Canada’s Regions

The Land and Its Regions

Canada takes in many different geographical areas grouped into five regions: the Atlantic Provinces, the Prairie Provinces, Central Canada, the West Coast and the Northern Territories. Canada and the United States are both committed to keeping their shared frontier safe, secure and efficient. Most Canadians live in cities, though many live in small towns and rural areas too.

Citizenship test topic: The 5 regions of Canada

OttawaThe National Capital

Ottawa, on the Ottawa River, is the capital of Canada. Queen Victoria — great-great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II — chose it in 1857. It now ranks as Canada’s fourth largest metropolitan area, and the National Capital Region around it, 4,700 square kilometres, looks after the area’s built heritage and its natural surroundings. The Rideau Canal, built as a military waterway, now serves as a tourist attraction and a winter skateway.

Ten plus threeProvinces, Territories and Capitals

There are ten provinces and three territories, and every one has a capital city of its own. You should know the capital of Canada and the capital of the province or territory where you live — and be ready for distractors: the largest city is often not the capital (Montreal, Vancouver, Saskatoon and Saint John are none of them capitals).

Atlantic CanadaThe Atlantic Provinces

Coasts and natural resources — fishing, farming, forestry and mining — have made the Atlantic provinces an important part of the country’s history and development, while the Atlantic Ocean gives the whole region cool winters and cool, humid summers. Out on the far edge, Newfoundland and Labrador keeps a time zone of its own and marks the most easterly point in North America; it was the British Empire’s oldest colony and, early in Canada’s history, a strategic prize, long known for its fisheries, its coastal fishing villages and a culture of its own. Today off-shore oil and gas supply much of its economy, and Labrador holds immense hydro-electric resources.

The smallest province is Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.), known for beaches, red soil and agriculture — potatoes above all — and as the birthplace of Confederation. The Confederation Bridge, among the world’s longest continuous multispan bridges, links it to the mainland, and it is the setting of Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s much-loved story of a little red-headed orphan girl.

The most populous Atlantic province, Nova Scotia, is a historic gateway to Canada, home to the Bay of Fundy and the world’s highest tides. Its identity is tied to shipbuilding, fisheries and shipping; the capital, Halifax, is the largest port on Canada’s east coast, deep-water and ice-free, a long-standing centre of Atlantic trade and defence and home to Canada’s largest naval base. Coal mining, forestry and agriculture have long histories here, now joined by off-shore oil and gas exploration. Celtic and Gaelic traditions sustain a lively culture, with over 700 festivals a year, among them the spectacular military tattoo in Halifax.

New Brunswick, in the Appalachian Range, was founded by the United Empire Loyalists. The St. John River system is the Atlantic coast’s second largest river system in North America, and the main industries are tourism, food processing, forestry, agriculture, fisheries and mining. Saint John is the largest city and the main port and manufacturing centre; Moncton is the chief Francophone Acadian centre; Fredericton is the historic capital. It is Canada’s only officially bilingual province, with about one-third of its people living and working in French, and its Loyalist and French heritage comes alive in street festivals and traditional music.

The HeartlandCentral Canada

More than half of all Canadians live in southern Quebec and Ontario, in the cities and towns clustered around the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence River. This is the industrial and manufacturing heartland: together the two provinces turn out more than three-quarters of all Canadian manufactured goods. Winters are cold and summers warm and humid in southern Ontario and Quebec.

Quebec has nearly eight million people, most of them along or close to the St. Lawrence River, and French is the first language of more than three-quarters of them. Forestry, energy and mining grew on the resources of the Canadian Shield; Quebec is the country’s main producer of pulp and paper and, thanks to its huge freshwater supply, its largest producer of hydro-electricity. Quebecers lead in pharmaceuticals and aeronautics, and the province’s films, music, literature and food carry international stature, especially within the association of French-speaking nations known as La Francophonie. Montreal, Canada’s second largest city, is the world’s second largest mainly French-speaking city after Paris, famous for its cultural diversity.

Ontario, at more than 12 million people, holds over one-third of Canadians. Toronto is Canada’s largest city and its main financial centre; many Ontarians work in service or manufacturing industries that produce a large share of the country’s exports. The Niagara region is famous for its vineyards, wines and fruit crops, and Ontario farmers raise dairy and beef cattle and poultry and grow vegetables and grain. Ontario was founded by United Empire Loyalists and has the largest French-speaking population outside Quebec, proud of preserving its language and culture.

The PrairiesThe Prairie Provinces

The Prairie Provinces are Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta — rich in energy resources and holding farmland among the most fertile on earth. The region is largely dry, with cold winters and hot summers.

Manitoba’s economy rests on agriculture, mining and hydro-electric power. Its most populous city, Winnipeg, has in its Exchange District Canada’s most famous street intersection, Portage and Main. St. Boniface, the city’s French Quarter, is the largest Francophone community in Western Canada, 45,000 strong. Manitoba is an important centre of Ukrainian culture (14% report Ukrainian origins) and, at over 15%, the largest Aboriginal share of any province.

Saskatchewan, once called the "wheat province" and the "breadbasket of the world", holds 40% of Canada’s arable land and is the largest producer of grains and oilseeds. Its uranium and potash deposits are the richest in the world (potash goes into fertilizer), and it produces oil and natural gas. The capital, Regina, hosts the RCMP training academy; Saskatoon, the largest city, is where the mining industry has its headquarters and a centre of education, research and technology.

Alberta is the most populous Prairie province. Both the province and Lake Louise, the world-famous lake in the Rocky Mountains, were named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter. Its five national parks include Banff National Park (established 1885), and its rugged Badlands hold some of the world’s richest prehistoric fossil and dinosaur deposits. It is Canada’s largest producer of oil and gas, with the northern oil sands being developed as a major energy source, and its vast cattle ranches place Canada among the world’s major beef producers.

British ColumbiaThe West Coast

Canada’s westernmost province is British Columbia (B.C.), which lies on the Pacific coast and has a population of four million. Famed for its majestic mountains, it is Canada’s Pacific gateway and enjoys a temperate climate on the coast thanks to warm airstreams from the Pacific. The Port of Vancouver is Canada’s largest and busiest port and its gateway to the Asia-Pacific, handling billions of dollars’ worth of goods traded worldwide.

About half of everything B.C. produces is a forestry product — lumber, newsprint, pulp and paper — the most valuable forestry industry in Canada. Mining and fishing also matter, as do the Okanagan Valley’s fruit orchards and wine industry, and it has Canada’s most extensive park system, roughly 600 provincial parks. Thanks to large Asian communities, Chinese and Punjabi are the languages most spoken after English in its cities. Victoria, the capital, is a tourist centre and the headquarters of the navy’s Pacific fleet.

The Far NorthThe Northern Territories

The Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon contain one-third of Canada’s land mass but only about 100,000 people. Mines produce gold, lead, copper, diamond and zinc, and oil and gas deposits are under development. The North earns the name "Land of the Midnight Sun" from summer days when daylight can stretch to 24 hours; come winter, the sun vanishes and darkness lasts three months. Winters are long and cold, summers short and cool, and much of the land is tundra — a vast rocky Arctic plain with no trees and permanently frozen soil. Some people still live by hunting, fishing and trapping, and Inuit art is sold across Canada and around the world.

The Gold Rush of the 1890s brought thousands of miners to Yukon, an era captured in the poems of Robert W. Service, and mining is still significant. The White Pass and Yukon Railway opened in 1900 from Skagway, in neighbouring Alaska, to the capital, Whitehorse, and now offers a spectacular tourist excursion. Yukon holds Canada’s coldest recorded temperature (-63°C) and its highest mountain, Mount Logan, named for Sir William Logan, the geologist born in Montreal in 1798 who founded the Geological Survey of Canada and directed it from 1842 to 1869.

The Northwest Territories (N.W.T.) were formed in 1870 from the North-Western Territory and Rupert’s Land. The capital, Yellowknife (population 20,000), is the "diamond capital of North America", and Aboriginal people — Dene, Inuit and Métis — make up more than half the population. Running 4,200 kilometres, the Mackenzie River is North America’s second-longest river system after the Mississippi and drains 1.8 million square kilometres.

Nunavut means "our land" in Inuktitut. It was carved in 1999 out of the eastern Northwest Territories, taking in the whole of the former District of Keewatin. Its capital, Iqaluit, was formerly Frobisher Bay, named after Martin Frobisher, the English explorer who in 1576 entered the uncharted Arctic on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I. Its 19-member Legislative Assembly picks a premier and ministers by consensus; about 85% of the people are Inuit, and Inuktitut is one of the official languages and the first language taught in schools.

Security & SovereigntyThe Canadian Rangers

Canada’s vast north poses security and sovereignty challenges. Part of the Canadian Forces Reserves (militia), the Canadian Rangers play a key role in this harsh, isolated region: drawing on indigenous knowledge and experience, they travel by snowmobile in winter and all-terrain vehicle in summer, ranging from Resolute to the Magnetic North Pole, keeping the flag flying in the Arctic. The caribou (reindeer), popular game for hunters, is a symbol of Canada’s North.

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