King's Highway 2 , commonly referred to as Highway 2 , is the lowest-numbered provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario , and was originally part of a series of identically numbered highways which started in Windsor , stretched through Quebec and New Brunswick , and ended in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Prior to the s, Highway 2 travelled through many of the major cities in Southern Ontario , including Windsor, Chatham , London , Brantford , Hamilton , Burlington , Mississauga , Toronto , Oshawa , Belleville , Kingston and Cornwall , and many other smaller towns and communities.
Once the primary eastβwest route across the southern portion of Ontario, most of Highway 2 was bypassed by Highway , which was completed in The August completion of Highway bypassed one final section through Brantford. Virtually all of the The entire route remains driveable, but as County Road 2 or County Highway 2 in most regions.
Portions of what became Highway 2 served as early settlement trails, post roads and stagecoach routes. While the arrival of the railroad in the midth century diminished the importance of the route, the advent of the bicycle and later the automobile renewed interest in roadbuilding. By this time, it was one of the dominant transportation arteries across southern Ontario and was The section of Highway 2 between Hamilton and Toronto along Lakeshore Road became the first paved intercity road in Ontario in Beginning in the mids, the DHO began reconstructing several portions of the highway into the new German-inspired "dual highway", including east from Scarborough along Kingston Road.
This would be the progenitor to Highway , which was built in a patchwork fashion across Southern Ontario throughout the s and early s, often as bypass of and parallel to Highway 2 except between Woodstock and Toronto. Conversely, the importance of Highway 2 for long-distance travel was all but eliminated, and coupled with the increasing suburbanization of the Greater Toronto Area , it became simply a series of urban arterials street between Hamilton and Oshawa. Having been replaced in importance by the parallel freeways of Highway , the Queen Elizabeth Way , and finally Highway , the province gradually transferred sections of the route back to the municipal, county and regional governments that it passed through, a process known as downloading.
In and , the province downloaded Since , Highway 2 has remained in the provincial highway system solely as a connection between westbound Thousand Islands Parkway and eastbound Highway Highway 2 begins at the eastern town limits of Gananoque, and travels east a short distance before gently curving northward.
