The Great Lakes region of North America includes the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. The region borders the Great Lakes and forms a distinctive historical, economic, and cultural region. The Great Lakes Commission, authorized by the eight American states and Ontario, confirmed by the Canadian and American federal governments recognizes a formal U.S. - Canadian International Great Lakes Region, with the additional inclusion of the Canadian Province of Quebec.
The Great Lakes Region takes its name from the corresponding geological formation of the Great Lakes Basin, a narrow watershed encompassing The Great Lakes, among watersheds to the region's north (Hudson Bay), west (Mississippi), east and south (Ohio). To the east, the rivers of St. Lawrence, Richelieu, Hudson, Mohawk and Susquehanna form an arc of watersheds east to The Atlantic.
The Great Lakes region, as distinct from The Great Lakes Basin, defines a unit of political entities defined by the U.S. states and the Canadian Province of Ontario encompassing the Great Lakes watershed, and bordering one or more lakes.
Read more about Great Lakes Region: History, Economy, Population Centers
Famous quotes containing the words lakes and/or region:
“Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)