Ontario in the 1950s Through Amazing Color Photos

Ontario is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Located in Central Canada, it is Canada’s most populous province, with 38.3 percent of the country’s population, and is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec). Ontario is Canada’s fourth-largest jurisdiction 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 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 2,700 km (1,678 mi) border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the westerly Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. There is only about 1 km (0.6 mi) of actual land border, made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.

The great majority of Ontario’s population and arable land is in Southern Ontario. In contrast, Northern Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation. These amazing photos from Archives Of Ontario captured life of Ontario in the 1950s.

Mrs. George Baxter lacing a beaver pelt into a drying frame. Overhead hangs half of a tanned moosehide, Washi Lake, Ontario, 1951

51 St. Cyril's and St. Methodius' Ukrainian Catholic Church, on the Queen Elizabeth Way, near St. Catharines, Ontario, 1951

Canoe lessons, Ontario, 1952

Garden in front of Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, 1952

Picnickers at Aubrey Falls, Ontario, 1952

Chief Jeremiah Sainawap of the Big Trout Lake band raising flag at the council house to announce a meeting of trappers with government wildlife officers, Big Trout Lake, Ontario, 1953

A Cree boy at Weenusk with a caribou skull, Ontario, February 20, 1955

A dance at Fort Severn, Ontario, circa 1955

Moses Koostachin at a noon stop while en route from Weenusk to Hawley Lake, Ontario, February 1955

Mrs. Duncan Gray and her daughter untangling a gillnet, Fort Severn, Ontario, 1955

Smoke house, Waweagama Lake (Round Lake), Patricia District, Round Lake, Ontario, circa 1955

Sphagnum moss is drying as stuffing for an infants moss bag or tikinagan, Lansdowne House (now Neskantaga First Nation), Ontario, 1956

Woman with a child in a tikinagan, Sandy Lake, Ontario, 1956

Blue Water Bridge, Sarnia, Ontario, 1958

Skyway Bridge, Burlington, Ontario, 1958

Stanley Naveau with a moosehide that has been de-haired, and hung to cure before being cut into "babiche". Babiche is rawhide lacing such as used for snowshoe webbing, Mattagami Reserve, Gogama, Ontario, 1958

Woman plucking geese, Ontario, 1958

York Mills Collegiate, York Mills, Ontario, 1958

Battlefield House, Stoney Creek, Ontario, 1959

City Hall, Barrie, Ontario, 1959

Fort Malden, Amherstburg, Ontario, 1959

Hurontario Street, Collingwood, Ontario, 1959

Main Street, Barrie, Ontario, 1959

Main Street, Orillia, Ontario, 1959

McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 1959

Monument to Joseph Brant, Brantford, Ontario, 1959

New City Hall, Ottawa, Ontario, 1959

Old St. Paul's Church, Woodstock, Ontario, 1959

Pioneer Village, Fanshawe Park, London, Ontario, 1959

The Bell Homestead, home of Alexander Graham Bell, Brantford, Ontario, 1959

Woman of the Echum family fleshing a beaver pelt and scraping it during the "frost drying" process, near Gogoma, Ontario, 1959

Woodstock City Hall, Woodstock, Ontario, 1959