Shining Waters: Lake Ontario

We started our trip around the Great Lakes almost a year ago with a post about Lake Superior. We’ve moved from west to east, as the waters flow, through the largest freshwater system on earth. Today we’re moving to the final, easternmost lake, and the only one that does not border the state of Michigan – Lake Ontario. 

Lake Ontario is the smallest Great Lake by surface area, although only slightly smaller than Lake Erie. However, it is significantly deeper at an average of 283 feet (Erie’s average depth: 66 feet). This means that it has almost four times the volume of water of Lake Erie. This fact will be important for a future post about Toronto’s deep lake water cooling system. Stay tuned on that front!

Water comes into the lake from the Niagara River which famously drops over Niagara Falls. In the eastern basin of the lake, water flows out into the St. Lawrence River on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s thought that “Ontario” means “lake of shining waters” in the native Huron language. However, Lake Ontario lacks some of the physical and maritime beauty of some of the other Great Lakes. Several factors also make it the least productive commercial fishery of the Great Lakes.  

The dynamics of wind across Lake Ontario has a number of impacts. One is substantial lake effect snow which famously dumps snow on places like Syracuse, NY (the snowiest city in the United States). But another impact of the wind are some pocket areas of microclimates that allow for a vibrant wine industry – notably right near Niagara Falls.

The human and built world on Lake Ontario’s shores has several remarkable places.

The first is Toronto which, with a population of around 2.9 million people, is the fourth largest city in North America. It’s a dynamic, bustling, global city. We had a terrific three days there in the summer of 2023 that I’ll share about in a future post.

Little known fact: It’s said that Babe Ruth hit his first home run ever in 1914 out of a ballpark in Toronto and into Lake Ontario.

Across the lake, Rochester is New York’s third largest city. While the city has experienced economic challenges over the past half-century, it has a rich history in the fields of photography, xerography, and optics as the home of Eastman Kodak, Xerox and Bausch & Lomb among other companies.

Areas to the west of Rochester attract millions of visitors to see Niagara Falls. There are actually three water falls – Horseshoe Falls, American Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls. 3,160 tons of water flow over the three every second. Niagara Falls is the oldest state park in America. It opened in 1885 and over 8 million people visit every year.

Some tourists make their way to Niagara-by-the-Lake, a popular summer destination at the mouth of the Niagara River with wineries and a well-known summer theater festival.

In my post on the Great Lakes as characters of the 1980s movie The Breakfast Club, I said that Lake Ontario would be like Brian Johnson as played by Anthony Michael Hall – the small and cerebral lake. But it has ambitions for something larger. As waters flow into the St. Lawrence River, the freshwater of the Great Lakes is ocean-bound. It will eventually meet the saltwater and will no longer be of the inland seas, but of the enormous expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.