Quebec City-Windsor Corridor
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The 1,150-kilometre Quebec City-Windsor Corridor is the most densely-populated and heavily-industrialised region of Canada. With over 17 million people (2001 Census), it contained 56.8 percent of the Canadian population, and three of the four largest cities in the country in 2001. Many urban areas adjacent to the corridor may be considered part of the region, having strong ties to it, such as Sherbrooke, Quebec; Buffalo, New York; and Detroit, Michigan. If these regions are included, the population could be said to be over 25 million. In its relative importance to the country's economic and political infrastructure, it has many similarities to the area along the Northeast Corridor in the United States.
The name is derived from the names of the cities at each end and was first popularized by VIA Rail, which runs frequent passenger rail service on what it simply calls "The Corridor". Much like the Northeast Corridor in the United States, the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor name has been expanded to refer to the geography and demography of the region the corridor traverses.
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[edit] Geography
The corridor extends from Quebec City, Quebec in the northeast to Windsor, Ontario (immediately south of Detroit) in the southwest, running north of the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie.
Significant urban areas along the route include (from east to west) Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, Drummondville, Montreal, Cornwall, Brockville, Kingston, Belleville, Oshawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Chatham, and Windsor. In addition to these, Sherbrooke, Ottawa, Peterborough, Guelph, Brantford, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Barrie, and Sarnia are connected to the major transportation routes by feeder highways and rail lines.
Cities in upstate New York and southeastern Michigan are not part of this corridor, but have many significant cultural, political and economical ties with urban areas near the border (such as the Golden Horseshoe and Windsor). If included, these regions would increase the population by over 7 million.
For most of its length, the corridor runs through a narrow strip of farmland with the Canadian Shield to the north and the Appalachian Mountains or the Great Lakes to the south. A drive of only a few minutes north from many of the corridor's cities or towns will show an abrupt change from flat farmland and limestone bedrock to the granite hills of the shield. The highways often run right on the boundary of the shield, and it is possible to observe the frequent change from limestone to granite in rockcuts along the way. There are, however, several wider areas of flat farmland, including the southwestern Ontario peninsula between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, the eastern Ontario delta from Ottawa to the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers at Montreal, and the Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal.
Because of the moderating influence of the Great Lakes and the frequent influx of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, the corridor — particularly the western half — has a markedly warmer climate than the rest of central Canada. The rich soil and the warmer climate mean that the flora and fauna in the corridor are similar to those in the deciduous forests of the eastern United States as far south as Virginia, rather than the evergreen forests that cover most of central Canada up to the Arctic.
[edit] History
During the French colonization of what would later be Canada in seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, only the eastern third of the corridor, from Quebec City to Montreal, was heavily settled. The major cross-country route used by voyageurs in the fur trade continued west from Montreal through the Canadian shield along the Ottawa Valley to Lake Nipissing and Georgian Bay, passing far to the north of what would later become the Ontario part of the corridor. The lack of good farmland made that route unsuitable for settlement, however, and the frequent portages made transportation in boats larger than canoes difficult. When the English-speaking United Empire Loyalists arrived in Canada after the U.S. War of Independence, they naturally settled along the narrow strip north of the St. Lawrence River and lower Great Lakes, where good farm land was available and larger boats could be used for transportation, and these people formed the English-speaking nucleus of what would later be Ontario (by contrast, many of the Ontario towns along the old fur-trading and logging route to the north, through the Ottawa Valley and westward, still have large French-speaking populations). Initially, Kingston was the principal city of the English half of the corridor, but eventually Toronto grew and eclipsed it in importance.
During both the North American part of the Seven Years' War between England and France (known as the French and Indian War in the United States) and the War of 1812 between England and the United States, settlements along the corridor were at the centre of the conflicts. Ottawa was eventually chosen as Canada's capital precisely because it was further inland, and thus, less vulnerable to attack, though it is now also considered part of the corridor. The Rideau Canal was constructed to provide a way to bypass the most vulnerable part of the corridor, from Cornwall to Kingston, where it lies directly on the U.S. border.
[edit] Transportation
The corridor is held together by a series of major transportation routes — water, road, rail, and air — all running close together and sometimes overlapping each other. These routes are anchored by Highway 401 in Ontario from Windsor leading into Quebec's Highway 40 to Quebec City.
[edit] Water transportation
The oldest transportation route is the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, where the series of channels and locks that make up the St. Lawrence Seaway allow ocean-going vessels and Lakers to travel the entire length of the corridor.
[edit] Road transportation
For road travel, the Ontario portion of the corridor was originally joined by Highway 2 (often known locally by names such as "Montreal Road", "Toronto Road", "Dundas Street", or "Kingston Road") following the older stagecoach roads and the paths and trails that predated those. Highway 2 still forms the main street of many of the corridor's Ontario towns and cities, which were built around it, but large parts of the highway are now maintained by counties or municipalities rather than the province. From 1938 to 1968 the province of Ontario built Highway 401, a freeway that bypasses most of the town and city centres, and it is now the main road as far as the Quebec border, where it connects to Autoroute 20, which continues east through the Quebec part of the corridor to Quebec City. When viewing any transportation map of Canada, or of just Ontario and Quebec, one can easily notice that the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor is centered along the former route of Ontario provincial highway 2, and modern-day Ontario Highway 401 in Ontario, and Autoroute 20 in Quebec.
[edit] Rail transportation
The Canadian National Railway and part of the Canadian Pacific Railway main lines run the length of the corridor. The corridor is the busiest service area for VIA Rail, which runs the majority of Canada's intercity passenger trains on trackage through the corridor, mostly using CN's former Grand Trunk Railway network. VIA derives the majority of its revenue from traffic in this corridor.
[edit] Passenger rail
The following VIA services operate along the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor:
- Montreal-Alexandria-Ottawa
- Montreal-Charny-Quebec City
- Montreal-Toronto-Oakville
- Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa
- Toronto-Kitchener-Sarnia
- Toronto-London-Sarnia
- Toronto-London-Windsor
- Toronto-Niagara Falls (with service to Buffalo and New York City)
[edit] Non-VIA passenger rail
In addition to VIA, three commuter rail agencies operate passenger service using Quebec City-Windsor Corridor tracks.
- GO Transit Lakeshore West from Toronto to Hamilton
- GO Transit Lakeshore East from Toronto to Oshawa
- Agence métropolitaine de transport Dorion-Rigaud line from Montreal to Dorion
- Agence métropolitaine de transport Mont-Saint-Hilaire line from Montreal to Mont-Saint-Hilaire
- OC Transpo O-Train from suburban Ottawa to the city core, on former Canadian Pacific Railway tracks
[edit] Air transportation
The major airports along the corridor are Toronto Pearson International Airport, Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport, Québec/Jean Lesage International Airport, Hamilton/John C. Munro International Airport and the military airbase at CFB Trenton.
Other civilian corridor airports with scheduled airline service include Windsor Airport, Sarnia (Chris Hadfield) Airport, London International Airport, Region of Waterloo International Airport, Toronto City Centre Airport, Kingston/Norman Rogers Airport, and Ottawa-Gatineau Airport. While it no longer has scheduled airline service, Toronto/Buttonville Municipal Airport is Canada's 9th busiest airport by number of flights due to heavy general aviation traffic. Montréal-Mirabel International Airport is a large facility near Montreal that now serves only cargo flights.
Inside the corridor, the busiest area of travel is the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle. Air Canada serves the three cities with its Rapidair service, offering hourly flights, and its principal competitor WestJet offers similar service; both airlines also offer regular scheduled flights to Quebec City.
Porter Airlines runs frequent commuter flights from Toronto City Centre Airport to Ottawa and Montreal, while Air Canada Jazz offers commuter flights connecting many of the smaller airports to Toronto Pearson or Montreal. In addition to scheduled air service, some of the airports along the corridor also have frequent charter flights to popular tourist destinations.
[edit] See also
- BosWash - a similar multi-urban transportation corridor in the U.S.
[edit] External references
[edit] General information
- Making Transportation Sustainable: A Case Study of the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor from Environment Canada, including information about the population and extent of the corridor.
- Transportation in Quebec - Economic Overview from Transport Canada, describing the population and transportation clustering along the corridor in Quebec.
- Air pollution in the Windsor–Quebec City corridor: the price of the automobile?, from Environment Canada
- Population distribution in Ontario from the Canadian Encyclopedia
[edit] Transportation
- Discussion of pros and cons of jet trains in the corridor
- VIA Rail, who originally named the corridor.
- AMT
- O Train
- GO Transit
- Air Canada's RapidAir service
