Seven people were killed when a small plane crashed north of Kingston, Ontario, on Wednesday evening, the authorities in Canada said Thursday.

It was not immediately clear what caused the plane, a Piper PA-32 registered in the United States, to crash after 5 p.m. The wreckage was found in a heavily wooded area more than three miles north of Kingston, which is between Toronto and Montreal and near the border with America.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which is investigating the crash, said the plane “collided with terrain” during a flight from the Toronto Buttonville Municipal Airport to Quebec City. The board said that the angle of impact was “very steep” and that there had been “deteriorating weather” at the time of the crash.

“We will obtain detailed weather information as the investigation proceeds,” Ken Webster, an investigator with the board who is leading the inquiry into the crash, said at a news conference on Thursday.