1.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
2.
Provinces and territories of Canada
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Canadas geography is divided into administrative divisions known as provinces and territories that are responsible for delivery of sub-national governance. Over its history, Canadas international borders have changed several times, the ten provinces are Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. Several of the provinces were former British colonies, Quebec was originally a French colony, the three territories are Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon, which govern the rest of the area of the former British North America. Together, the provinces and territories make up the worlds second-largest country by area, the powers flowing from the Constitution Act are divided between the federal government and the provincial governments to exercise exclusively. In modern Canadian constitutional theory, the provinces are considered to be co-sovereign divisions, the territories are not sovereign, but simply part of the federal realm, and have a commissioner who represents the federal government. Notes, There are three territories in Canada, unlike the provinces, the territories of Canada have no inherent sovereignty and have only those powers delegated to them by the federal government. They include all of mainland Canada north of latitude 60° north and west of Hudson Bay, the following table lists the territories in order of precedence. Prior to Confederation, Ontario and Quebec were united as the Province of Canada, over the following years, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island were added as provinces. The Hudsons Bay Company controlled large swathes of western Canada referred to as Ruperts Land and the North-Western Territory until 1870, subsequently, the area was re-organized into the province of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. The remaining Arctic islands were transferred by Britain to Canada in 1880,1898 saw the Yukon Territory, later renamed simply as Yukon, carved from the parts of the Northwest Territories surrounding the Klondike gold fields. On September 1,1905, a portion of the Northwest Territories south of the 60th parallel north became the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 1912, the boundaries of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba were expanded northward, Manitobas to the 60° parallel, Ontarios to Hudson Bay, in 1907, Newfoundland acquired dominion status. In the middle of the Great Depression in Canada with Newfoundland facing a period of economic crisis. In 2001, it was officially renamed Newfoundland and Labrador, in 1903, the Alaska Panhandle Dispute fixed British Columbias northwestern boundary. This was one of two provinces in Canadian history to have its size reduced. In 1999, Nunavut was created from the portion of the Northwest Territories. Yukon lies in the portion of The North, while Nunavut is in the east. All three territories combined are the most sparsely populated region in Canada, covering 3,921,739 km2 in land area and they are often referred to as a single region, The North, for organisational and economic purposes
3.
Ontario
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Ontario, one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada, is located in east-central Canada. It is Canadas most populous province by a margin, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all Canadians. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and it is home to the nations capital city, Ottawa, and the nations most populous city, Toronto. There is only about 1 km of land made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border. Ontario is sometimes divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontarios population and arable land is located in the south, in contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and is heavily forested. The province is named after Lake Ontario, a thought to be derived from Ontarí, io, a Huron word meaning great lake, or possibly skanadario. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes, the province consists of three main geographical regions, The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and central portions, which comprises over half the land area of Ontario. Although this area mostly does not support agriculture, it is rich in minerals and in part covered by the Central and Midwestern Canadian Shield forests, studded with lakes, Northern Ontario is subdivided into two sub-regions, Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. The virtually unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the north and northeast, mainly swampy. Southern Ontario which is further sub-divided into four regions, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Golden Horseshoe, the highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres above sea level located in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500 m are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands, the Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment, the Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87 percent of the area of the province. Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario that is the southernmost extent of Canadas mainland, Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the border of California. The climate of Ontario varies by season and location, the effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontarios climate is classified as humid continental, Ontario has three main climatic regions
4.
Urban sprawl
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In addition to describing a particular form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. In Continental Europe the term peri-urbanisation is often used to denote similar dynamics and phenomena, There is widespread disagreement about what constitutes sprawl and how to quantify it. For example, some commentators measure sprawl only with the number of residential units per acre in a given area. But others associate it with decentralization, discontinuity, segregation of uses, the term urban sprawl is highly politicized, and almost always has negative connotations. It is criticized for causing environmental degradation, and intensifying segregation and undermining the vitality of existing urban areas, due to the pejorative meaning of the term, few openly support urban sprawl as such. The term has become a cry for managing urban growth. Definitions of sprawl vary, researchers in the field acknowledge that the term lacks precision and he argued that a better way to identify sprawl was to use indicators rather than characteristics because this was a more flexible and less arbitrary method. He proposed using accessibility and functional space as indicators. Ewings approach has been criticized for assuming that sprawl is defined by negative characteristics, what constitutes sprawl may be considered a matter of degree and will always be somewhat subjective under many definitions of the term. The following characteristics are associated with sprawl, This refers to a situation where commercial, residential, institutional and industrial areas are separated from one another. Consequently, large tracts of land are devoted to a use and are segregated from one another by open space, infrastructure. The degree to which different land uses are mixed together is used as an indicator of sprawl in studies of the subject. Job sprawl is another land use symptom of urban sprawl and car-dependent communities, spatial mismatch is related to job sprawl and economic environmental justice. Job sprawl has been documented and measured in various ways and it has been shown to be a growing trend in Americas metropolitan areas. The Brookings Institution has published articles on the topic. In 2005, author Michael Stoll defined job sprawl simply as jobs located more than 5-mile radius from the CBD, and measured the concept based on year 2000 U. S. Census data. These two authors used three geographic rings limited to a 35-mile radius around the CBD,3 miles or less,3 to 10 miles and this compares to the year 1998 -23. 3%,34. 2%, and 42. 5% in those respective rings. The study shows CBD employment share shrinking, and job growth focused in the suburban and exurban outer metropolitan rings, Sprawl is often characterized as consisting of low-density development
5.
Orleans, Ontario
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Orleans, is a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the part of the city along the Ottawa River. The Canada 2011 Census determined that Orleans population was 107,823, according to the 2011 census,62,888 people lived in the Cumberland portion of Orleans, while 44,935 people lived in the Gloucester portion. Today, Orleans spans the municipal wards of Orleans, Innes, Orleans is one of 3 areas of the post-amalgamated City of Ottawa to contain a significant francophone population, hence the communitys name. The community is thought to have been named by its first postmaster, Théodore Besserer, after his place of birth, Orleans was an incorporated police village from 1922 to 1974 and was then known as St. Joseph dOrléans. The name corresponds to the main francophone Roman Catholic Church, Paroisse St-Joseph of which the part of Orleans is built around. The communitys name inspired the name of one its main roads, Jeanne DArc Boulevard, Jeanne dArc was a 15th-century martyr who led the French army to victory in Orléans, France. Largely a rural area for a number of years, the first major suburban subdivision constructed in the community was the Queenswood Heights development starting in the late 1960s. Orleans has continued its growth as a suburban community since that time, its southern. Orleans continues to have a sizable French-speaking population, although the proportion of francophones has been decreasing in recent years, the communitys name is spelled with an acute accent in French in the relevant regulation to the City of Ottawa Act, reflective of the areas francophone heritage. Growth has focused around the Place dOrléans shopping centre, a shopping centre with over 175 stores situated off Ottawa Regional Road 174. Place DOrléans was originally constructed in 1979 and underwent major expansions in 1984,1988, the population and business growth also forced the improvement of Innes Road from a two-lane to a four-lane road in 2005. It is home to the Gloucester Skating Club and the Canadian Academy of Skating Arts, the skating club is well known for sending skaters to national and international level competitions. In 2009, the Shenkman Arts Centre opened just east of Place dOrléans and it is a multidisciplinary arts centre that houses a concert hall, black-box theatre, several art galleries and studio spaces for both visual and performing arts. Along the Ottawa River in the north-east of Orleans, is the parkland of Petrie Island, the parkland is located on several small islands connected by Trim Road, a north-south roadway. The islands are sandbars developed over time in the river, there was a facility extracting sand from the islands, but this has been closed and converted into a large beach area. Petrie Island is home to turtles in some of its sheltered lagoons and has a centre for learning more about the local environment. One section of Petrie Island has several homes, but the area is mainly parkland, there is a marina with canoe and kayak rentals
6.
Barrhaven
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Barrhaven is a rapidly growing suburban neighbourhood in the southwest of the urban area of the city of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, about 17 km southwest of downtown Ottawa. Prior to amalgamation with Ottawa in 2001, Barrhaven was part of the City of Nepean and its population as of the Canada 2011 Census was 72,324. The area is bisected by CN rail tracks. Barrhaven is surrounded by areas and farmland, with the exception of the growing Riverside South area across the Rideau River. Directly south of Barrhaven is Manotick, a town of the city. Barrhaven is divided several areas, Barrhaven proper or Old Barrhaven is the westernmost part of the neighbourhood. New residential development is expanding the west side of Old Barrhaven between Cedarview and Strandherd Drive, also included in this area is a triangle of land east of Greenbank between Fallowfield Road and the railway tracks known as Knollsbrook or The Triangle. South of this is the known as Longfields, which stretches south to Strandherd. Sandwiched between the tracks, Jockvale Road, Greenbank and Strandherd is the neighbourhood of Barrhaven on the Green. East of Woodroffe, next to the Rideau River, is the neighbourhood of Davidson Heights, South of Strandherd and east of Greenbank is a new community known as Chapman Mills. As Prince of Wales Drive approaches Jockvale, there is a community known as Stonebridge that is located beside the Stonebridge Golf & Country Club. The Barrhaven area was inhabited by First Nations peoples. In the 19th century the area populated by European farmers as the area was divided into a number of rural homesteads. The old Barrhaven School House located at Jockvale and Strandherd was in built in 1906, today, the school stands as a historic site. In 1911, the Canadian Northern Railway built a line from Ottawa to Toronto through the area. Modern Barrhaven was established in the 1960s, one of a group of new suburbs built outside the Greenbelt from the city of Ottawa. Building in the area was begun by Mel Barr, for whom the community is named, Barr had originally purchased a 200-acre farm with the intent of constructing a horse racing track. However the Rideau Carleton Raceway was built further to the east, in 1968-69 Barrhaven Public School was built as the very first public school in Barrhaven
7.
Jim Prentice
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Peter Eric James Jim Prentice PC QC was a Canadian politician who served as the 16th Premier of Alberta from 2014 to 2015. In the 2004 federal election he was elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a candidate of the Conservative Party of Canada. He was re-elected in the 2006 federal election and appointed to the cabinet as Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians. Prentice was appointed Minister of Industry on August 14,2007, on November 4,2010, Prentice announced his resignation from cabinet and as MP for Calgary Centre-North. All three stood as candidates in by-elections scheduled for October 27,2014, and all three were elected with Prentice becoming the MLA for Calgary-Foothills. After introducing his first budget in 2015, Prentice declared a provincial election on May 5,2015. On October 13,2016, Prentice and three others were killed when the aircraft in which they were travelling crashed shortly after taking off from Kelowna, the flight was en route from Kelowna to Springbank Airport, just outside Calgary. Prentice was born to a large, blue-collar family in South Porcupine, near Timmins, the family then moved to Alberta in 1969. He was the son of Wilma Lyle Marea and Eric Prentice and his uncle Dean Prentice played in the NHL for more than 20 years. Prentice was educated at the University of Alberta and Dalhousie University and he paid for his tuition by working as a coal miner in the summer months for seven years. As a lawyer, he served as a Law Commissioner of the Indian Claims Commission of Canada, in his personal life, Prentice served for seven years on the Board of Directors at the Calgary Winter Club, including stints as President and Chairman. He was a member and volunteer leader in the Grace Presbyterian Church. Prentice and his wife Karen have three daughters and two grandchildren and he was also a member of the Trilateral Commission, a non-partisan organization that aims to increase cooperation within the developed world. In this capacity, Prentice was one of 20 Canadian members, Prentice joined the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 1976, and was active in Tory circles ever since. In the 1986 provincial election, Prentice ran for the Progressive Conservatives in Calgary Mountain View, during the early 1990s, Prentice served as the governing federal PC partys chief financial officer and treasurer. He ran in the 2003 Progressive Conservative leadership election to support the United Alternative proposal to merge the PC party with the Canadian Alliance and he was seen by many as an alternative to the status quo candidate and front runner Peter MacKay. A basic platform of Prentices campaign was no one has ever defeated the Liberals with a divided conservative family. He also unexpectedly received the support of fellow leadership challenger Craig Chandler, Prentice ultimately emerged in second-place on the fourth ballot to the eventual winner MacKay
8.
Bat
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Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but instead flap their spread-out digits, which are very long and covered with a thin membrane or patagium. About 70% of bat species are insectivores, most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. A few species, such as the bat, feed from animals other than insects, with the vampire bats being hematophagous. Bats are present throughout most of the world, with the exception of cold regions. They perform the vital roles of pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit seeds. Bats are economically important, as they consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides, the smallest bat is the Kittis hog-nosed bat, measuring 29–34 mm in length,15 cm across the wings and 2–2.6 g in mass. It is also arguably the smallest extant species of mammal, with the Etruscan shrew being the other contender. The largest species of bat are a few species of Pteropus, the Mexican free-tailed bat is the fastest flying animal in horizontal flight. An older English name for bats is flittermouse, which matches their name in other Germanic languages, middle English had bakke, most likely cognate with Old Swedish natbakka, which may have undergone a shift from -k- to -t- influenced by Latin blatta, moth, nocturnal insect. They were formerly grouped in the superorder Archonta, along with the treeshrews, colugos, genetic studies have now placed bats in the superorder Laurasiatheria, along with carnivorans, pangolins, odd-toed ungulates, even-toed ungulates, and cetaceans. A recent study by Zhang et al. places Chiroptera as a taxon to the clade Perissodactyla. The phylogenetic relationships of the different groups of bats have been the subject of much debate and this hypothesis recognized differences between microbats and megabats and acknowledged that flight has only evolved once in mammals. Most molecular biological evidence supports the view that bats form a single or monophyletic group, in the 1980s, a hypothesis based on morphological evidence was offered that stated the Megachiroptera evolved flight separately from the Microchiroptera. The so-called flying primate hypothesis proposes that, when adaptations to flight are removed, one example is that the brains of megabats show a number of advanced characteristics that link them to primates. Although recent genetic studies support the monophyly of bats, debate continues as to the meaning of available genetic. Genetic evidence indicates that megabats originated during the early Eocene and should be placed within the four lines of microbats. Consequently, two new suborders based on molecular data have been proposed and these two new suborders are strongly supported by statistical tests
9.
Bear
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Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails. While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely on bamboo, with the exception of courting individuals and mothers with their young, bears are typically solitary animals. They may be diurnal or nocturnal and have an excellent sense of smell, despite their heavy build and awkward gait, they are adept runners, climbers, and swimmers. Bears use shelters, such as caves and logs, as their dens, most species occupy their dens during the winter for a period of hibernation. Bears have been hunted since prehistoric times for their meat and fur, they have used for bear-baiting and other forms of entertainment. With their powerful physical presence, they play a prominent role in the arts, mythology, in modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats and illegal trade in bear parts, including the Asian bile bear market. The IUCN lists six species as vulnerable or endangered, and even least concern species. The poaching and international trade of these most threatened populations are prohibited, Bear taxon names such as Ursidae and Ursus come from Latin Ursus/Ursa, he-bear/she-bear. The female first name Ursula, originally derived from a Christian saints name, in Switzerland, the male first name Urs is especially popular, while the name of the canton and city of Bern is derived from Bär, German for bear. The Germanic name Bernard means bear-brave, bear-hardy, or bold bear, the Old English name Beowulf is a kenning, bee-wolf, for bear, in turn meaning a brave warrior. The family Ursidae is one of nine families in the suborder Caniformia, or doglike carnivorans, Bears closest living relatives are the pinnipeds, canids, and musteloids. Modern bears comprise eight species in three subfamilies, Ailuropodinae, Tremarctinae, and Ursinae, the earliest members of Ursidae belong to the extinct subfamily Amphicynodontinae, including Parictis and the slightly younger Allocyon, both from North America. These animals looked very different from bears, being small and raccoon-like in overall appearance. Parictis does not appear in Eurasia and Africa until the Miocene, european genera morphologically are very similar to Allocyon, and to the much younger American Kolponomos, are known from the Oligocene, including Amphicticeps and Amphicynodon. The raccoon-sized, dog-like Cephalogale is the member of the subfamily Hemicyoninae. The subfamily includes the younger genera Phoberocyon, and Plithocyon, a Cephalogale-like species gave rise to the genus Ursavus during the early Oligocene, this genus proliferated into many species in Asia and is ancestral to all living bears
10.
Beaver
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The beaver is a large, primarily nocturnal, semiaquatic rodent. Castor includes two extant species, the North American beaver and Eurasian beaver, Beavers are known for building dams, canals, and lodges. They are the second-largest rodent in the world and their colonies create one or more dams to provide still, deep water to protect against predators, and to float food and building material. The North American beaver population was more than 60 million. Beavers, along with pocket gophers and kangaroo rats, are castorimorph rodents, Beavers are known for their natural trait of building dams on rivers and streams, and building their homes in the resulting pond. Beavers also build canals to float building materials that are difficult to haul over land and they use powerful front teeth to cut trees and other plants that they use both for building and for food. In the absence of existing ponds, beavers must construct dams before building their lodges, first they place vertical poles, then fill between the poles with a crisscross of horizontally placed branches. They fill in the gaps between the branches with a combination of weeds and mud until the dam impounds sufficient water to surround the lodge and this serves as a warning to beavers in the area. Once a beaver has sounded the alarm, nearby beavers will dive, Beavers are slow on land, but are good swimmers, and can stay under water for as long as 15 minutes. Beavers are herbivores, and prefer the wood of quaking aspen, cottonwood, willow, alder, birch, maple and they also eat sedges, pondweed, and water lilies. Beavers do not hibernate, but store sticks and logs in a pile in their ponds, some of the pile is generally above water and accumulates snow in the winter. This insulation of snow often keeps the water freezing in and around the food pile. Beavers have webbed hind-feet, and a broad, scaly tail and they have poor eyesight, but keen senses of hearing, smell, and touch. A beavers teeth grow continuously so that they not be worn down by chewing on wood. Their four incisors are composed of hard orange enamel on the front, the chisel-like ends of incisors are maintained by their self-sharpening wear pattern. The enamel in a beavers incisors contains iron and is resistant to acid than enamel in the teeth of other mammals. Beavers continue to grow throughout their lives, adult specimens weighing over 25 kg are not uncommon. Females are as large as or larger than males of the same age, Beavers live up to 24 years of age in the wild
