Franco-Ontarian
There are more than 600,000 francophones residing in Ontario. According to the 2016 Canadian census, there were 550,600 people living in Ontario who declared French their first official language spoken, 490,715 people who declared French their mother tongue, and 277,045 Ontarians who declared French as the language they speak most often at home. Over 1.4 million Ontarians reported themselves as bilingual, and 1.3 million Ontarians reported partial or full French ethnic origins. French-speaking Ontarians constitute the largest French-speaking community in Canada outside Quebec, as well as the largest minority language group within Ontario, and French is the fourth most common ethnic background in the province after English, Scottish and Irish.
Quebec diaspora
The development of mining and forestry resources in the northeastern and eastern regions of Ontario at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century attracted a large workforce from Quebec. A great part of today's half a million Franco-Ontarians are the descendants of these Quebec emigrants. The Francophone population of Ontario is today still concentrated mainly in the northeastern and eastern parts of Ontario, close to the border with Quebec, although smaller pockets of Francophone settlement exist throughout the province in areas like Windsor, Welland and St. Catherines.