Ten provinces and three territories span three oceans
Canada stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north into the Arctic, making it the second-largest country by area, with the longest coastline on Earth and the longest land border, shared with the United States. Its name comes from kanata, a St. Lawrence Iroquoian word for village.
More than 41 million people live across ten provinces and three territories, most of them in cities, leaving vast areas nearly empty. The country is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy on the Westminster model, officially bilingual in English and French at the federal level. In 1535 local people used the word kanata to guide Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, and Cartier stretched the term to cover all the land under its chief, Donnacona.
The first people probably crossed from Siberia over the Bering land bridge at least 14,000 years ago, and Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are among the oldest sites. Estimates of the Indigenous population when Europeans settled range from 200,000 to two million, and colonisation cut it by 40 to 80 per cent through disease, conflict and loss of land. Church-run residential schools, funded by the government, are now considered part of a genocide, and a reconciliation commission began work in 2008.
Norse sailors kept a short-lived camp at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around 1000 AD. John Cabot claimed the Atlantic coast for England's Henry VII in 1497, and Samuel de Champlain set up the first year-round European outposts, Port Royal in 1605 and then Quebec City three years later. After four colonial wars, France gave up nearly all its North American colonies in 1763, and the Quebec Act of 1774 granted Quebec special self-government.
Britain split the old Province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada in 1791 and joined them as the Province of Canada in 1841. Confederation in 1867 united three colonies into a federal dominion of four provinces, adopting Canada as its legal name. The Canada Act of 1982 placed the constitution fully in Canadian hands, and the same year Dominion Day was renamed Canada Day.
Source: Canada
