It comprises Manitoulin Island primarily, as well as a number of smaller islands surrounding it, such as Barrie, Cockburn, and Great La Cloche islands. Previously it included the municipality of Killarney on the mainland, until this was transferred to Sudbury District in the late 1990s. Subsequently, more mainland portions were added to Killarney and these, together with Unorganized Mainland Manitoulin District, were also transferred to Sudbury District in 2006, about 1,600 square kilometres (600 sq mi) in all.[2]
Geography
The district has an area of 3,107.13 square kilometres (1,199.67 sq mi),[1] making it the smallest district in Ontario. It is in the northern part of Lake Huron, separated from the mainland by the North Channel to the north and by the Georgian Bay to the east.
As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the Manitoulin District had a population of 13,935 living in 6,144 of its 9,302 total private dwellings, a change of 5.1% from its 2016 population of 13,255. With a land area of 3,073.54 km2 (1,186.70 sq mi), it had a population density of 4.5/km2 (11.7/sq mi) in 2021.[4]
Notes: 2006 population adjusted for 2011 boundaries is 12,632. References: 2021[5] 2016[6] 2011[1] earlier[7][8]
Services
Like the other districts of Northern Ontario, the Manitoulin District does not have a county or regional municipality tier of government. All services in the district are provided either by the individual municipalities or directly by the provincial government. Services are provided jointly with the Sudbury District from its district seat in Espanola.
Media
The district is served by two weekly community newspapers, the Manitoulin Expositor in Little Current and the Manitoulin West Recorder in Gore Bay; the papers are sister publications both owned and operated by the McCutcheon family.