"The image on the cover of this volume suggests many of the most common themes in Ontario's history: the landscape, natural resources, commercial activity, the railways that played such a central part in Confederation, the border that represents both separation from and links to the United States. It also omits much of the human conflict and human diversity that marks the province's past. As Peter Baskerville points out, Ontario was never the uniform entity that many Canadians have imagined. For example, the sharp physical division between north and south was reflected in the complex relations that existed between the Iroquoian peoples of the south and the Algonkian peoples of the north long before the first European settlers arrived." "Ontario: Image, Identity, and Power is generously illustrated with some 150 paintings, drawings, and photographs that shed their own light on Ontario's social, economic, and political evolution."--Jacket.