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Geography and Climate
Canada is a large country, the second-largest in the world. Spanning six time zones and bordered by three oceans.
Even with over 30 million inhabitants, it is less densely populated than most countries. Even so, it has major cosmopolitan centers such as Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, along with numerous mid-sized cities, small towns, and rural areas. Canada is made up of ten provinces and three territories.
The temperatures (measured in Celsius) and weather conditions vary greatly. All parts of Canada have four seasons, and extremes of heat and cold are more pronounced in the eastern and central regions than in the Pacific coast region.
Culture
As a country of immigrants, Canada has a special appreciation for cultural diversity. The country's earliest inhabitants were the Aboriginal Peoples, followed by French and British settlers, and Canada is officially bilingual (English and French). Today, however, 40 percent of the population has an ethnic background other than British or French, and more than 130 languages are spoken.
First Inhabitants Aboriginal Peoples, also known as First Nations. Many historians believe that these first settlers probably came to what is now Canada from Asia thousands of years ago. Aboriginal Peoples still make up two to three percent of the Canadian population.
The main period of European settlement began in the early 1600s with the French, who established settlements on the east coast and in the St. Lawrence River valley. British explorers and settlers soon followed, and there was considerable competition and conflict between the two groups over trade (mainly in furs) and territory.
This conflict eventually led to the battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, in which the British army defeated the French. As a result, all of the Canadian colonies came under British control.
In the 1780s, following the U.S. Declaration of Independence, large numbers of "Loyalists" (people of British origin who were loyal to the British Crown) left the United States and moved to the Canadian colonies. Most settled in areas now part of Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Another large wave of European settlement occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the Canadian authorities encouraged people from all over Europe to come to Canada and settle in the areas west of Manitoba.
On July 1st, 1867, four colonies joined together to become a federation of provinces called the Dominion of Canada. This event, known as Confederation, was the foundation of Canada as we know it today. July 1st is a national holiday (Canada Day) in recognition of the event.
Because the four founding colonies were British, the legislation that joined them together and set out the framework for Canadian government was also British. This meant that the British parliament still had ultimate legal control over how Canada was run. This situation ended in 1982 when the Canadian and British parliaments jointly passed legislation establishing Canada's full legal independence.
The original four provinces were New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec, and the federation was expanded over the following years to include the other provinces and territories.