian cable operators. Where there is sufficient local demand for French-language television, Ontario cable systems may also offer French-language channels such as V, Ici ARTV, MusiquePlus and RDS, although these channels only have discretionary status outside Quebec and are typically offered only on a digital cable tier rather than in basic cable packages.

On radio, the Franco-Ontarian community is served primarily by Radio-Canada's Ici Radio-Canada Première network, which has originating stations in Ottawa (CBOF), Toronto (CJBC), Sudbury (CBON) and Windsor (CBEF), with rebroadcasters throughout Ontario. "Ici Musique", Radio-Canada's arts and culture network, currently broadcasts only in Ottawa (CBOX), Toronto (CJBC-FM), Sudbury (CBBX), Kitchener-Waterloo (CJBC-FM-1) and Windsor (CJBC-FM-2), with an additional transmitter licensed but not yet launched in Timmins.

Non-profit francophone community stations exist in several communities, including Penetanguishene (CFRH), Hearst (CINN), Kapuskasing (CKGN), Cornwall (CHOD), Ottawa (CJFO) and Toronto (CHOQ). Many campus radio stations air one or two hours per week of French-language programming as well, although only CHUO at the University of Ottawa and CKLU at Laurentian University are officially bilingual stations.

Francophone commercial radio stations exist in Sudbury (CHYC), Timmins (CHYK) and Sturgeon Falls/North Bay (CHYQ); all three stations are owned and operated by Le5 Communications, and air distinct locally-targeted morning shows while operating for the remainder of the day as a shared region-wide simulcast with each station originating some of the common programming. Ottawa francophones are served by the commercial radio stations licensed to Gatineau, and many other Eastern Ontario communities are within the broadcast range of the Gatineau and Montreal media markets. One station in Hawkesbury (CHPR) airs a few hours per week of locally oriented programming, but otherwise simulcasts a commercial station from Montreal.

Through their proximity to Gatineau or Montreal, Ottawa and the communities east of it toward Montreal are the only regions in Ontario which have consistent access throughout the year to French-language theatrical films. However, Cinéfest in Sudbury and the Toronto International Film Festival include francophone films in their annual festival programs, the Toronto-based Cinéfranco festival programs a lineup consisting entirely of francophone films, and community groups in many smaller communities offer French film screenings from time to time. Francophone films also air on TFO and Radio-Canada.

Nine professional theatre companies offer French language theatrical productions, including five companies in Ottawa (Théâtre du Trillium, Théâtre de la Vieille 17, Vox Théâtre, Théâtre la Catapulte and Créations In Vivo), one in Sudbury (Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario) and three in Toronto (Théâtre Corpus, Théâtre La Tangente and Théâtre Franglais de Toronto). There are also numerous community theatre groups and school theatre groups.

Annual music festivals include La Nuit sur l'étang in Sudbury and the Festival Franco-Ontarien in Ottawa. Notable figures in Franco-Ontarian music include Robert Paquette, Marcel Aymar, En Bref, Chuck Labelle, Les Chaizes Muzikales, Brasse-Camarade, Swing, Konflit Dramatik, Stéphane Paquette, Damien Robitaille and CANO.

The song "Notre Place" by Paul Demers and François Dubé, long considered an unofficial anthem of the Franco-Ontarian community after it was written for a gala to celebrate the passage of the French Language Services Act in 1986, was legally designated as the community's official anthem by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 2017.

Ontario has seven francophone publishing companies, including Sudbury's Prise de parole, Ottawa's Editions Le Nordir and Les Éditions David.

Notable Franco-Ontarian writers include Lola Lemire Tostevin, Daniel Poliquin, Robert Dickson, Jean-Marc Dalpé, François Paré, Gaston Tremblay, Michel Bock, Doric Germain, Fernand Dorais and Hédi Bouraoui. The French-language scholar Joseph Médard Carrière was Franco-Ontarian.

See also List of French Canadian writers from outside Quebec.

In the late 1980s, several Ontario towns and cities, most famously Sault Ste. Marie, were persuaded by the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada to declare themselves "English-only" in the wake of the "French Language Services Act" and the Meech Lake Accord debate. This was considered by many observers to be a direct contributor to the resurgence of the Quebec sovereignty movement in the 1990s, and consequently to the 1995 Quebec referendum. (See also Sault Ste. Marie language resolution.)

Quebec writer Yves Beauchemin once controversially referred to the Franco-Ontarian community as ""warm corpses"" (« cadavres encore chauds ») who had no chance of surviving as a community. In a similar vein, former Quebec Premier René Lévesque referred to them as "dead ducks".

Ontario's Minister of Francophone Affairs, Madeleine Meilleur, became the province's first cabinet minister to attend a Francophonie summit in 2004, travelling to Ouagadougou with counterparts from Quebec, New Brunswick and the federal government. Meilleur also expressed the hope that Ontario would someday become a permanent member of the organization. On November 26, 2016, Ontario was granted observer status by La Francophonie.

On January 10, 2005, Clarence-Rockland became the first Ontario city to pass a bylaw requiring all new businesses to post signs in both official languages. Clarence-Rockland is 60 per cent francophone, and the city council noted that the bylaw was intended to address the existence of both English-only and French-only commercial signage in the municipality.

In 2008, the provincial government officially introduced a French licence plate, with the French slogan "Tant à découvrir" in place of "Yours to Discover", as an optional feature for drivers who wished to use it.

In 2009, the government faced controversy during the H1N1 flu pandemic, when it sent out a health information flyer in English only, with no French version published or distributed for the province's francophone residents. In response, MPP France Gélinas introduced a private member's bill in May 2011 to have the provincial Commissioner of French Language Services report to the full Legislative Assembly of Ontario rather than exclusively to the Minister of Francophone Affairs.

During this period, governments in Quebec began to fly the Franco-Ontarian flag as a gesture of solidarity. The flag was hoisted at Montreal City Hall on November 23, and at the National Assembly of Quebec on December 1.

The dialects of French spoken in Ontario are similar to, but distinct from, Quebec French and constitute part of the greater Canadian French dialect. Due to the large English majority in the province, English loanwords are sometimes used in the informal or slang registers of Franco-Ontarian French. While English loanwords occur to a large extent in many varieties of French in Canada and Europe, there has been more of a conscious effort in Quebec to eliminate anglicisms.

Franco-Ontarian

Franco-Ontarians ( or "Franco-Ontariennes" if female) are French Canadian or francophone residents of the Canadian province of Ontario. They are sometimes known as ""Ontarois"".

There are more than 600,000 francophones residing in Ontario. According to the 2016 Canadian census, there were 550,600 people living in Ontario who declared French their first official language spoken, 490,715 people who declared French their mother tongue, and 277,045 Ontarians who declared French as the language they speak most often at home. Over 1.4 million Ontarians reported themselves as bilingual, and 1.3 million Ontarians reported partial or full French ethnic origins. French-speaking Ontarians constitute the largest French-speaking community in Canada outside Quebec, as well as the largest minority language group within Ontario, and French is the fourth most common ethnic background in the province after English, Scottish and Irish.

The francophone population is concentrated primarily in Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa, Cornwall and many rural farming communities, and in Northeastern Ontario, in the cities of Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins and a number of smaller towns, but can also be found in smaller numbers throughout the province. Other communities with notable francophone populations are Hamilton, London, St. Catharines, Lakeshore, Windsor, Penetanguishene and Welland.

Ottawa, with 128,620 francophones, has the province's largest Franco-Ontarian community by size. Among the province's major cities, Greater Sudbury has the largest proportion of Franco-Ontarians to the general population at 29 per cent, and Timmins has the largest proportion among the smaller sized cities at 41 per cent. Prescott and Russell United Counties has the highest proportion of Franco-Ontarians to the general population among the province's census divisions, with about two-thirds of the population being francophone.

Some smaller communities in Ontario have a francophone majority. These include Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Embrun, St. Charles, Sturgeon Falls, Rockland, Casselman, Dubreuilville, Vankleek Hill and Hawkesbury.

The concept of Franco-Ontarian as a distinct cultural identity emerged primarily in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prior to this time, virtually all French Canadians were understood as a single unified cultural group regardless of which province they lived in; however, the Estates General of French Canada of 1966 to 1969 radically reshaped the landscape of French Canadian identity, pushing those in Quebec toward the new concept of a uniquely "québécois" identity. This caused what is sometimes labelled as a "rupture" with French Canadian minority communities elsewhere in Canada, who perceived Quebec's shift as an abandonment of the shared French Canadian identity, and were then forced to reconceptualize their own cultural identities in new ways.

In popular usage, the first meaning predominates and the second is poorly understood. Although most Franco-Ontarians meet both definitions, there are notable exceptions. For example, although Louise Charron was the first native-born Franco-Ontarian appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, she was preceded as a francophone judge from Ontario by Louise Arbour, a Quebecer who worked in Ontario for much of her professional career as a lawyer and judge. As a result, both women have been referred to as "the first Franco-Ontarian Supreme Court justice", although the technically correct practice is to credit Charron, Franco-Ontarian in both senses, with that distinction.

Conversely, two of the most famous rock musicians from Ontario, Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette, are Franco-Ontarian by the second definition but not by the first, since they were born to Franco-Ontarian parents but currently live outside Ontario and work primarily in English. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin was born in Windsor to a Franco-Ontarian father from Pembroke and an anglophone mother, although many Canadians consider him a Quebecer as he represented a Montreal riding in Parliament.

The third and most recent wave consists of Quebecers and other francophones (Haitians, Maghrebans, Europeans, etc.) who move to the larger cities and often preserve their original identity (Québécois, Haitian, etc.) as their primary cultural affiliation. Franco-Ontarians may also have historical ties to more than one of these three groups, which blurs the lines between these distinctions. Intermarriage between Franco-Ontarians and people of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds is also quite common.

The term "Ontarois", following the convention that a francophone minority is referred to with ending of -ois, is sometimes used to distinguish French-speaking Ontarians, while the general term for Ontarian in French is "Ontarien".

Although Ontario as a whole is not officially bilingual, the Ontario government's French Language Services Act designates 25 areas of the province where provincial ministries and agencies are required to provide local French-language services to the public. An area is designated as a French service area if the francophone population is greater than 5,000 people "or" 10% of the community's total population. Due to the 5,000 population threshold, large cities that are actually overwhelmingly anglophone (and may also have several widely-spoken immigrant languages) with virtually no obvious francophone element due to very low percentages, such as Toronto (population 2,731,571) or Brampton (population 593,638) are nevertheless still subject to the Act.

The French Language Services Act applies to provincial government services only. It does not require municipal governments to provide bilingual services. Municipal governments may, however, provide French language services at their own discretion.

The following census divisions (denoted in dark blue on the map) are designated areas in their entirety:

The following census divisions (denoted in light blue on the map) are not fully designated areas, but have communities within their borders which are designated for bilingual services:The most recent addition to the list of designated areas is the city of Kingston. It was named in May 2006, and after the three-year implementation period provided for by the French Language Services Act, officially became a bilingual service centre in 2009.

The Ministry of Francophone Affairs is the government department responsible for ensuring that French language services are provided. Francophones who live in non-designated areas can also receive French language services by directly contacting the Office of Francophone Affairs in Toronto, or in the nearest designated community. The cabinet minister currently responsible for the Office of Francophone Affairs is Caroline Mulroney.

The judicial system in Ontario is officially bilingual in all areas, although in some parts of the province a legal matter involving francophones may have to be transferred to another region where francophone services are more readily available. A francophone who wishes to be served in French by the judicial system cannot be refused this transfer if he or she cannot be served locally in French.

There are 44 municipalities in Ontario which are officially or functionally bilingual at the municipal level. Most of these are members of the Francophone Association of Municipalities of Ontario, or "AFMO".

On April 26, 2010, the Ontario government designated September 25 as Franco-Ontarian Day. This date was chosen as it represented the anniversary of the official raising of the Franco-Ontarian flag in 1975.

In the past, the Ontario government was often much less supportive of and often openly hostile toward the Franco-Ontarian community. Regulation 17, passed in 1912, forbade French-language instruction in Ontario schools. Although the regulation itself was rescinded in 1927, the government continued to refuse funding for French language high schools until the latter half of the 1960s. As a result, francophones had to pursue high school education in English, pay tuition to private high schools (which few Franco-Ontarian families could afford), or simply stop attending school after Grade 9.

As a result, several generations of Franco-Ontarians grew up without formal education since the dropout rate for francophones was quite high during this period. Franco-Ontarians thus opted for jobs which did not require reading and mathematical skills, such as mining and forestry, and were virtually absent from white collar jobs. Sociologically, it meant that education was not a value transmitted to younger Franco-Ontarians. Although this has changed dramatically since the advent of funding for francophone high schools in the 1960s, according to the 2001 census, francophones in Ontario still tend to have a lower level of education than the general population.

Ontario now has eight French-language Roman Catholic school boards and four French-language public school boards. Each of these school boards serves a significantly larger catchment area than an English-language school board in the province, due to the smaller francophone population.

Currently, Ontario has two exclusively francophone community colleges, La Cité collégiale in Ottawa, with a second campus in Hawkesbury, and Collège Boréal in Sudbury, with additional campuses in several Northern Ontario communities, and one in Toronto. Collège Boréal also operates a network of student access centres throughout the province to promote its programs and services. A third college, Collège des Grands-Lacs in Toronto, ceased operations in 2002, and its programs and services are now the Toronto campus of Collège Boréal. The Ontario Agricultural College has a francophone campus in Alfred.

Ontario has four universities which offer instruction in both English and French: Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Laurentian University in Sudbury, the Dominican University College in Ottawa, and the University of Ottawa. York University in Toronto has a bilingual federated college, Glendon College, although the university is otherwise an anglophone institution. Laurentian University has a federated college, Université de Hearst, which, although not a fully independent university, is the only exclusively francophone university-level institution in the province.

In 2015, MPP France Gélinas introduced a private member's bill to mandate the creation of a fully independent French-language university. Although her bill did not pass, the government of Kathleen Wynne announced the creation of a French-language university in 2017; although following the 2018 election the project was cancelled by the new government of Doug Ford.

The primary cultural organization of the Franco-Ontarian community is the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, or AFO, which coordinates many of the community's cultural and political activities.

The Franco-Ontarian flag consists of two bands of green and white. The left portion has a solid light green background with a white fleur-de-lys in the middle, while the right portion has a solid white background with a stylized green trillium in the middle. The green represents the summer months, while the white represents the winter months. The trillium is the floral symbol of Ontario, while the fleur-de-lys represents the French-Canadian heritage of the Franco-Ontarian community. The green color on the flag is Pantone 349.

The flag was created in 1975 by Gaétan Gervais, history professor and Michel Dupuis, first year political science student, both from Laurentian University. It was officially recognized by the Ontario PC government as the emblem of the Franco-Ontarian community in the Franco-Ontarian Emblem Act of 2001.

The historical park, also known as Les Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa, was built by the francophone community to commemorate francophone contribution in the development and well being of the City of Ottawa. The first of six Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa designed by Edward J. Cuhaci represents the first homes and the founding of Bytown. The next five monuments, each progressing uphill, highlight business achievements that were crucial to the prosperity of Ottawa economy. The seventh monument, an unfinished granite block, symbolizes future developments. The flag is 5 x 10 m and was raised on a 27 m pole.

The dialects of French spoken in Ontario are similar to, but distinct from, Quebec French and constitute part of the greater Canadian French dialect. Due to the large English majority in the province, English loanwords are sometimes used in the informal or slang registers of Franco-Ontarian French. While English loanwords occur to a large extent in many varieties of French in Canada and Europe, there has been more of a conscious effort in Quebec to eliminate anglicisms.

In addition, the majority of Franco-Ontarians are, out of necessity, functionally or fluently bilingual in English, a fact that encourages borrowing, as does the fact that the English language has a greater prestige in the province from its being a majority language. Franco-Ontarian communities with a small francophone population tend to have more English-influenced French, and some younger speakers there may feel more comfortable using English than French. On the other hand, the French spoken in French-dominant Ontarian communities (such as Hearst and Hawkesbury), or in those communities near the Quebec border (such as Ottawa), is virtually indistinguishable from Quebec French.

Furthermore, improved access to publicly funded French-language schools and the establishment of bilingual universities and French language community colleges has improved French-language proficiency in younger populations.

Franco-Ontarians retain many cultural traditions from their French Canadian ancestry. For example, unmarried elder siblings "dansent sur leurs bas" (dance on their socks) when their younger siblings get married. Catholic Franco-Ontarians attend "messe de minuit" (midnight mass) on Christmas Eve. Many Franco-Ontarians also enjoy late night feasts/parties on Christmas Eve, called "réveillon", at which tourtière is a common dish.

Ontario has one francophone daily newspaper, "Le Droit" in Ottawa. However, several other communities in Ontario are served by francophone community weekly papers, including "L'Express" and "Le Métropolitain" in Toronto, "Le Voyageur" in Sudbury, "L'Action" in London/Sarnia, "Le Rempart" in Windsor, "Le Régional" in Hamilton-Niagara and "Le Journal de Cornwall" in Cornwall. Important historical publications include Ottawa's "Le Progrès", which was launched in 1858 as the province's first francophone newspaper, and Sudbury's "L'Ami du peuple", which was published from 1942 to 1968.

The province has two Ici Radio-Canada Télé (SRC) stations, CBOFT-DT in Ottawa and CBLFT-DT in Toronto, which previously had rebroadcast transmitters throughout the province but remain available provincewide on basic cable. Both stations carry identical programming directed from SRC's master control in Montreal, except for local news and advertisements. CBOFT produces a newscast for broadcast only in the Ottawa area, while CBLFT produces another serving the rest of the province. The network formerly also operated CBEFT in Windsor, which was shut down in 2012.

The provincial government operates TFO, a sister channel to TVOntario, which is available provincewide via mandatory carriage on basic cable or satellite packages and via online streaming. In 2003, TFO produced and aired "Francoeur", the first Franco-Ontarian "téléroman". In 2008, TFO also began airing the first Franco-Ontarian sitcom, "Météo+" — itself, in part, a satire of the Franco-Ontarian community's relative lack of access to local French-language media. In 2012, the production team behind "Météo+" launched "Les Bleus de Ramville".

The Quebec-based francophone network TVA as well as specialty channels TV5 Québec Canada and Ici RDI are available on all Ontario cable systems, as these channels are mandated by the CRTC for carriage by all Canadian cable operators. Where there is sufficient local demand for French-language television, Ontario cable systems may also offer French-language channels such as V, Ici ARTV, MusiquePlus and RDS, although these channels only have discretionary status outside Quebec and are typically offered only on a digital cable tier rather than in basic cable packages.

On radio, the Franco-Ontarian community is served primarily by Radio-Canada's Ici Radio-Canada Première network, which has originating stations in Ottawa (CBOF), Toronto (CJBC), Sudbury (CBON) and Windsor (CBEF), with rebroadcasters throughout Ontario. "Ici Musique", Radio-Canada's arts and culture network, currently broadcasts only in Ottawa (CBOX), Toronto (CJBC-FM), Sudbury (CBBX), Kitchener-Waterloo (CJBC-FM-1) and Windsor (CJBC-FM-2), with an additional transmitter licensed but not yet launched in Timmins.

Non-profit francophone community stations exist in several communities, including Penetanguishene (CFRH), Hearst (CINN), Kapuskasing (CKGN), Cornwall (CHOD), Ottawa (CJFO) and Toronto (CHOQ). Many campus radio stations air one or two hours per week of French-language programming as well, although only CHUO at the University of Ottawa and CKLU at Laurentian University are officially bilingual stations.

Francophone commercial radio stations exist in Sudbury (CHYC), Timmins (CHYK) and Sturgeon Falls/North Bay (CHYQ); all three stations are owned and operated by Le5 Communications, and air distinct locally-targeted morning shows while operating for the remainder of the day as a shared region-wide simulcast with each station originating some of the common programming. Ottawa francophones are served by the commercial radio stations licensed to Gatineau, and many other Eastern Ontario communities are within the broadcast range of the Gatineau and Montreal media markets. One station in Hawkesbury (CHPR) airs a few hours per week of locally oriented programming, but otherwise simulcasts a commercial station from Montreal.

Through their proximity to Gatineau or Montreal, Ottawa and the communities east of it toward Montreal are the only regions in Ontario which have consistent access throughout the year to French-language theatrical films. However, Cinéfest in Sudbury and the Toronto International Film Festival include francophone films in their annual festival programs, the Toronto-based Cinéfranco festival programs a lineup consisting entirely of francophone films, and community groups in many smaller communities offer French film screenings from time to time. Francophone films also air on TFO and Radio-Canada.

Nine professional theatre companies offer French language theatrical productions, including five companies in Ottawa (Théâtre du Trillium, Théâtre de la Vieille 17, Vox Théâtre, Théâtre la Catapulte and Créations In Vivo), one in Sudbury (Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario) and three in Toronto (Théâtre Corpus, Théâtre La Tangente and Théâtre Franglais de Toronto). There are also numerous community theatre groups and school theatre groups.

Annual music festivals include La Nuit sur l'étang in Sudbury and the Festival Franco-Ontarien in Ottawa. Notable figures in Franco-Ontarian music include Robert Paquette, Marcel Aymar, En Bref, Chuck Labelle, Les Chaizes Muzikales, Brasse-Camarade, Swing, Konflit Dramatik, Stéphane Paquette, Damien Robitaille and CANO.

The song "Notre Place" by Paul Demers and François Dubé, long considered an unofficial anthem of the Franco-Ontarian community after it was written for a gala to celebrate the passage of the French Language Services Act in 1986, was legally designated as the community's official anthem by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 2017.

Ontario has seven francophone publishing companies, including Sudbury's Prise de parole, Ottawa's Editions Le Nordir and Les Éditions David.

Notable Franco-Ontarian writers include Lola Lemire Tostevin, Daniel Poliquin, Robert Dickson, Jean-Marc Dalpé, François Paré, Gaston Tremblay, Michel Bock, Doric Germain, Fernand Dorais and Hédi Bouraoui. The French-language scholar Joseph Médard Carrière was Franco-Ontarian.

See also List of French Canadian writers from outside Quebec.

In the late 1980s, several Ontario towns and cities, most famously Sault Ste. Marie, were persuaded by the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada to declare themselves "English-only" in the wake of the "French Language Services Act" and the Meech Lake Accord debate. This was considered by many observers to be a direct contributor to the resurgence of the Quebec sovereignty movement in the 1990s, and consequently to the 1995 Quebec referendum. (See also Sault Ste. Marie language resolution.)

Quebec writer Yves Beauchemin once controversially referred to the Franco-Ontarian community as ""warm corpses"" (« cadavres encore chauds ») who had no chance of surviving as a community. In a similar vein, former Quebec Premier René Lévesque referred to them as "dead ducks".

Ontario's Minister of Francophone Affairs, Madeleine Meilleur, became the province's first cabinet minister to attend a Francophonie summit in 2004, travelling to Ouagadougou with counterparts from Quebec, New Brunswick and the federal government. Meilleur also expressed the hope that Ontario would someday become a permanent member of the organization. On November 26, 2016, Ontario was granted observer status by La Francophonie.

On January 10, 2005, Clarence-Rockland became the first Ontario city to pass a bylaw requiring all new businesses to post signs in both official languages. Clarence-Rockland is 60 per cent francophone, and the city council noted that the bylaw was intended to address the existence of both English-only and French-only commercial signage in the municipality.

In 2008, the provincial government officially introduced a French licence plate, with the French slogan "Tant à découvrir" in place of "Yours to Discover", as an optional feature for drivers who wished to use it.

In 2009, the government faced controversy during the H1N1 flu pandemic, when it sent out a health information flyer in English only, with no French version published or distributed for the province's francophone residents. In response, MPP France Gélinas introduced a private member's bill in May 2011 to have the provincial Commissioner of French Language Services report to the full Legislative Assembly of Ontario rather than exclusively to the Minister of Francophone Affairs.

During this period, governments in Quebec began to fly the Franco-Ontarian flag as a gesture of solidarity. The flag was hoisted at Montreal City Hall on November 23, and at the National Assembly of Quebec on December 1.

French is the dominant language in Quebec and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and is spoken in Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Louisiana. It is spoken alongside French-based creole languages in Saint Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Saint Barthélemy, and the French side of Saint Martin. French is one of the two official and national languages of Canada.

Languages of North America

The languages of North America reflect not only that continent's indigenous peoples, but the European colonization as well. The most widely spoken languages in North America (which includes Central America and the Caribbean islands) are English, Spanish, and to a lesser extent French, and, especially in the Caribbean, creole languages lexified by them.

North America is home to a large number of language families and some language isolates. In the Arctic north, the Eskimo–Aleut languages are spoken from Alaska to Greenland. This group includes the Aleut language of the Aleutian Islands, the Yupik languages of Alaska and the Russian Far East, and the Inuit languages of Alaska, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Greenland.

The Na-Dené languages, of which the most numerous and widespread are the Athabaskan languages, include the languages of central and eastern Alaska and northwestern Canada, as well as the Apachean languages of the Southwestern United States. The Algic languages, including the large Algonquian branch, are widespread across Canada and the United States; they include Cree, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), Mi'kmaq, and Blackfoot. The Iroquoian languages dominate the area around the Saint Lawrence River and the eastern Great Lakes, but also include Cherokee. The Siouan–Catawban languages, including Crow and Sioux, dominate the Great Plains. A large number of small language families are spoken in the Pacific Northwest from British Columbia to California.

The Uto-Aztecan languages are found throughout the Western United States, northern and central Mexico, and as far south as El Salvador; they include Hopi, O'odham, and Nahuatl (descended from Aztec). Other large families in Mexico include the Mayan languages (also spoken in Belize and Guatemala), the Mixe–Zoque languages, and the Oto-Manguean languages. In the Caribbean, the Arawakan languages were formerly widespread, but are now limited to Garifuna on the Central American mainland; the family is still well represented in South America, however. The Chibchan languages are spoken in Costa Rica and Panama as well as South America.

The most widely spoken languages in North America are English, Spanish and French, a legacy of colonization of much of the continent by settlers from Europe.

English is the predominant language of Canada, the United States, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands, and is spoken alongside English-based creole languages in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Virgin Islands. It is also the official language of Dominica and Saint Lucia, where the French-based Antillean Creole is also widely spoken.

Spanish is the dominant language in Mexico and all of Central America apart from Belize, as well as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico (where English is spoken as well); it is also widely spoken in the United States.

Russian was once widely spoken in Alaska as it was the language of administration, commerce, and the settlers there that often intermarried with the locals (they numbered no more than a thousand), creating a sizable biracial population. The language began to decline after the United States purchased the land from the Russian Empire. Nonetheless, the language, called "Old Russian" by its speakers, is still spoken today in parts of Alaska like Ninilchik and Kodiak by descendants of Russian colonists and Russified Alaskan Natives and is known for its archaic Russian vocabulary and indigenous influences, though the vast majority of speakers are elderly, so that this unique Russian dialect is heavily endangered. In addition, a Russian creole/mixed language known as Medny Aleut language was once spoken in some of the Aleutian Islands. Only a few elderly people still speak it. There has also been sizable recent immigration from Russia in the past few decades, leading to a new generation of Russian-speaking Alaskans.

Though no German state played a major role in the European colonization of the Americas, German people did found their own colonies. Pennsylvania German, Hutterite German, Texas German, all of which developed in North America, as well as Plautdietsch are spoken by descendants of these settlers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Other introduced languages include Danish in Greenland, where it is spoken by nearly everyone (mostly as a second language) due to centuries of colonization by Denmark. Danish was once the language of administration of the US Virgin Islands before the purchase by the United States. Dutch in Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, where it is spoken alongside the Portuguese Creole language in Papiamento. In modern times North America has immigrant speakers of a large number of languages from around the world. For details see Languages of Canada, Languages of the United States, and Languages of Mexico. Some historic languages include Gholan Language and Quechua.

Caribbean Hindustani is spoken by Indo-Caribbeans in islands in the Caribbean like Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica, and Suriname where a majority of the Indians are North Indian. Tamil and Telegu are spoken as the lingua franca of Indians in islands like Martinique and Guadeloupe, where the majority of Indians are Dravidians (South Indians). Bengali, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Konkani, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Malayalam, Kannada, and other Indian languages are also spoken. Indians were brought to the Caribbean from South Asia during the mid 19th century to the early 20th century to work on the sugar cane, cocoa bean, rice, and coffee bean plantations after slavery was abolished. Recent immigration from India to Canada and the United States has increased the prevalence of Indian languages in those countries, with Punjabi being the third most-spoken language in Canada.

Ontario French is often divided into two categories: North and South. The further north the more French is spoken and the closer the dialect and culture is to Quebec French. The further south, the French becomes a more pronounced French with a more English cultural influence as well as a Parisian grammar and dialect structure, as both Parisian and Canadian French are taught in the French immersion schools.

Varieties of French

Dialects of the French language are spoken in France and around the world. The francophones of France generally use Metropolitan French (spoken in Paris and considered standard) although some also use regional dialects or varieties such as Meridional French. In Europe outside France there are Belgian French, Swiss French, and in Italy Aostan French. In Canada, French is an official language along with English; the two main dialects of French in Canada are Quebec French and Acadian French, but also another dialect commonly grouped as Canadian French, used by Anglophones speaking French as a second language or by Francophones in Canada using a different dialect. In Lebanon, French was an official language until 1941 and the main dialect spoken there is Lebanese French or Levantine French. Note that the discussion here refers to varieties of the French language, not to the Romance sister languages (sometimes considered dialects) of French spoken in France (e.g. Picard, Limousin, Gascon, etc.; for these languages see: Langues d'oïl, Francoprovençal, Occitan and languages of France). See also French-based creole languages, which are also considered separate languages.

French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. As of 2006, an estimated 115 million African people spread across 31 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. While there are many varieties of African French, common features include the use of an alveolar trill and use of borrowed words from local languages.

Acadian French is a variant of French spoken by francophone Acadians in the Canadian Maritime provinces, the Saint John River Valley in the northern part of the U.S. state of Maine, the Magdalen Islands and Havre-Saint-Pierre, along the St. Lawrence's north shore. Speakers of Metropolitan French and even of other Canadian dialects have some difficulty understanding Acadian French.

Notable features include and becoming and and becoming before front vowels and the use of some archaic words.

Chiac is a dialect of combined Acadian French and English and is spoken mainly around Moncton, New Brunswick. The pronunciation of French words by is very different from other dialects and resembles English pronunciation. Chiac cannot be identified solely on its frequent use of English words since many other French dialects use many English words as well, but Chiac has an unusual amount of English. Chiac French has developed through proximity to English-speakers who settled nearby during the colonial period. Sounds that are characteristic of Chiac are the different use of the letters "d", "t", "r", and "c" (such as the word "bec", normally spoken in French with a softer "c" sound but spoken as "beck" with a hard "c" as in the English pronunciation). Other differences include the use of vowel sounds such as "ea", "eo", "on", "an", and "oi". Such English-stylized pronunciations are different from other dialects of North American French such as Québécois and Brayon. Some forms of Chiac deviate from the original language to the extent that it is nearly incomprehensible to the larger francophone community. Chiac is perhaps best categorized as a creole language alongside Haitian Creole and Louisiana Creole, French dialects that incorporate Indigenous, African, and other European languages, as opposed to dialects such as Québécois and Brayon that deviate slightly from Metropolitan French but are nonetheless derived primarily from earlier dialects of French with little contribution from other source languages.

Newfoundland French is a regional dialect of French that was once spoken by settlers in the French colony of Newfoundland.

Quebec French is the dominant and most prevalent regional variety of French found in Canada. Although Quebec French constitutes a coherent and standard system, it has no objective norm since the very organization mandated to establish it, the "Office québécois de la langue française", believes that objectively standardizing Quebec French would lead to reduced interintelligibility with other French communities around the world.

Notable features include,, and as allophones of,, and in closed syllables and affrication of and to and before and (the word "tu" is pronounced ).

Long vowels are generally diphthongized in closed syllables (the word "fête" is pronounced ).

Several varieties of French emerged in the United States: Louisiana French, New England French and the nearly-extinct Frenchville French, Missouri French, Muskrat French and Métis French.

Louisiana French, the largest of the groupings, is spoken mostly in Louisiana and derives from the forms of the language spoken by the colonists of lower French Louisiana. Louisiana French is traditionally into three dialects: Colonial French, Modern Louisiana French or "Acadian" French, and Louisiana Creole French. Colonial French was originally the dialect spoken by the land-holding educated classes. Acadian, the dialect of the Acadians who came to French Louisiana in droves following their expulsion from Acadia during the French and Indian War, was spoken largely by the white lower classes. Louisiana Creole, a creole that developed long before Haitian immigrants arrived in Louisiana, largely developed as the tongue of the Louisiana Creole community and a significant portion of self-identified Cajuns. However, linguists now believe that the Colonial and Acadian dialects have largely merged into modern Louisiana French but remain distinct from Louisiana Creole.

French has gained co-official status with English in Louisiana, and there is both a thriving multi-generational base of speakers as well as a growing network of French immersion schools across the state in order to preserve the language. Louisiana also has a French-language society called CODOFIL (Conseil pour le développement du français en Louisiane).

Missouri French is now spoken by a handful of people in the Midwestern United States, primarily in Missouri. It is the last remnant of the form of French once spoken widely in the region known as the Illinois Country, which was colonized as part of French Louisiana. It is considered very moribund, with only a few elderly speakers still fluent.

New England French is the local name for Canadian French as it is spoken in New England, except in the Saint John Valley of northern Aroostook County, Maine, where Acadian French predominates.

Haitian French is the variety of French spoken in Haiti. The main difference between Haitian French and the Metropolitan French is in the Haitian speaker's intonation, a rather subtle creole-based tone being used. Importantly, differences are not enough to cause problems between both speakers.

Cambodian French is the French of Cambodia. It dates back to the French colonization of Indochina in 1863. Colonists taught French to the local inhabitants, especially the Khmer and Chinese. The locals also taught the colonists Khmer and some Chinese spoken variants, such as Teochew and Cantonese. Cambodian French was influenced by Khmer and Chinese spoken variants, and it was spoken by children of French men married to Khmer or ethnic Chinese women.

Cambodian French is still used as a second language in some schools, universities and government offices, but most of the younger generations and members of the business world choose to learn English. Mostly, only older natives still speak French. Since the 1990s, there has been a small revival of French in Cambodia with French-language schools and centres opening. Many Cambodian students travel to France to receive studies as well as French-language media. Nevertheless, Cambodia still has the smallest Francophone population of the three French-speaking Asian countries, the others being Vietnam and Laos.

Indian French is the French spoken by Indians in the former colonies of Pondichéry, Chandannagar, Karaikal, Mahé and Yanam. There is a considerable influence from Dravidian languages like Tamil (Puducherry Tamil dialect), Telugu (Yanam Telugu dialect) and Malayalam (Mahé Malayalam dialect).

Lao French is spoken in Laos. It goes back to the French colonization of Indochina despite a decline in the language after the country's independence and the communist takeover. A revival has now raised the number of students learning French to 35%. In addition, the Laotian élite and the elderly population speak French, which is the diplomatic language of Laos.

Vietnamese French is spoken in Vietnam, which has the largest Francophone population in Asia. Over 5% of the population learn the language or speak it well. French is also spoken among the elderly in Vietnam as a legacy of the colonial French era and also by the country's élite. A French pidgin, Tây Bồi, was spoken by Vietnamese servants in French households during the colonial era. Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the number of French-speakers in Vietnam and the number of students taking the language have declined, but French remains taught as an optional foreign language in higher education.

Aostan French (French: "français valdôtain") is the variety of French spoken in the Aosta Valley of Italy, where there is a significant trilingual francophone population. Some expressions, words and phrases are different from Standard French, some of them are similar to Swiss French and some reflecting the influence of Piedmontese language or Italian. Both French and Italian overlay the indigenous local language continuum of Aosta Valley, called "Valdôtain" (locally, "patois"), which is Franco-Provençal in type.

Belgian French (French: "français de Belgique") is the variety of French spoken mainly in the French Community of Belgium, alongside related minority regional languages such as Walloon, Picard, Champenois and Gaumais. Belgian French and the French of northern France are almost identical.

Notable features include a strong distinction between long and short vowels, the lack of the approximant, and the use of certain Belgicisms.

Jersey Legal French is the official dialect of French used administratively in Jersey. Notable features include some archaic word choices and the words "septante" and "nonante" for "seventy" and "ninety" respectively.

Meridional French (French: "français méridional") is the regional variant of the French spoken in Occitania. It is strongly influenced by Occitan.

Swiss French () is the variety of French spoken in the French-speaking area of Switzerland known as Romandy. The differences between Swiss French and Parisian French are minor and mostly lexical.