Canada
Introduction :
Canada is a country of 32 million inhabitants that occupies the northern portion of the North American continent, and is the world's second largest country in area.
Inhabited for millennia by First Nations (aboriginal), Canada has evolved from a group of European colonies into an officially bilingual (English and French), multicultural federation, having peacefully obtained sovereignty from its last colonial possessor, Great Britain.
France sent the first large group of settlers in the 17th century, but Canada came to be dominated by the British until the country attained full independence in the 20th century. Its history has been affected by its inhabitants, its geography, and its relations with the outside world. |
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The origin of the name "Canada" comes from the expedition of explorer Jacques Cartier up the St. Lawrence River in 1535. The Iroquois pointing out the route to the village of Stadacona, the future site of Quebec City, used the word "kanata," the Huron-Iroquois word for village. Jacques Cartier used the word Canada to refer to both the settlement of Stadacona and the land surrounding it subject to Chief Donnacona.
By 1547, maps were showing the name Canada applied to everything north of the St. Lawrence River. The St. Lawrence River was called the "rivière du Canada" by Cartier, and the name stuck until the 1600s.
In the 1600s, the name Canada was often used loosely to refer to New France, and as land opened up to the west and south in the 1700s, the name Canada was applied to what is now the American midwest and as far south as present day Louisiana.
But it was not official.
In 1791, the Constitutional Act or Canada Act divided the Province of Quebec into two - the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada. In 1841, the two colonies were united again, this time as the Province of Canada.
At Confederation in 1867, the British North America Act officially joined the Province of Canada (Quebec and Ontario) with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to become "one Dominion under the name of Canada."
Canada wasn't the only name considered for the new dominion though. Other names suggested at the time of Confederation were
• Victorialand
• Borealia
• Cabotia
• Tuponia (The United Provinces of North America)
• Superior
• Norland
• Hochelaga
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The geography of Canada is vast and diverse. Occupying most of the northern portion of North America (precisely 41% of the continent), Canada is the world's second largest country in total area after Russia.
Canada spans an immense territory between the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east (hence the country's motto), with the United States to the south (contiguous United States) and northwest (Alaska), and the Arctic Ocean to the north; Greenland is to the northeast. Off the southern coast of Newfoundland lies Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, an overseas collectivity of France. Since 1925, Canada has claimed the portion of the Arctic between 60°W and 141°W longitude to the North Pole; however, this claim is contested.[1]
Covering 9,984,670 km² or 3,855,103 square miles (Land: 9,093,507 km² or 3,511,023 mi²; Water: 891,163 km² or 344,080 mi²), Canada is slightly less than three-fifths as large as Russia, less than 1.3 times larger than Australia, slightly smaller than Europe, and more than 40.9 times larger than the UK. In total area, Canada is slightly larger than both in turn the US and China; however, Canada is somewhat smaller than both in land area (China is 9,596,960 km² / 3,705,407 mi² and the US is 9,161,923 km² / 3,537,438 mi²), ranking fourth.
The northernmost settlement in Canada (and in the world) is Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert (just north of Alert, Nunavut) on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island – latitude 82.5°N – just 834 kilometres (518 mi) from the North Pole.
The magnetic North Pole lies within the Canadian Arctic territorial claim; however, recent measurements indicate it is moving towards Siberia.
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A massive dome of Precambrian rock dominates the Canadian landscape. Called the Canadian Shield, it lies at or near the surface of the Earth. Shaped somewhat like a giant inverted saucer, it sweeps from the Amundsen Gulf southward and eastward across the top of the Prairie Provinces, around Hudson Bay to the Atlantic Ocean, encompassing most of Ontario and Quebec and all of Labrador. The sedimentary rocks that make up the remainder of the country's surface and near surface rest on this ancient base, though it may be necessary to penetrate deeply into the Earth to find it.
In the Paleozoic era (570 million to 225 million years ago) and later in the Mesozoic era (225 million to 65 million years ago), ancient seas invaded the depressed areas of the Canadian Shield and gradually formed layer upon layer of sediment. In the course of millions of years, these layers were solidified, then uplifted and broken by tremendous geologic forces. Tiny marine life trapped in the sediment formed oil and natural gas deposits that gathered in the folds of the rock. Giant dinosaurs also were covered, and they too became part of the rock layers.
Some rock was melted and re-formed, and some molten rock invaded the massive cracks in the Earth's crust, where slowly it cooled and formed massive deposits of minerals. Wind and water and glacial ice wore away the rock, laying down the particles in valleys and depressions, where over the centuries living organisms have turned it into soil. |
