Canada
is a country in North America, made up of ten provinces and three territories.
It is a vast nation with a wide variety of geological formations, climates, and
ecological systems. Canada has rain forest, prairie grassland, deciduous forest,
tundra, and wetlands. It has more lakes than any other country. On a per-capita
basis, its resource endowments are the second richest in the world after
Australia.
Canada is the second largest country in the world. Most Canadians live in the southern part of the country. More than 3/4 of them live in metropolitan areas, the largest of which are Toronto, Ontario; Montréal, Québec; Vancouver, British Columbia; Ottawa, Ontario; Hull, Québec; and Edmonton, Alberta. French and English are the official languages, and at one time most Canadians were of French or English descent.
Before the first Europeans arrived on the American continent, several tribes inhabited what is now Canada. They lived mainly from hunting and fishing, as well as subsistence farming. Only from the 16th century onwards, the vast territory began to be the subject of dispute between England and France. In 1534, Frenchman Jacques Cartier discovered the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and took possession of the area in the name of France. In 1604, French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Acadia. He later founded Quebec. Montreal, initially a missionary center, was founded in 1642. In 1663, Louis XIV decreed that the region was a French province. A century later, there were approximately 60,000 French settlers in the territory.
