“Rural Ontario” is different than rural areas of the U.S. As you make your way up the Ottawa River valley you find that most of rural Ontario is forested with rocky soil. Combined with the cold climate, it’s not conducive to agriculture at all. Logging and mining have historically been the dominant industries in these areas, and they’ve been slowly fading over time.
For all you geology/geography fans out there, you just described the Canadian Shield, the part of Canada that was covered in glaciers in the last major Ice Age. (All of Ontario, most of Quebec and the Labrador part of Newfoundland are in the Canadian Shield.) Indeed, you can see the from the air the demarcation between the maximum extent of the glaciers and fertile farmland in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Indeed, the farmland south of the Canadian Shield in the provinces I mentioned are some of the richest farmland in the world when it comes to growing staple grain crops.
I have gone on fishing trips near Red Lake, Ontario which is about 1200 miles to the northwest of Toronto. The main businesses are gold mining, lumber, and fishing resorts. There is not much else going on. The people in that part of Canada have more in common with the the people of Winnipeg, Manitoba which is a few hours to the west.