Ontario has some interesting population census data on how the province has grown. Many European settlers from Scotland and Ireland were moving to Ontario around 1850 due to the highland clearances that increased in the early 1800s after the Battle of Culloden about a 100 years earlier. The potato famine in 1848 added greatly to this mass exodus.
In 1851, 86 per cent of Ontario’s population lived in rural areas. By 2016, 165 years later, the figures were exactly reversed, with 86 per cent of the population living in urban areas. Urban areas have significantly increased in the Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario and have grown in large numbers since 2016.
More than 64 per cent of Ontario’s population now lives in the predominantly urban Golden Horseshoe area. Ontario’s population when I was born in 1945 was four million. Now, it is 16 million in 2024 — four times as many people during the almost 80 years of my lifetime.
Our way of life has significantly changed. As a young boy living in a rural area, every year I looked forward to attending the Markdale Fall Fair, one of many fall fairs held every September by community volunteers. We would set up on Friday; Saturday was always the main day with shows of livestock, horse pulls, cattle judging and midways.
We ran late into Saturday evening, then started to wrap up the fair on Sunday with take down and clean up late Sunday and early Monday morning. It was a way of life in our rural community. Several years ago, I got in.