| | The 1st of July is the National Day of Canada. Canada, the second biggest country in the world, stretches from the Artic to the Great Lakes and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Consequently Canada's geography includes high mountains, huge forests and wide fertile plains as well as vast expanses of snow, glaciers and frozen sea. Canada also has hundreds of rivers and lakes which give it the second largest area of fresh water in the world. Because of its variety of habitats Canada has a wide range of wildlife from polar bears to buffalo. |
| | Like the USA, Canada has tribes of native "Amerinds", but also Inuits (Eskimos), who live in the far north. The Indians are believed to have arrived in Canada from Asia over 12,000 years ago (some say as many as 38,000 years ago), by walking across the Bering Strait when the sea was frozen solid, as it sometimes is even today. The Inuits, however, were only thought to have come about 2,000 years ago by the same route. There is evidence to suggest that the first European to arrive was a Viking called Leiff Ericsson, who sailed across the Atlantic to Canada's east coast. However, his people , the Norsemen, gave up any idea of colonizing the land after resistance from the native population. The French were the first to colonise, naming part of eastern Canada "New France", and later the British also developed settlements. After a succession of wars Britain finally established the Dominion of Canada in 1867, although the French territories retained certain legal and cultural rights. Later, there was an expansion of territory west and north to create the Canada of today. |
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