Golden Horseshoe

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The census divisions that constitute the original Golden Horseshoe appear in red on the map. The divisions in green are more recently considered part of the "Greater" Golden Horseshoe, formerly a region known as South Central Ontario.

The built-up region extends from Niagara Falls at the eastern end of the Niagara Peninsula, wraps around Lake Ontario west to Hamilton, anchored by Toronto on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario, continuing to the east of Oshawa and spreading inland in all directions away from the Lake Ontario shoreline.

A July 13, 2004 report from the provincial Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal entitled Places to Grow coined the term Greater Golden Horseshoe, extending the boundaries west to Waterloo Region, north to Barrie, and northeast to Peterborough. A subsequent edition released February 16, 2005, broadened the term further, adding Brant, Haldimand and Northumberland Counties. Statistics Canada defined the region first in its 2001 census as the Extended Golden Horseshoe, combining many CMAs.

Under the 2001 StatsCan definition, the population was 6,704,598 in the 2001 census with an estimated population of 7,400,000^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} as of early 2006. Of these people approximately 5,600,000 live in the Greater Toronto Area. There is also a wider, but less used, definition of an international megapolis which extends across the border into western New York state, including the Buffalo-Niagara Area and Rochester, New York urban areas. The total population in this definition is over 9 million.

The "horseshoe" part of the region's name is derived from the characteristic horseshoe shape of the west end of lake ontario with Burlington roughly positioned in the centre. The "golden" part is historically attributed to the region's wealth and prosperity, according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. (An alternative explanation often quoted attributes it to its bright, or "golden", appearance from space, as a result of a continuous urban stretch of nighttime lights; however, the name predates satellite imagery.)

List of regions

• Niagara
• Hamilton
• Halton
• Peel
• Toronto
• York
• Durham

• Haldimand
• Six Nations Reserve
• Brant
• Kitchener-Waterloo
• Guelph
• Wellington
• Dufferin
• Simcoe
• Kawartha Lakes
• Peterborough
• Northumberland

References