Canada

Canada: capital Ottawa, population 41.7M, area 9,984,670 km². The 38th most populous country, in Americas. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Canada stretches from Newfoundland, where Norse builders left timbers dated to 1021, to the Pacific spike driven at Craigellachie in 1885. Four provinces joined in 1867 and the federal government became officially bilingual in 1969, while insulin, basketball and the Marathon of Hope all started here. Its landmarks run to extremes: the world's largest tides in the Bay of Fundy, a 553-metre tower in Toronto and a buffalo jump used for 5,500 years in Alberta.

• Tree rings date the Norse buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland to 1021, the only undisputed site of contact between Europe and the Americas before Columbus, outside Greenland.
• The British North America Act joined four provinces on 1 July 1867: Ontario and Quebec, split from the Province of Canada, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
• Donald Smith drove the last spike of the first transcontinental railway at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on 7 November 1885, finishing a line promised when the province joined Confederation in 1871.
• The Official Languages Act came into force on 9 September 1969, giving French and English equal standing in the federal government and in its services wherever numbers warranted them.

• Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin in Toronto in 1921; Banting took the 1923 Nobel Prize at 32, still the youngest in Physiology or Medicine, and split the money with Best.
• James Naismith, who had taught physical education at McGill in Montreal, designed basketball in 1891 to keep a restless class occupied indoors through a Massachusetts winter.
• Terry Fox, whose right leg was amputated in 1977, set out from St. John's in April 1980 and ran the distance of a marathon every day until the cancer reached his lungs near Thunder Bay.
• Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, the first Canadian and the thirteenth woman to do so, for short stories that move backwards and forwards through time.

• The Bay of Fundy has the largest tidal range on Earth, averaging about 16 metres against a world average of one, because the funnel-shaped basin resonates with the Atlantic tide.
• The CN Tower stands 553.3 metres over Toronto and held the record for the world's tallest free-standing structure for 32 years, from 1975 until 2007.
• The Rideau Canal runs 202 kilometres from Ottawa to Kingston through 46 locks; cut between 1826 and 1832, it is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America.
• At Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, hunters drove bison down cairn-lined lanes and over an 11-metre cliff for 5,500 years, leaving bone deposits 12 metres deep.

• The first organised indoor ice hockey game was played in Montreal on 3 March 1875, and the modern sport was largely worked out in that city's rinks.
• Maple sap is only 2 to 5 per cent sugar and has to be boiled down for hours; Canadian rules then require the syrup to be at least 66 per cent sugar and made from sap alone.
• Poutine — fries, cheese curds and hot gravy — appeared in the Centre-du-Québec region in 1959 and spread from roadside snack counters to the rest of the country.
• Katajjaq sets two Inuit women face to face without instruments, each holding a rhythmic breathing pattern until one gives out; the Ainu of Hokkaido once had a similar form.

What is the capital of Canada?

The capital of Canada is Ottawa.

What is the population of Canada?

Canada has about 41.7M people — the 38th most populous country in the world.

How big is Canada?

Canada covers 9,984,670 km², making it the 2nd largest country by area.

Which region is Canada in?

Canada is in North America, Americas.