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Canada
The world's second-largest country, from Atlantic to Pacific to Arctic
Canada sprawls across nearly ten million square kilometers, second only to Russia, yet most of its forty million people cluster within a couple hundred kilometers of the United States border. It is a nation defined by immensity and emptiness in equal measure: boreal forest, prairie, tundra, and a coastline longer than any other country's. Bilingual in English and French, shaped by Indigenous nations, British and French settlement, and waves of global immigration, Canada has built a reputation for stability, openness, and quiet confidence on the northern edge of the continent.
The terrain ranges from the rugged Canadian Shield wrapping Hudson Bay to the wheat-and-canola plains of the Prairies and the snow-capped Rockies and Coast Mountains of the west. The St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes form the industrial heartland, while the far north dissolves into Arctic archipelago and permafrost. Mount Logan in the Yukon, at 5,959 meters, is the highest peak. Winters are long and severe across much of the interior, tempered only on the Pacific coast around Vancouver.
Confederation in 1867 united British colonies into a self-governing dominion that gradually shed imperial ties while keeping the monarch as head of state. Today Canada is a wealthy G7 economy built on energy, minerals, timber, manufacturing, and services, with Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver as cosmopolitan hubs. Reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples, climate pressures on the Arctic, and a deeply intertwined relationship with its southern neighbor define its present moment.