All photos eastbound except one.


Avenue Atwater Avenue - bilingualism TO THE EXTREME!! The first, more modern photo show the new style of exit arrow (in yellow) that Ontario is keen on and I'm much less so. The older photo, courtesy Doug Kerr, still signs the Regional Route number for Exit 121, and has a cool diagrammatic to go with it.


Yes, even though Highway 417 is an east-west freeway, it's numbered as if it runs north from the Québec border, and thus numbers decrease instead of increase as one heads east. To mimic Québec's TO/VERS plate, and follow the unique EXIT/SORTIE and ugly new exit arrow off to the right, one must use local streets like Nicholas St. to connect from this freeway to Autoroute 5. It appears there may have once been plans to connect them, but I don't think they will ever gain traction. Photos of the ghost ramp coming in from the right, which may have been from Lees Avenue or, more likely, signaled a potential southward extension to the current mini-freeway at the exit, are courtesy Lou Corsaro.


Similar but different in the westbound direction, with another diagrammatic, courtesy Doug Kerr.


Once you're east of Ottawa (proper - these towns are still part of Carleton County, which is now the Ottawa-Carleton Region), don't hope to escape bilingual signs. Vars and Embrun, as Francophone as the names may be, are the nearest towns in English-speaking Ontario. (Actually, there is a "line" past which French becomes the dominant language, and from what one gas station attendant told me, it's approximately at Exit 96 to the west. He referred to people on either side of Boundary Road speaking the language appropriate to that side. I assume at least part of his story is Canadian humor.) This photo is really here for the strange font used on the RR 33 shield.


In Ontario, construction colors are orange and black, in a way a lot more rigid than in the United States. The drums, therefore, are not reflective, but resemble Abraham Lincoln on Halloween. Notice that unlike American arrowboards, the Ontarian arrowboard has the arrows outlined in black against an orange sign, so that the arrow itself has to be flipped before the sign can be used.


Oh, really, these exits lead to Ontario? Gee, thanks, Ontario. Actually, these are service signs for exits that have no services. So why the signs?


There's nothing odd about a Highway turning into a County Road, but that Highway shield looks awfully wide for just two digits. I'm not sure if there is a narrower variant, though. By the way, as English-looking as Hawkesbury looks, it's actually 70% French-speaking.


No bones about which language will be spoken here. This is an Ontario-erected sign for what will be Sortie 1 on Autoroute 40 in Québec. Good job on the shield.

Into Québec on Autoroute 40
Exit 118 to Autoroute 5
Into Ottawa
Back to Ontario Roads
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