Ontario Highway 83
former highway in Ontario
King's Highway 83, also known as Highway 83, was a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. The route travelled inwards from the shores of Lake Huron, beginning at Highway 21 north of Grand Bend and travelling eastward to Highway 23 in Russeldale. Today the route is known by the local names Dashwood Road and Thames Road, as well as by county-assigned designations Huron County Road 83 and Perth County Road 20.
Route description
Highway 83 was a straight highway connecting Highway 21 north of Grand Bend with Highway 23 in Russeldale, lying almost entirely within Huron County. Today, the majority of the former route is known as County Road 83, although the portion that lay within Perth County became part of County Road 20.
Between the termini of the route, the highway passed through the communities of Dashwood, Thames Road and Farquhar, as well as the town of Exeter. Outside these locations, the surroundings of the former route consist of a mix of farmland and woodlots. West of Hay, itself lying immediately north of Exeter, the Hay Swamp, a provincially significant wetland and conservation area,
lies immediately north of the route.
History
Highway 83 was first established by the Department of Highways in 1938 to connect Highway 21 near Grand Bend with Highway 23 in Russeldale. On April 13, 1938, the 38.6-kilometre (24.0 mi) Thames Road was assumed into the expanding provincial highway network.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ontario Highway 83” is former highway in Ontario. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ontario, Highway and former, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7094778. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ontario Highway 83” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.