to a National Park, is the southernmost point on the Canadian mainland, on the same latitude, in fact, as northern California. This is Central Canada, the country’s industrial and commercial heartland, home to half the country’s population, and a region with the nation’s most productive agricultural land.

The landscape here offers none of the spectacular landforms of other parts of Canada, such as the rugged mountains of the West. The topography is mainly flat or gently rolling, most of it seldom rising above 250 metres. The flattest areas are found along the banks of the St. Lawrence and the north and south shores of Lake Ontario. A steep rock face provides the ecozone’s most prominent physical feature, the Niagara Escarpment, whose line of 300-metre high cliffs and bluffs runs south-east to northwest for 725 kilometres, from the Niagara River – site of the world-famous falls – to the Manitoulin Islands, in Lake Huron.

During the last glacial period, 10,000 to 12,000