Canada

I

Introduction

Canada, federated country of North America, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the north-east by Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, which separate it from Greenland; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by the United States; and on the west by the Pacific Ocean and the US state of Alaska. It was formerly known as the Dominion of Canada. Occupying all of North America north of the conterminous United States, except Alaska, Greenland, St Pierre and Miquelon Islands, Canada is the world’s second-largest country, surpassed in size only by Russia. It includes many islands, notably the Canadian Arctic Islands (Arctic Archipelago) in the Arctic Ocean. Among the larger members of this group, which in aggregate area is about 1,424,500 sq km (550,000 sq mi), are (in descending order) Baffin, Victoria, Ellesmere, Banks, Devon, Axel Heiberg, and Melville islands. Cape Columbia, a promontory of Ellesmere Island at latitude 83°06′ north, is the northernmost point of Canada; its southernmost point is Middle Island in Lake Erie, at latitude 41°41′ north. The easternmost and westernmost limits are delineated, respectively, by longitude 52°37′ west, which lies along Cape Spear, on Newfoundland Island, and longitude 141° west, which coincides with part of the Alaska-Yukon border. Canada has a total area of 9,984,670 km (3,855,103 sq mi), of which 755,180 sq km (291,575 sq mi) is covered by bodies of freshwater such as rivers and lakes, including those portions of the Great Lakes under Canadian jurisdiction.

Canada contains great reserves of natural resources, notably timber, petroleum, natural gas, metallic minerals, and fish. It is also an important manufacturing country, and its major cities, such as Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Ottawa (the country’s capital) are bustling centres of commerce and industry. Most of Canada’s inhabitants live in the southern part of the country, and vast areas of the north are sparsely inhabited. The name “Canada” is believed to derive from an Iroquoian term meaning “village” or “community”.

II

Land and Resources

The coast of the Canadian mainland, about 58,500 km (36,350 mi) in length, is extremely broken and irregular. Large bays and peninsulas alternate, and Canada has numerous coastal islands, in addition to the Arctic Archipelago, with a total insular coastline of some 185,290 km (115,135 mi). Off the eastern coast the largest islands are Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward, and Anticosti. Off the western coast, which is fringed with fiords, are Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. Southampton Island, covering 41,214 sq km (15,913 sq mi), and many smaller islands are in Hudson Bay, a vast inland sea in east-central Canada.

Although forests in Ontario and Quebec were badly affected by acid rain in the 1970s and 1980s caused by pollution originating in the United States, Canada’s own carbon dioxide emissions per capita were higher, at 4.1 tonnes per person per year. Canada is a signatory of a number of international environmental treaties, such as the Convention on Climate Change, the Montreal Protocol on CFC Emissions, and the Bio-Diversity Convention.

With its large areas of forest and important timber industry, Canada’s old-growth forest has been extensively logged for more than a century. Since the 1960s, however, legislation (usually at provincial level) has introduced increasing levels of obligation on timber companies to replant clear-cut areas, to ensure species diversity, and to minimize incidental damage from construction of logging roads. In this way, the area of old-growth forest logged as a proportion of all logging has continually diminished. Assisting this process has been the increase in the area protected within national and provincial parks; for instance, British Columbia has passed legislation increasing the area to be protected within BC provincial parks from some 25,000 sq km (9,650 sq mi) in the early 1990s to 100,000 sq km (38,600 sq mi—more than 10 per cent of the province’s area) by the end of the decade.

A

Physiographical Regions

Excluding the Arctic Archipelago, six general physiographical regions are distinguishable in Canada: the Canadian Shield (also known as the Laurentian Plateau), Appalachian, Great Lakes, St Lawrence, Interior Plains, and Cordillera. The largest region, the Canadian Shield, extends from Labrador to the Great Bear Lake, from the Arctic Ocean to the Thousand Islands in the St Lawrence River, and into the United States west of Lake Superior and into northern New York State. This region of ancient granite rock, sparsely covered with soil and deeply eroded by glacial action, comprises all of Labrador (the easternmost part of the mainland, which is part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador), most of Quebec, northern Ontario, Manitoba, and most of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, with Hudson Bay in the centre.

Eastern Canada consists of the Appalachian region and the Great Lakes-St Lawrence lowlands. The former embraces the island of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. This region is an extension of the Appalachian mountain system and of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The Great Lakes-St Lawrence lowlands region, covering an area of about 98,420 sq km (38,000 sq mi) in southern Quebec and Ontario, is a generally level plain. This region includes the largest expanse of cultivable land in eastern and central Canada and most of the manufacturing industries of the nation.

Bordering the Canadian Shield on the west is the Interior Plains, an extension of the Great Plains of the United States. About 1,300 km (800 mi) wide at the US border, it narrows to about 320 km (200 mi) west of Great Bear Lake and widens again at the mouth of the Mackenzie River on the coast of the Arctic Ocean to about 480 km (300 mi). Within the Interior Plains are the north-eastern corner of British Columbia, most of Alberta, the southern half of Saskatchewan, and the southern third of Manitoba. This region contains the most fertile soil in Canada.

The fifth and westernmost region of Canada embraces the uplifts west of the Interior Plains. The region belongs to the Cordillera, the vast mountain system extending from the southernmost extremity of South America to westernmost Alaska. In Canada, the Cordillera has an average width of about 800 km (500 mi). Part of western Alberta, much of British Columbia, the Inuvik Region and part of the Fort Smith Region of Northwest Territories, and practically all of Yukon Territory lie within this region. The eastern portion of the Cordillera in Canada consists of the Rocky Mountains and related ranges, including the Mackenzie, Franklin, and Richardson mountains. Mount Robson (3,954 m/12,972 ft) is the highest summit of the Canadian Rockies, and ten other peaks reach elevations of more than 3,500 m (11,500 ft). To the west of the Canadian Rockies is a region occupied by numerous further ranges, notably the Cariboo, Stikine, and Selkirk mountains, and a vast plateau region. Deep river valleys and extensive tracts of arable land are the chief features of the plateau region, particularly in British Columbia. Flanking this central belt on the west and generally parallel to the Pacific Ocean is another great mountain system. This system includes the Coast Mountains, related to the Cascade Range of the United States, and various coastal ranges. The loftiest coastal uplift is the St Elias Mountains, on the boundary between the Yukon Territory and Alaska. Among noteworthy peaks of the western Cordillera in Canada are Mount Logan (5,951 m/19,524 ft, the highest point in Canada and second-highest mountain in North America after Mount McKinley), Mount St Elias (5,489 m/18,008 ft), Mount Lucania (5,226 m/17,147 ft), and King Peak (5,173 m/16,971 ft); all are in the St Elias Mountains.

B

Geology

The Canadian Shield, which occupies the eastern half of Canada’s land mass, is an ancient craton, or stable platform, made up of rocks that formed billions of years ago, during the Priscoan, Archaean, and Proterozoic eons. The shield, with its assemblage of granites, gneisses, and schists 2 billion to 4 billion years old, became the nucleus of the North American plate at the time that the Earth’s crust first began experiencing the forces of plate tectonics that drive continental drift. See also North America: Geological History.

During the Palaeozoic era, large parts of Canada were covered by shallow seas. Sediments deposited in these seas formed the sandstone, shale, and limestone that now surround the Canadian Shield. The Cambrian and Silurian systems are represented by great thicknesses of strata that appear in outcroppings in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador, along the St Lawrence Valley, and on the shores of Lake Ontario. Flat-lying beds of Palaeozoic and younger rocks extend westward across the Interior Plains throughout the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. In these areas, the rocks contain valuable deposits of oil and gas. In the Cordilleran region of western Canada, the rocks were subjected to tectonic forces generated by the collision of the North American plate with the Pacific plate. In the ensuing upheavals, which began during the Cretaceous period, mountain ranges rose throughout the Cordilleran region. The easternmost of these ranges, the Rocky Mountains, are similar in structure to the mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, having been built by uplift and folding of sedimentary rocks and, in lesser degree, by volcanic activity. The strata of which they are composed range in age from Palaeozoic to Tertiary and contain valuable deposits of base and precious metals as well as fossil fuels.

During the Quaternary sub-era, nearly all of Canada was covered by vast ice sheets that terminated in the northern United States during the ice ages. Landscapes were profoundly modified by the erosive action of this vast mass of moving ice, particularly in the creation of Canada’s many thousands of lakes and its extensive deposits of sand, clay, and gravel.