Orillia

Town in Simcoe County, southern Ontario, Canada, at the junction of lakes Simcoe and Couchiching, 106 km/66 mi north of Toronto; population (1990) 25,900. Lumbering, once the economic mainstay of the community, has been largely replaced by tourism and the manufacture of machinery, wood and steel products, boats, and electrical appliances.

A community known as the Narrows was established here in 1832, in ancient Huron, later Chippewa, territory. In 1902 the Orillia Company built Canada's first municipally owned hydroelectric plant here. The summer home of humorist Stephen Leacock (1869–1944), who made Orillia his ‘Mariposa’, is preserved.