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Canada

How is the land laid out?

Western Canada, save the very north, is within the Western Cordillera. These are generally highlands, though they bound the Pacific Ocean. In the west are the Pacific Mountains and valleys, further east intermontane basins and plateaus, and yet further, the Rocky Mountains. More than one of the mountains in southwest Yukon tops 5,000 meters. The offshore part of these mountains form the Alexander Archipelago. The Yukon River(1 drains part of the north center of this area.

The very north coast of the Yukon west of the Mackenzie River, and a broad swathe of the continent moving northwest to southeast, from the Beafort Sea to beyond the United States border, are the Interior Lowlands. The plains are bounded west by the Rocky Mountains and east by lines connecting (or coming near to) a set of great lakes: Great Bear, Great Slave, Athabasca, Manitoba, Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario.2 The Mackenzie River flows northward through this region. Northeast of the great lakes, the lowlands continue for a while in the St. Lawrence (St. Laurent) River valley.3

East of the plains is the Canadian Shield. This extends from the Canadian Archipelago of giant icy islands4 in a great C-shape around Hudson Bay, dipping a little into the United States. It extends all the way to Labrador

The Saskatchewan-Nelson River system(5 binds the plains and the Shield. It flows across the southern plains into Lake Winnipeg, then northeast into the Hudson Bay.

The last stretch of this river flows across the Northern Interior Lowlands, which lie along the southern shores of Hudson Bay, and around James Bay.

The Appalachian Mountain system is the last geophysical zone in Canada. These include the south shore of the lower St. Lawrence River, the Gaspé Peninsula and the Maritime Provinces, including the island of Newfoundland.6

Who lives there?

In Nunavut and northern Québec, the majority speak Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language. In southern Québec most speak French. Everywhere else most speak English. The last two are Indo-European languages.

Regardless of language, almost everyone is Christian. Catholicism is the norm for French speakers and some others; Protestantism, especially Anglican Protestantism, for the rest.

There are four cities of over a million: Vancouver in the west; Toronto on Lake Ontario and Montréal on the St. Laurence River. The capital, Ottawa, on a tributary of the St. Laurence, also has over a million metropolitan residents. See also New York, New England and Maritime Provinces cities, which includes one New York city whose suburbs extend into Canada. Suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, also extend into Canada.

Within the area

Yukon, Northwest Territories and British Columbia
Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba
Nunavut
Ontario
Québec
Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia

Footnotes

1. One of the continent's top ten rivers.
2. Four of these are among the world's top ten; all eight are among the continent's top ten.
3. The MacKenzie and the St. Lawrence are two of the continent's top ten rivers.
4. It includes three of the world's largest islands; six of the continent's.
5. Another of the continent's top ten rivers.
6. Another of the continent's top ten islands.