I also grew up in Canada. After graduating high school I attended MIT for my bachelor’s degree. As an international student at MIT, I was invited to show up a couple of days early and attend a welcome event for international students. This gave me at least one peek into the type of international students who get accepted to the top ranked American universities. It was a humbling experience (“How did I get accepted here” came to mind). The international students at the top US universities are in many, many cases coming in with very impressive accomplishments.
Just being the #1 or #2 student in your high school is not likely to be sufficient to get you accepted to a university on the “MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Chicago” level. It would be a start, but you will need quite a bit more.
If you are a top 5% student in your high school, and a very good hockey player, then I will point out that Harvard has a hockey team (actually 2, men’s and woman’s). Right now Harvard does have some Canadian players on both their men’s and women’s varsity hockey teams. I would be surprised if they ever fail to have a few Canadians on their hockey teams. A few other top universities will be the same.
In most cases the top ranked universities in the US do not have merit based financial aid. You can run the NPC and see what they are likely to cost you. Without need based aid they are insanely expensive. My kids and I have dual citizenship but live in the US. Our one daughter who just graduated from university in Canada (and more recently started her first professional job in the US) spent less for four years of university in Canada than it would have cost us for one year at one of the top ranked universities in the US. Lower ranked US universities if we could get merit aid, or our in-state public universities, would have been somewhere in the middle.
You have some superb universities in Ontario. Toronto, Queen’s, McMaster, and Waterloo come to mind but I know that there are quite a few more.
Two more things to think about: If you graduate from a university in the US, this will not give you the legal right to stay and work in the US. You will be required to return to your home country. However, at least in my experience Canadian employers prefer to hire graduates from the very good Canadian universities. Also, universities in the US have a wider range of general education requirements. You will be required to take more courses in unrelated fields. My daughter who recently graduated from university in Canada in contrast was allowed to take more classes in her major or in related fields. This means that graduates from Canadian universities do come out very well prepared for employment and for graduate programs.
One thing that you should very seriously consider: Get a bachelor’s degree in Canada, and then consider getting a master’s degree at one of the top universities in the US. Admissions at the top universities in the US will know how strong the academics are at the top Canadian universities (or even at average Canadian universities).