Quebec City–Windsor Corridor

The 1,150-kilometre Quebec City-Windsor Corridor in central Canada is the most densely-populated, wealthy, and heavily-industrialized area of the country, containing over half of Canada's population, at 16 million, and three of its four largest cities. It has many similarities to the BosWash megalopolis that extends from Boston to Washington, D.C. 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 along the corridor. Much as 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 through which the corridor traverses.

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, St. Catharines, Barrie, and Sarnia are connected to the major transportation routes by feeder highways and rail lines.

For most of its length, the corridor runs through a narrow strip of farmland with the Canadian Shield to the north and the St. Lawrence Seaway 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.

The section of the corridor from Montreal to Hamilton is close to or actually on the U.S. border.

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.

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.

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.

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)

Non-VIA passenger rail

In addition to VIA, two 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 Montreal/Dorion-Rigaud from Montreal to Dorion
Agence métropolitaine de transport Montreal/Mont-Saint-Hilaire from Montreal to Mont-Saint-Hilaire

Non-rail transportation

The corridor is held together by a series of major transportation routes, all running close together and sometimes overlapping each-other.

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.

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. During the 1960's, 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. The low-level airway V98 runs almost immediately above the other transportation routes, though it is not the most direct great circle route between Windsor and Quebec City.

Inside the corridor, the busiest area of travel is the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle. Air Canada serves it with its Rapidair service, offering hourly flights among the three cities.