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The 1,150-kilometre Quebec City-Windsor Corridor is the most densely-populated and heavily-industrialised region of Canada. With over 17 million people (2001 Census), it contained 56.8 percent of the Canadian population, and three of the five largest cities in the country in 2001. In its relative importance to the country's economic and political infrastructure, it has many similarities to the area along the Northeast Corridor 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 on what it simply calls "The Corridor". Much like 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 the corridor traverses.

Contents 1 Geography 2 History 3 Transportation 3.1 Water transportation 3.2 Road transportation 3.3 Rail transportation 3.3.1 Inter-city passenger rail 3.3.2 Commuter passenger rail 3.4 Air transportation 4 See also 5 External references 5.1 General information 5.2 Transportation

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, Guelph, Brantford, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Barrie, and Sarnia are connected to the major transportation routes by feeder highways and rail lines.

Cities located in neighboring American regions (such as Upstate New York and Southeastern Michigan) are not considered part of the corridor, but have many significant cultural, economic, and political ties with urban areas on or near the border (such as the Golden Horseshoe and Windsor, Ontario). Though sometimes, Detroit is included in this area due to its major influence over the region. If included, these areas would increase the population by over 7 million.

For most of its length, the corridor runs through a narrow strip of farmland with the Canadian Shield to the north and the Appalachian Mountains or the Great Lakes 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. Also surrounding Toronto is a minor Great Lakes Corridor of stratified limestone called the Niagara Escarpment

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.

Population: The majority of the Canadian Population is situated along this Corridor. For example according to the 2006 Canadian Census more than 2/3 of Ontario's Population live in this area. Likewise, In Montreal and Quebec City nearly half of Quebec's population live near or around them.

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.

The construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway during the late 1950's made it possible for some ocean-going vessels to travel the full length of the corridor and beyond to the upper Great Lakes, but resulted in the destruction of several villages in the Eastern Ontario portion of the corridor.

The corridor is held together by a series of major transportation routes — water, road, rail, and air — all running close together and sometimes overlapping each other. These routes are anchored by Highway 401, the world's busiest highway in Ontario from Windsor leading into Quebec's Highway 20 to Quebec City.

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 routes of older stagecoach roads and the paths and trails that predated them. 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. From 1938 to 1968 the province of Ontario built Highway 401, a freeway that bypasses most of the town and city centres. Highway 401 is now the main transportation route of the corridor up to the Quebec border, where it becomes Autoroute 20 and continues east through the Quebec part of the corridor to Quebec City. When viewing any transportation map of Canada, or of just Ontario and Quebec, one can easily notice that the corridor is generally centred around the route of the old Highway 2 and the current Highway 401 (in Ontario) and Autoroute 20 (in Quebec).

Both the Canadian National Railway (CN) and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) have extensive railway lines along the length of the Quebec-City-Windsor Corridor.

Main article: Corridor (VIA)

Published VIA Rail timetables refer to the route from Quebec City to Windsor as simply the Corridor.

The Corridor service area is the busiest in the VIA system, accounting for the majority of Canada's intercity passenger trains and ridership. VIA Rail mostly uses CN's former Grand Trunk Railway network but also uses part of the CP network as well.

VIA's Corridor service area includes the following routes:

• Montreal-Alexandria-Ottawa
• Montreal-Charny-Quebec City
• Montreal-Toronto-Oakville
• Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa
• Toronto-Kitchener-London-Sarnia
• Toronto-Oakville-Brantford-London-Windsor

Amtrak also offers an international service from New York City via Buffalo to Toronto.

Three commuter rail agencies offer services in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal using railway tracks in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor.

• GO Transit operates its Lakeshore West and Lakeshore East lines, connecting Hamilton in the west via Toronto to Oshawa in the east within the Toronto region.

• Agence métropolitaine de transport operates its Dorion-Rigaud and Mont-St-Hilaire lines, connecting Rigaud and Dorion in the west via Montreal to Mont-St-Hilaire in the east within the Montreal region.

• OC Transpo operates its O-Train in the western part of suburban Ottawa.

The major airports along the corridor are Toronto Pearson International Airport, Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport, Québec/Jean Lesage International Airport, Hamilton/John C. Munro International Airport and the military airbase at CFB Trenton.

Other civilian corridor airports with scheduled airline service include Windsor Airport, Sarnia (Chris Hadfield) Airport, London International Airport, Region of Waterloo International Airport, Toronto City Centre Airport, Kingston/Norman Rogers Airport, and Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport. While it no longer has scheduled airline service, Toronto/Buttonville Municipal Airport is Canada's 9th busiest airport by number of flights due to heavy general aviation traffic. Montréal-Mirabel International Airport is a large facility near Montreal that now serves only cargo flights.

Inside the corridor, the busiest area of travel is the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle. Air Canada serves the three cities with its Rapidair service, offering hourly flights, and its principal competitor WestJet offers similar service; Air Canada also offers regular scheduled flights to Quebec City.

Porter Airlines runs frequent commuter flights from Toronto City Centre Airport to Ottawa and Montreal, while Air Canada Jazz offers commuter flights connecting many of the smaller airports to Toronto Pearson or Montreal. In addition to scheduled air service, some of the airports along the corridor also have frequent charter flights to popular tourist destinations.

• BosWash - a similar multi-urban transportation corridor in the U.S.
• M4 Corridor - a corridor of business prowess in the United Kingdom.

• Making Transportation Sustainable: A Case Study of the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor from Environment Canada, including information about the population and extent of the corridor.
• Transportation in Quebec - Economic Overview from Transport Canada, describing the population and transportation clustering along the corridor in Quebec.
• Air pollution in the Windsor–Quebec City corridor: the price of the automobile?, from Environment Canada
• Population distribution in Ontario from the Canadian Encyclopedia
• Population distribution Canda from Stats Canada

• Discussion of pros and cons of jet trains in the corridor
• VIA Rail, who originally named the corridor.
• AMT
• O Train
• GO Transit
• Air Canada's RapidAir service