1. Structure and relief.

Canada is a distinctly northern land in a world where geography and history have conspired to emphasize the north. No wonder the Canadian national anthem stresses the point of the true North strong and free. Spanning six time zones, Canada indeed, is the second largest country in the world, covering an area of 9,960,555 square kilometers and exceeded only by that of Russia. This is larger than both her southern neighbour, the United States, with 9,346,411 square kilometers and the giant of Asia, the Chinese People’s Republic, with 9,736,305 square kilometers.

Canada has vast areas of still untapped forest, fuel, water and mineral wealth which enables the country to play an ever-growing part in the economy of the world.

Canada ids bordered by only one other country – the United States. In the far north-west, Canada is bordered by the American state of Alaska, while in the north her territory extends far into the Arctic.

Nearly one half of Canada’s territory is made up of the cold, snow-and-ice-covered far north. This is a land of thousands of lakes. In fact there are more lakes in Canada than in the rest of the world taken together. There are also large and almost unexplored islands extending northwards towards the North Pole. Among them islands are Victoria Island, Prince of Wales Island, Baffin Island, Queen Elizabeth Islands.

Canada is divided into ten provinces and three large territories: Yukon, and the subdivided Northwest Territories Nunavut and the Northwest territories. These territories include an are which is often called the empty part of the country, because of the small number of people living permanently all the year round.

Beginning in the east, there are the four Maritime Provinces. This name means that they are on the coast, or near it in this case, the Atlantic Ocean. The Maritimes are small in population; their inhabitants are of British and French stock; many of them are fishermen and sea-faring people. The four Maritimes are: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

West of New Brunswick is Quebec, Canada’s largest province. It is primarily a French province and this part of Canada is called French Canada.

West of Quebec lies the province of Ontario, largest in population and second largest in area of all the Canadian provinces.

The Prairie Provinces lie to the west of Ontario. There are three of them: Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

West of Alberta lies the tenth province of Canada – British Columbia. It has a long Pacific coastline. British Columbia is the third largest province in population after Ontario and Quebec.

The structure and relief of Canada show both a simplicity and a variety that are striking.

The country can roughly be divided into 7 major topographic regions. They are as

1) the Appalachian Region;

2) the St. Lawrence - Great Lowland;

3) the Canadian Shield;

4) the Hudson Bay Lowland;

5) the Interior Plains;

6) the Western Mountain Region;

7) the Arctic Islands.

The Appalachian Region is a northern extension of the ancient Appalachian mountain system that traverses the eastern part of the United States. The whole structure has been fractured and drowned by the sea, so that is a mix of great ocean inlets with peninsulas between them.

The continental shelf is very widely developed off the Island of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia where swirls of cold and warm currents include the famous fishing grounds of the Grand Banks. Oil and natural gas have also been discovered in this great structure.

Timbering, mining and fishing are major sources of income in Newfoundland, Labrador and New Brunswick. Low-lying, fertile Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, where the first attempts to colonize Canada took place in 1604, produce 85 per cent of Canada’s potato crop, and together the four Atlantic Provinces produce nearly half of Canada’s fish take each year. Forestry, agriculture, fishing and mining rank next to importance to manufacturing.

The St. Lawrence – Great Lakes Lowland, extending south-westwards from the City of Quebec is the smallest but one of the most important regions of Canada. A series of fertile, low-lying plains bordering the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes makes up the greatest part of this region where dairy farming, tobacco and fruit are important industries. It is also the mostly heavily populated part of the country. This is the real heart of Canada. The Ontario peninsular, bounded by Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario, is the most heavily industrialized are in the nation.

The Canadian Shield, which is a geographical heart of the country, covers almost 4,8 million square kilometers, or more than the whole Western Europe. It includes some of the oldest rocks of the earth, dating back over 4,5 billion years. It is made up of huge lava tablelands, of lots of granite domes and shallow basins of sandstones and limestones. Due to erosion it resembles a plateau-like surface, about 427 metres above sea-level. The Canadian Shield reaches in a great are from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic Ocean to surround Hudson Bay.

The region includes large areas of Labrador and the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan as well as the bulk of the mainland part of the Nunavut and Northwest Territories. In the west< Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake, Lakes Athabasca and Winnipeg and Lake of the Woods mark the boundary of the Shield. To the south, the shield extends to Lake Superior and Huron and borders on the St. Lawrence and Appalachian Regions. The Canadian Shield (the Laurentian Plateau) is dotted by thousands of lakes, streams and swamps. It is an unpromising area for agriculture, however, most of the region is covered with forests, and it is rich in water power and such minerals as iron ore, nickel, lead, zinc, copper and gold. The wealth from mining has made the Shield a central part of the Canadian economy with the mining towns acting as a major market for eastern machinery and western food.

The Hudson Bay Lowland is wedged between the Canadian Shield and the Hudson Bay. The

land is flat and poorly drained. The region lies within the sub-Arctic. Because there is almost twenty-four hour daylight during the sub-Arctic summer (which lasts for four months) certain kinds of fruit and vegetables can be grown There are several rich mining towns and villages in this area, as well as settlements of the aboriginal population. But there are problems of daily living there, as much of the soil is spongy and swamp-like and is called muskeg. When the muskeg thaws a little during the summer, it becomes almost like quicksand. This makes the building of permanent roads both difficult and expensive.

During the summer there if another unpleasant problem in the sub-Arctic. Mosquitoes and files hatch by the million. These pests are a summer problem even in parts much farther north.

The Interior Plains are located west of the Canadian Shield. The southern parts of the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are the wheat growing prairies: Canada’s bread-basket.

Much of the soil is brawn and fertile, which is best for growing wheat. The northern portions of the Interior Plains are mostly forested. Draining much of the area is the Mackenzie River, the longest river in Canada.

The Western Mountain Region is rising abruptly from the prairies of western Alberta and the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which mark the beginning of the Cordilleran Region.

Canada’s highest peaks are located in the coastal mountains. Mt. Logan (6,054 metres) is the highest, and nearby Mt. St. Elias is 5,493 metres high. In the western parts of the region, in British Columbia, the fertile valleys and plateaus are used for farming and ranching. The relief in the west creates the greatest variety of climate, soils, farming, forestry and recreation in the whole country. British Columbia’s deeply indented coast with excellent harbours accounts for about 11 thousand kilometer mainland coastline. Here is some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Much of the territory of the region is covered with needleleaf forests. The two world famous national parks are located in Alberta. They are Banff and Jasper National Parks.

The Arctic Islands is located north of the Canadian mainland, on the Arctic Archipelago – it is a vast expanse of islands of various sizes, many of which are geographically similar to the Canadian Shield. Included in this region are huge Baffin, Ellesmere, and Victoria Islands which are among the ten largest islands in the world. Baffin Island has an area more than double that of Great Britain! The mountains that run through these islands, especially Ellesmere Island, though bare of vegetation have considerable reserves of oil and natural gas and add appreciably to Canada’s fuel wealth. The region is a land of year-long ice and snow and such terrible cold that no one can live there permanently. Except for a few moss-like plants called lichens, nothing can survive in the winter, but in the summer the Arctic ground is covered with beautiful flowers. The only land animal which can live wholly on the plants of this region is the musk-ox which feeds on lichens. But the musk-ox is a dying breed; there are very few left even in the most remote parts of Canada’s north.