Canadian population characteristics and principal cities

Canadian population characteristics

Photographic Book Canada

Canada map

Canada vegetation and animals

Canada people

Population characteristics

The population of Canada is 33,679,263 (2008), compared with 27,296,859 in the 1991 census. The overall population density is about 4 people per sq km (9.6 people per sq mi). Approximately three quarters of the people of Canada inhabit a relatively narrow belt of land along the US border, with about 62 per cent concentrated in Quebec and Ontario. Nearly 17 per cent of the population lives in the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan; about 8 per cent in the Atlantic provinces, which include Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritime provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and about 13 per cent in British Columbia. Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut are sparsely inhabited, having only about 0.3 per cent of the total population. About 81 per cent of the population is urban.

The demography of the Canada population

The country is divided into ten provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan) and three territories (Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, and Nunavut, which was created from a division of the Northwest Territories, and came into existence in 1999).

Among the leading cities of Canada are: Toronto, Ontario, a port and manufacturing city (population, 2006 estimate, 5,406,300); Montreal, Quebec, a port and major commercial centre (2006 estimate, 3,666,300); (Vancouver, British Columbia, a railway, shipping, and forest-products manufacturing centre (2006 estimate, 2,236,100); Ottawa, Ontario, the capital of Canada and a commercial and industrial city (2006 estimate, 1,158,300); Winnipeg, Manitoba, a major wheat market and railway junction (2006 estimate, 706,700); Edmonton, Alberta, a farming and petroleum centre (2006 estimate, 1,050,000); Quebec City, Quebec, a shipping, manufacturing, and tourist centre (2006 estimate, 723,300); Hamilton, Ontario, a shipping and manufacturing centre (2006 estimate, 716,200); Calgary, Alberta, a transport, mining, and farm-trade centre (2006 estimate, 1,107,200); St Catharines, Ontario, an industrial and commercial city (2006 estimate, 396,800); Kitchener, Ontario, a city of manufacturing industries (2006 estimate, 463,600); London, Ontario, a railway and industrial centre (2006 estimate, 465,700); and Halifax, Nova Scotia, a seaport and manufacturing city (2006 estimate, 382,200). The capital of the territory of Nunavut is Iqaluit (2006, 6,184).

Canada city. Encarta