ABSTRACT

Canada is a country of 35 million inhabitants with the second largest land mass in the world, covering nearly 10 million square kilometres, bordered in the east by the Atlantic, in the west by the Pacific and in the north by the Arctic Ocean. It also shares the longest border in the world with the United States. It is in the ranks of the world’s wealthiest countries in terms of per capita income, gross domestic product (GDP), and other economic and social indicators. Its vast physical landscape is divided into five distinct regions: the geographically fragmented Atlantic coast; the Great Lakes-St Lawrence River system that became the country’s economic heartland and linked the two largest provinces of Quebec and Ontario, despite their ethnolinguistic and religious differences; the Prairies, destined to become one of the world’s great breadbaskets; the mountainous west with its temperate rainforest; and the immense Canadian north of tundra, taiga and archipelago.