Canada

Indigenous peoples — First Nations, Inuit, and later the Métis — have lived across what is now Canada for thousands of years, in nations as different as the coastal Haida, the Plains Cree, the Haudenosaunee of the eastern woodlands, and the Inuit of the Arctic. French settlers founded Québec in 1608 and Montréal in 1642; Britain took New France in 1763, leaving a large French-speaking, Catholic population under British rule.

The colonies of British North America federated in 1867 as the Dominion of Canada, expanding west and north over the following decades. The Canadian Pacific Railway bound the country together, immigration filled the Prairies, and Canadian troops fought as a distinct force in both world wars, a step toward full independence, formalised over the twentieth century and completed with the patriation of the constitution in 1982.

Alongside this runs a harder history: treaties often broken, the reserve system, and the residential schools that removed Indigenous children from their families for more than a century, an experience a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 called cultural genocide. The confirmation of unmarked graves at former school sites from 2021 brought a renewed national reckoning that continues.

Canada defines itself partly against the United States and partly through official multiculturalism, adopted as policy in the 1970s: about a quarter of residents were born abroad, and the big cities are among the most diverse in the world. Politeness, understatement, and a strong attachment to public healthcare are common self-descriptions.

The French–English duality runs deep, most of all in Québec, which has its own media, civil law tradition, language laws, and a lasting sovereignty movement. Indigenous art, film, and politics have moved from the margins toward the centre of national culture, and land acknowledgements now open public events.

Ice hockey is the national winter sport and a genuine cultural touchstone; canoeing, cottage weekends, Tim Hortons coffee, and a fondness for the outdoors in all seasons are others. Thanksgiving falls in October, and Canada Day is 1 July.

Most Canadians live within a couple of hundred kilometres of the US border, in a string of metropolitan areas — Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton — separated by long distances. The far north, vast and resource-rich, is sparsely populated and largely Indigenous.

The economy combines natural resources — oil and gas in Alberta, minerals, forestry, farming on the Prairies, fisheries on both coasts — with finance, technology, and manufacturing in central Canada. Housing affordability in Toronto and Vancouver is a defining political issue, along with healthcare wait times and reconciliation.

Winter shapes daily life for much of the year: block heaters, snow tyres, indoor shopping concourses and skyways, and a national habit of decamping to a lake or the mountains when the weather turns.

Canada has strong regional food traditions rather than one national cuisine. Québec contributes poutine — fries with cheese curds and gravy — along with tourtière meat pie, split-pea soup, and maple syrup, of which the province produces most of the world's supply. The Maritimes mean lobster, snow crab, mussels, and Digby scallops; the Prairies, beef, bison, and Ukrainian-influenced perogies and cabbage rolls.

Pacific salmon, spot prawns, and a strong Asian food culture define the West Coast, while Toronto and Montréal offer essentially every world cuisine. The "Canadian" staples that unite the country are more casual: butter tarts, Nanaimo bars, back bacon, ketchup chips, and coffee-and-doughnut culture.

Wine comes from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia and the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, the latter also known for icewine; craft beer and cider are widespread; and rye whisky is the traditional spirit.

The Canadian Rockies are the headline: Banff and Jasper national parks in Alberta, with turquoise glacial lakes such as Louise, Moraine, and Peyto, the Columbia Icefield, and the Icefields Parkway linking them. Across the border in British Columbia, Yoho and the Kootenays continue the range, and Vancouver sits between mountains and sea near Whistler.

In the east, Niagara Falls straddles the US border; Québec City has the only walled city north of Mexico, a UNESCO site; Montréal offers a distinctly French North American culture; and the Maritimes bring the Bay of Fundy's giant tides, Cape Breton's Cabot Trail, and Prince Edward Island's red cliffs. Newfoundland adds icebergs, seabird colonies, and the Viking site at L'Anse aux Meadows.

Farther afield are the polar-bear town of Churchill on Hudson Bay, the aurora over Yellowknife and Whitehorse, the Cabot and Bruce trails, the Bay of Islands, and the immense, little-visited national parks of the territories. Toronto's CN Tower and the country's big-city museums and festivals anchor an urban visit.