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OUT OF COUNTRY (CANADA)Canada,the second largest country.in the world in area (after Russia),occupying roughly the northern two fifths of the continent of North America.Canada is officially bilingual in english and French, reflecting the country’s history as ground once contested by two of Europe’s great powers. The word canada is derived from the Huron-Iroquois kanata, meaning a village or settlement. In the 16th century,French explorer Jacques Cartier used the name canada to refer to the area around the settlement that is now Quebec city.Later, canada was used as a synonym for New France, which,from 1534 to 1763, included all the France possessions along the St.Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.
Land of Canada
Land of Canada
Canada’s total land area includes thousands of adjacent islands, notably Newfoundland in the north . canada is bounded by the Arctic Ocean to the north , Greenland to the northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, 12 states of the United States to the south, and the Pacific Ocean and the U.S.state of Alaska to the west;in addition,tiny Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (an archipelagic territory of France) lies off Newfoundland.
The combination of physical geography and discontinuous settlement has led to a strong sense of regionalism in Canada and popular regional terms often overlap.The Atlantic provinces include all of the Appalachian region except the Quebec portion. If the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is excluded, the three remaining east-cosat province are called the Maritime Provinces or the Maritimes.Quebec and Ontario are usually referred to separately but sometime together, as central canada. The West usually means all four province west of Ontario,but British Columbia may be referred to along and the other three collectively as the Prairie Provinces or the prairies. Yukon,the Northwest Territories,and Nunavut are referred to us the North.
Relief of Canada
Canada contains within its borders a vast variety of geographic features.In general,the country’s landform structure can be considered as a vast basin more than 3,220 miles (5,200km) in diameter. The cordillera in the west, the Appalachians in the southeast, the mountaints of northern Labrador and of Baffin Island in the In Mountains in the north form its high rim, while Hudson Bay, set close to the centre of the enormous platform of the canada shield, occupies the basin bottom. The western rim of the basin bottom. The western rim of the baisn is higer and more massive than its eastern counterpart,and pieces of the rim, notably in the far northwest and in the south , are missing.
The main lines of canadian landforms continus well into the United States, intimately linking the geography of both countries. To create such a large country,Canadians had to forge transportation and communication links in an east-west direction, against the physiographic grain of the continent.The Canadian North remains one of the least settled and least economically exploited parts of the world.
Rainfall
Humid air masses from the pacific cause enormous quantities of orographic (mountain-caused)rain to fall on the west coast and mountain areas.Several sites along the British Columbia coat receive annual quantities in excess of 100 inches (2,500 mm),but British Columbia receives much less precipitation in summer than in winter because low-pressure systems move on a more northerly track in summer and seldom cross the southern part of the coast.Vancouver has an annual average precipitation of about 40 inches (1,000mm).
Snowfall
Canada’s snowfall does not follow the same pattern as rainfall. In the North and the interior plains , snowfall is light because cold air is very dry. The snow is hard and dry,falls in small amounts, and is packed down by the constant wind.The east and west coasts are areas of lighter snowfall because the ocean usually makes the air too warm for large of snow to fall. The depth of snow increases inland from each coast, reaching maximums of about 240 inches (6,100mm) in the Rocky Mountains and on the shores of the gulf of ST.Lawrence.