Presentation of the theme:
Description of Canada
- About Canada
- People of Canada
- European colonization
- Confederation and expansion
- Early 20th century
- Modern times
- Government and politics
- Foreign relations and military
- Provinces and territories
- Geography and climate
- Science and technology
- About Ottawa
- Ottawa as the capital
Motto: A Mari Usque Ad Mare (Latin)
"From Sea to Sea"
Anthem: "O Canada"
Royal anthem: "God Save the Queen"
Official language(s)English and French
GovernmentFederal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy
MonarchHM Queen Elizabeth II
Governor GeneralMichaëlle Jean
Prime MinisterStephen Harper
Lower HouseHouse of Commons
British North America ActsJuly 1, 1867
Statute of WestminsterDecember 11, 1931
Canada ActApril 17, 1982
Total9,984,670 km2 (2nd)
3,854,085 sq mi
Water (%)8.92 (891,163 km2/344,080 mi2)
2010 estimate34,073,000  (36th)
Drives on the Right
Canada (pronounced /ˈkænədə/) is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area. Canada's common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.
People of Canada
Canada is a good example of the way peoples of different ways of life and different languages can live side by side under one government. The population of Canada has risen from 11,5 million in 1941 to 25 million in 1980. Most of the new-comers are from Europe, Asia and the USA, so that today less than 44% of Canadas population is of British origin. Quebec Province is still 90% French. There are some groups of French Canadians in Ontario and Manitoba, but the numbers are quite small. There are many Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese, and also blacks from the USA, among the immigrants who are pouring into Canada now. Some Canadians are afraid that before long Canada will have colored citizens that white. Other Canadians are disturbed by the growing racism in their country. Canada, like so many countries, has only just begun to treat her own non-white citizens, Eskimos (or Inuit) and the Indians, as generously as they deserve. The Indian and Eskimo populations have grown quite a lot in the last few years. The government is at last realizing that it has a duty towards this people that it has neglected for so long. All Canadian children have to learn both French and English at school, but Franco phones and Anglophones do not enjoy learning each others language. Still, most Quebecois middle class families, living in Montreal are bilingual - they speak English and French equally well. Until the Second World War, every Canadian province except Quebec was overwhelmingly British. Some Canadians were more patriotic than the British them-selves and were really angry if anyone walked out of a cinema while God Save the King was being played. Now Canadians think of themselves as a people in their own right, not tied to either Britain or the USA. The USA has not been a threat to Canada for almost two hundred years. In fact, the 6,416 km US-Canadian frontier is the longest continuous frontier in the world, has no wire fence, no soldiers, no guns on either side. It is called The Border. The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal people. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. A federation consisting of ten provinces and three territories, Canada is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual nation with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. One of the world's highly developed countries, Canada has a diversified economy that is reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon tradeparticularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. It is a member of the G8, G-20, NATO, OECD, WTO, Commonwealth, Franco phone, OAS, APEC, and UN.
The name Canada comes from a St. Lawrence Iroquoian word, Kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement". In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier towards the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village, but also the entire area subject to Donnacona (the chief at Stadacona); by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this region as Canada. From the early 17th century onwards, that part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River and the northern shores of the Great Lakes was known as Canada. The area was later split into two British colonies, Upper Canada and Lower Canada. They were re-unified as the Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, the name Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country, and Dominion was conferred as the country's title. Combined, the term Dominion of Canada was in common usage until the 1950s. As Canada asserted its political autonomy from the United Kingdom, the federal government increasingly used simply Canada on state documents and treaties, a change that was reflected in the renaming of the national holiday from Dominion Day to Canada Day in 1982.
Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" are falling into disuse. Archaeological and Indigenous genetic studies support a human presence in the northern Yukon from 26,500 years ago, and in southern Ontario from 9,500 years ago. Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are the earliest archaeological sites of human (Paleo-Indians) habitation in Canada. Among the First Nations peoples, there are eight unique stories of creation and their adaptations. These are the earth diver, world parent, emergence, conflict, robbery, rebirth of corpse, two creators and their contests, and the brother myth. The characteristics of Canadian Aboriginal civilizations included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European arrivals (c. late 15thearly 16th centuries), and have been discovered through archaeological investigations. The aboriginal population is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million in the late 1400s. Repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza, measles and smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity), combined with other effects of European contact, resulted in an eighty-five to ninety-five percent aboriginal population decrease post-contact. The Métis culture of mixed blood originated in the mid-17th century when First Nation and Inuit married European settlers. The Inuit had more limited interaction with European settlers during the early periods.]
Europeans first arrived when the Vikings settled briefly at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around AD 1000; after the failure of that colony, there was no known further attempt at Canadian exploration until 1497, when Italian seafarer Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) explored Canada's Atlantic coast for England. In 1534 Jacques Cartier explored Canada for France. French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1603 and established the first permanent European settlements at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608. Among French colonists of New France, Canadians extensively settled the Saint Lawrence River valley and Acadians settled the present-day Maritimes, while