Canada’s Regions

The Land and Its Regions

Canada spans many geographical areas and is organized into five distinct regions. Canada and the U.S.A. alike are committed to a shared frontier that is safe, secure and efficient. Most Canadians live in cities, though people also live in small towns, in rural areas, and everywhere between.

OttawaThe National Capital

Queen Victoria — the great-great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II — chose Ottawa, on the Ottawa River, as the capital in 1857. It ranks today as Canada's fourth largest metropolitan area. Around it the National Capital Region covers 4,700 square kilometres, where the built heritage and the natural environment are both preserved and enhanced. The Rideau Canal, a military waterway in its day, now serves as a tourist attraction and a winter skateway.

Atlantic CanadaThe Atlantic Provinces

Coasts and natural resources — fishing, farming, forestry and mining — have made the Atlantic provinces an important part of the country's history and development. Cool winters and cool, humid summers come from the Atlantic Ocean. Newfoundland and Labrador keeps a time zone of its own and marks the most easterly point in North America; once the oldest colony of the British Empire and a strategic prize, it is long known for its fisheries and its distinct sea-linked culture, while today offshore oil and gas drives much of the economy and Labrador holds immense hydro-electric resources.

The smallest province, Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.), is known for beaches, red soil and agriculture — potatoes above all — and as the birthplace of Confederation. The Confederation Bridge, one of the longest continuous multispan bridges in the world, links it to the mainland. P.E.I. is also the setting of Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery's much-loved story of a little red-headed orphan girl.

Nova Scotia is the most populous Atlantic Province and a historic gateway to Canada, home to the Bay of Fundy and its world-record tides. Its identity is tied to shipbuilding, fisheries and shipping; Halifax, the capital, is Canada's largest east coast port — deep-water and ice-free — and home to Canada's largest naval base. Alongside a long history of coal mining, forestry and agriculture, there is now offshore oil and gas exploration. Celtic and Gaelic traditions sustain a vibrant culture, with over 700 annual festivals including the spectacular military tattoo in Halifax.

New Brunswick, in the Appalachian Range, was founded by the United Empire Loyalists and has the St. John River system, the second largest river system on North America's Atlantic coastline. Its principal industries are forestry, agriculture, fisheries, mining, food processing and tourism. The largest city, port and manufacturing centre is Saint John; the chief Francophone Acadian centre is Moncton; and the historic capital is Fredericton. It is the only officially bilingual province, with about one-third of the population living and working in French, and its Loyalist and French heritage comes alive in street festivals and traditional music.

The HeartlandCentral Canada

Over half of all Canadians live in southern Quebec and Ontario, in the cities and towns clustered around the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence River. This industrial and manufacturing heartland turns out more than three-quarters of all Canadian manufactured goods, and southern Ontario and Quebec have cold winters and warm, humid summers.

Quebec has nearly eight million residents, the great majority on or near the St. Lawrence River, and French is the first language of more than three-quarters of them. Forestry, energy and mining have been built on the resources of the Canadian Shield; Quebec leads Canada in pulp and paper output and, thanks to its huge freshwater supply, is the country's largest producer of hydro-electricity. Quebecers also lead in cutting-edge pharmaceuticals and aeronautics, and the province's films, music, literature and food carry international stature, especially within La Francophonie. Montreal, the country's second largest city, is — after Paris — the second largest mainly French-speaking city on earth.

Ontario, with more than 12 million people, makes up over one-third of all Canadians. Canada's largest city, Toronto, is also the country's main financial centre, and many people work in service or manufacturing industries that produce a large share of national exports. Vineyards, wines and fruit crops distinguish the Niagara region, while farmers in Ontario raise dairy and beef cattle and poultry, and grow vegetable and grain crops. Founded by United Empire Loyalists, Ontario also holds the largest French-speaking population outside Quebec.

The PrairiesThe Prairie Provinces

The Prairie Provinces are Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta — rich in energy resources, and holding farmland among the most fertile in the world. The region is largely dry, its winters cold and its summers hot.

Manitoba's economy rests on agriculture, mining and hydro-electric power. Its most populous city is Winnipeg, whose Exchange District includes Canada's most famous street intersection, Portage and Main. St. Boniface, the city's French Quarter, holds the largest Francophone community in Western Canada, some 45,000 strong. Manitoba is an important centre of Ukrainian culture (14% report Ukrainian origins) and has the largest Aboriginal population of any province, at over 15%.

Saskatchewan used to carry the names "breadbasket of the world" and "wheat province." It holds 40% of Canada's arable land and leads the country in grains and oilseeds, while also boasting the world's richest deposits of uranium and potash and producing oil and natural gas. The RCMP training academy is at the capital, Regina; Saskatoon, the largest city, is where the mining industry has its headquarters and is an important centre for education, research and technology.

Alberta is the most populous Prairie province. Both it and the world-famous Lake Louise in the Rocky Mountains take their names from Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, Queen Victoria's fourth daughter. Five national parks lie in Alberta, Banff National Park (established 1885) among them, and prehistoric fossils and dinosaur finds are packed into the rugged Badlands as densely as anywhere on earth. No province produces more oil and gas, and the northern oil sands are being developed into a major energy source. Agriculture matters too: the immense cattle ranches put Canada among the world's leading beef producers.

British ColumbiaThe West Coast

British Columbia (B.C.) is Canada's westernmost province, on the Pacific coast, with a population of four million. Known for its majestic mountains and as Canada's Pacific gateway, warm airstreams from the Pacific Ocean give its coast a temperate climate. The Port of Vancouver is Canada's largest and busiest port — its gateway to the Asia-Pacific — handling billions of dollars in goods traded around the world.

Roughly half of everything produced in B.C. is a forestry product — lumber, newsprint, and pulp and paper — making it the most valuable forestry industry in Canada. Mining and fishing also mark the province out, along with the fruit orchards and wine industry of the Okanagan Valley, and no province has a larger park system: about 600 provincial parks. Large Asian communities have made Chinese and Punjabi the languages most spoken in the cities after English. Victoria, the capital, is a tourist centre and the base of the navy's Pacific fleet.

The Far NorthThe Northern Territories

A third of Canada's land mass lies in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon, though only 100,000 people live there. The North holds gold, lead, copper, diamond and zinc mines, with oil and gas deposits being developed. Summer daylight can run to 24 hours, which is why it is often called the "Land of the Midnight Sun"; come winter the sun goes and three months of darkness follow. Winters are long and cold, summers short and cool, and much of the North is tundra — a vast rocky Arctic plain, treeless, its soil permanently frozen. Some still earn a living by hunting, fishing and trapping, and Inuit art sells across Canada and around the world.

The Gold Rush of the 1890s drew thousands of miners to the Yukon, an era caught in the poetry of Robert W. Service, and mining remains significant. In 1900 the White Pass and Yukon Railway opened between Skagway, in neighbouring Alaska, and the capital, Whitehorse, offering a spectacular tourist excursion across precipitous passes. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Canada (-63°C) was in Yukon, and Mount Logan — Canada's highest mountain — was named for Sir William Logan, the world-famous geologist born in Montreal in 1798, who founded the Geological Survey of Canada and directed it from 1842 to 1869.

Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory were combined in 1870 to form the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.). Its capital, Yellowknife (population 20,000), goes by the name "diamond capital of North America," and Aboriginal people (Dene, Inuit and Métis) make up over half the population. At 4,200 kilometres the Mackenzie River forms North America's second-longest river system, behind only the Mississippi, draining an area of 1.8 million square kilometres.

Nunavut means "our land" in Inuktitut. Created in 1999 out of the eastern Northwest Territories — taking in the whole of the former District of Keewatin — it has its capital at Iqaluit, once Frobisher Bay, whose former name recalls the English explorer Martin Frobisher, who pushed into the uncharted Arctic for Queen Elizabeth I in 1576. A 19-member Legislative Assembly picks a premier and ministers by consensus; around 85% of the population is Inuit, and Inuktitut is an official language and the language schools teach in first.

Security & SovereigntyThe Canadian Rangers

Canada's vast north brings security and sovereignty challenges. The Canadian Rangers are part of the Canadian Forces Reserves (militia) and play a key role in a region that is isolated and harsh in its weather. Drawing on indigenous knowledge and experience, they travel by snowmobile in winter and all-terrain vehicle in summer from Resolute to the Magnetic North Pole, keeping the flag flying in Canada's Arctic. Hunters prize the caribou (reindeer), which also stands as a symbol of Canada's North.