Canada Country Info - North America

Description and Basic Information

Canada with its capital Ottawa is located in North America (Northern North America, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean on the east). It covers some 9,984,671 square kilometres (slightly larger than the US) with 33,679,000 citizens. English and French are the some of the languages spoken by the majority in Canada. United States is a bordering country.

Canada is the second largest country in the world and the largest in North America. Canada is a land of vast distances and rich natural beauty. Economically and technologically, it resembles its neighbour to the south, the United States, although there are significant differences between the two countries. Trying to distill the climate of Canada into an easy-to-understand statement is impossible, given the vast area that this country occupies. Much of southern Ontario has a climate similar to the northeastern United States. Visiting Canada all in one trip is a massive undertaking. Over 5000 kilometres separate St. John's, Newfoundland from Victoria, British Columbia. There are many cities in Canada, all of which are distinctive, welcoming to tourists, and well worth visiting. All potential visitors, whether applying for a temporary resident visa or requesting landing permission at the border must be of good moral character, and under Canadian law this means having a completely clean criminal history. Immigration authorities take character concerns of visitors very seriously and any offence, misdemeanor or felony, regardless of how minor or how long ago it took place can exclude you from Canada for a period of time, indefinitely, or permanently. English and French are the only two official languages in Canada. In some parts of the country, April and May mark the beginning of Canadian music festival season. Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories celebrates spring with the Cariblues Festival, Halifax showcases chamber music with the Scotia Festival of Music and Ottawa highlights concerts, flowers and history at the Canadian Tulip Festival.

Pictures from Capital (Ottawa)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Canada

The terrain offers mostly plains with mountains in west and lowlands in southeast. The average density of population is about 3 per km². The climate in Canada can be described as varying from temperate in south to subarctic and arctic in north. Possible natural disasters include continuous permafrost in north being a serious obstacle to development or cyclonic storms form east of the Rocky Mountains, a result of the mixing of air masses from the Arctic, Pacific, and North American interior, and produce most of the country's rain and snow east of the mountains.

To reach someone in Canada dial +1 prior to a number. There are 18,251,000 installed telephones. And there are 23,081,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 850, 1900 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".ca". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 120V - 60Hz. The following list are the 13 regions/states in Canada we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Canadian population grew at a rate of 0.8% (or by 271,766 citizens). With 265,689 deaths and 347,050 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 0.24%. 190,405 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Canada: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.