Canada In View

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From Sea to Sea

Canada is the world's second-largest country after Russia. It occupies almost
the whole northern half of the North American continent, sharing a 5,512
-mile (8,889-kilometer) border with its neighbor, the United States, to the
south. To the northwest is Alaska in the United States, and Greenland, the
world's largest island, lies off the northeast coast.

Canada's official motto, A mari usque ad mare, "From sea even unto sea,"
describes a country that has many ties with water. Canada stretches from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded by the Arctic Ocean
and Hudson Bay in the north, and the thousands of islands and inlets on its
coast give it the longest coastline in the world. The Great Lakes and the
St. Lawrence River lie along part of the southern border. There are numerous
lakes and rivers throughout the entire country. Early exploreres, arriving
on Canada's east coast, used these waterways to travel north and west into
the interior.

Canada is a vast country, roughly 14 times the size of Texas. Most of its
4 million squaremiles is uninhabited. Many communities still cannot be
reached by road and are linked only by boat, plane, or train.

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Time Zone

Because Canada stretches across nearly 4,000 miles of the earth's surface
and is west of Greenwich, it spans 92' of longitude from 5' West to 142'
West. This covers six time zones. When it is 8:30 AM in Newfoundland on
the east coast of Canada, it is only 3:00 AM in Dawson City in the western
Yukon Territory.

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Native People

The hunters skillfully adapted to the environment as they roamed the vast,
empty territories. The isolation of the encampments enabled the native
people to develop distinctive Inuit and Amerindian cultures. The Inuit
were the most successful Arctic hunters, adapting to the harshness of the
climate and moving camp with the seasons and the life cycles of the animals
they hunted. Other hunters moved to the Canadian Shield territory and the
northern forests.

The majority of these indigenous peoples lived in semipermanent villages
along the coast of British Columbia and in the fertile areas of southern
Ontario and the St. Lawrence valley. Other groups, totally dependent on the
migrations of the buffalo, lived a nomadic existence on the prairies. When
the Europeans arrived in the 16th century, about 300,000 natives , speaking
12 different languages, were living in the uncharted wilderness.

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Building a New Nation

The Frenchman Jacques Cartier first used the name "Canada" for the new
territory that he discovered during his explorations of the St. Lawrence
River and the land on both sides of it. It is believed to have come from
kanata, a Huron-Iroquois word meaning "Village" or "settlement." Cartier,
whose explorations took place between 1532 and 1541, was not the first
European to reach Canada. The Norseman Leif Eriksson built a settlement
in Newfoundland in the early eleventh century. He was followed by other
Vikings and also John Cabot in the 1490s.

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The Dominion of Canada

In 1867 Upper and Lower Canada became the provinces of Ontario and Quebec
and agreed to join in a confederation with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Because Canada was ruled by the British, the confederation was formalized
as the Dominion of Canada in the British Parliament when the British
North America Act was passed on July 1, 1867. The act stated that the
Canadian Constitution should be similar to the United Kingdom's and
that the king should be represented in Canada by a governor-general.
In 1869 the central, or federal, government of Canada bought the
extensive lands known as the Northwest Territories from the Hudson's
Bay Company. These territories, formerly known as Rupert's Land, included
all the land with rivers flowing into Hudson Bay and stretched from
Ontario to the Rockies and north to the Arctic.

In 1870 Manitoba entered the Dominion as a province, followed by British
Columbia in 1871 and Prince Edward Island in 1873.

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Canada's Government

The government is based on the British Parliament, with two houses, the House of Commons and a Senate somewhat like the British House of Lords. The government is housed in Ottawa, the capital. Members of Parliament are elected, and Senate members are appointed by the prime minister.

The work of Parliament is divided between the federal government and the provincial legislatures. The federal government is responsible for defense, the postal service, transportation, banking and currency,communication, trade, immigration, and criminal law. The provincial legislatures make laws about education, municipal government, provincial resources, roads, and taxes.

月明

tks for sharing.

Skywalker

飄逸的花瓣

Hm, your history is pretty great!!! I also learnt them in the library and my school's Geo/history class. And maybe you also can talked about the different abriginal people.
Sooooo cooooool!!!

lamjin

Hm, your history is pretty great!!! I also learnt them in the library and my school's Geo/history class. And maybe you also can talked about the different abriginal people.
Sooooo cooooool!!!

飄逸的花瓣 发表于 2009-11-17 07:57

                               
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aboriginal 主要有三组，first nation， inuit 和 metis