(Alfred Hecht)

Teaching aim: The key intention is to establish and to foster a problem-oriented knowledge of Canada as a territorial and/or national unit over time. At the same time, a picture of the complexity of today's territorial configuration and population structure is portrayed. Keywords: Territorial dimension of Canada, provinces and territories, land use, multicultural society, aboriginal people, official languages, natural resources, urbanization, population distribution

What are the major distinctive characteristics of Canada [1] that could be considered significant in the context of studying world geography in schools? A few come clearly to the for ground. Canada has an immense land mass (Figure 1), the second largest in the world after Russia, inhabited by a relatively small population of just over 30 million people.
Secondly the size of the different provinces [2] within Canada vary tremendously. Prince Edward Island is the smallest in both area and population [3] while the largest provinces are Ontario and Quebec in terms of population and land mass respectively. The Northwest Territorie's land mass however is larger then Quebec's but it is not a province. It should also become quite clear from the above table that the density of population varies by a factor of about 20 between the provinces. Furthermore it would be quite misleading to think that the population density measure is a good indicator of the population distribution within the provinces. Except for the Maritime provinces all provinces have most of their populations concentrated in the southern parts of their land mass, while the northern areas are very sparsely populated somewhat like the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

It is a northern country, with a restrictive climate for agriculture over most of its territory. In fact only about 6% can be used for crop production and another 2% is used as range land. Despite this the actual acreage devoted to agriculture is still very large. In fact it is about twice as large as the total area of Germany. Hence Canada is very well known for its large cereal production especially wheat. Yes 23% of the total area is covered by tundra and another 3% by icefields. But forests, most of them still being virgin, cover about 45 % of the land mass, wetlands another 12%, and fresh water bodies a further 8%. As can be seen humans have not yet changed much of the natural landscape of Canada. Cities use only about 1% of the total land mass. (Canada Yearbook, 1997, p.7)

Canada has received immigrants from many parts of the world, and declares itself a multicultural country. At the same time it has an aboriginal population of about one million people and the relations between the aboriginals and the larger society (including the issue of Native land claims) are still being worked out. Canada is a federal country of ten provinces and two territories, and there is constant negotiation and occasional contention between the central government and the provincial and the territorial governments over their spheres of authority. Canada has two official languages [4], English and French, and in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec there have been persistent efforts to secede from Canada in the last two decades. The number of additional languages spoken [5] is large. In fact about 30% of Canadians are not of English or French ethnic origin and more and more are also claiming multi ethnic backgrounds.

The country has many natural resources [6], and the export [7] of raw materials was very important in the course of Canada's development, and still is significant. At the same time Canada is highly urbanized with over 76% of the population living in urban places with about 40% of these city-dwellers [8] residing in the three largest metropolitan regions of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Canada exists next to the most powerful country in the world, the United States, strong not only militarily and economically but culturally, and this inevitably affects Canada, particularly because both countries are predominantly English-speaking. Clearly all these things make a study of Canada very interesting for any geography student.

Questions for further consideration: How would you describe the most basic physical geography dimensions of Canada? Why is Canada's population ethnically so diverse and how got it this way ? Why were resources so important in Canada's past and not any more? Interactive Quiz

[1] http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/national/can_political_e/referencemap_image_view
[2] http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/national/politicaldivisonsinteractive
[3] http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Population/demo02.htm
[4] http://www.statcan.ca/english/census96/dec2/off.htm
[5] http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/standard/themes/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?Temporal=2001&PID=55539&APATH=3&GID=431515&METH=1&PTYPE=55440&THEME=41&FOCUS=0&AID=0&PLACENAME=0&PROVINCE=0&SEARCH=0&GC=0&GK=0&VID=0&FL=0&RL=0&FREE=0
[6] http://www2.nrcan.gc.ca/es/es/resources_e.cfm
[7] http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/gblec04.htm
[8] http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/peopleandsociety/QOL/miz