  The Canada-France Imaging Survey (CFIS) will map the northern high Galactic
latitude sky in the $u$-band ("CFIS-u", 10,000$\, {\rm deg^2}$) and in the
$r$-band ("CFIS-r", 5,000$\, {\rm deg^2}$), enabling a host of stand-alone
science investigations, and providing some of the ground-based data necessary
for photometric redshift determination for the Euclid mission. In this first
contribution we present the $u$-band component of the survey, describe the
observational strategy, and discuss some first highlight results, based on
approximately one third of the final area. We show that the Galactic anticenter
structure is distributed continuously along the line of sight, out to beyond 20
kpc, and possesses a metallicity distribution that is essentially identical to
that of the outer disk sampled by APOGEE. This suggests that it is probably a
buckled disk of old metal-rich stars, rather than a stream or a flare. We also
discuss the future potential for CFIS-u in discovering star-forming dwarf
galaxies around the Local Group, the characterization of the white dwarf and
blue straggler population of the Milky Way, as well as its sensitivity to
low-surface brightness structures in external galaxies.
