North America
North America is a continent within the Northern Hemisphere and all within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16.5% of the earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, the fourth by population after Asia and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if nearby islands are included. North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge 40,000 to 17,000 years ago; the so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago. The Classic stage spans the 6th to 13th centuries.
The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants. Owing to the European colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, their culture reflects Western traditions; the Americas are accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word "America" on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil, he explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio:... ab Americo inventore... quasi Americi terram sive Americam.
For Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, but in its feminine form "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia" and "Africa". Other mapmakers extended the name America to the northern continent, In 1538, Gerard Mercator used America on his map of the world for all the Western Hemisphere; some argue that because the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries, the derivation from "Amerigo Vespucci" could be put in question. In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed a derivation from the Amerrique mountains of Central America. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and... the can mean... a spirit that breathes, life itself." The United Nations formally recognizes "North America" as comprising three areas: Northern America, Central America, The Caribbean.
This has been formally defined by the UN Statistics Division. The term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with context. In Canadian English, North America refers to the land mass as a whole consisting of Mexico, the United States, Canada, although it is ambiguous which other countries are included, is defined by context. In the United States of America, usage of the term may refer only to Canada and the US, sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands. In France, Portugal, Romania and the countries of Latin America, the cognates of North America designate a subcontinent of the Americas comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Bermuda. North America has been referred to by other names. Spanish North America was referred to as Northern America, this was the first official name given to Mexico. Geographically the North American continent has many subregions; these include cultural and geographic regions. Economic regions included those formed by trade blocs, such as the North American Trade Agreement bloc and Central American Trade Agreement.
Linguistically and culturally, the continent could be divided into Latin America. Anglo-America includes most of Northern America and Caribbean islands with English-speaking populations; the southern North American continent is composed of two regions. These are the Caribbean; the north of the continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of "North America", which encompasses the whole continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used to refer only to Mexico, the United States, Greenland; the term Northern America refers to the northern-most countries and territories of North America: the United States, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Greenland. Although the term does not refer to a unifie
Sherbrooke
Sherbrooke is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. Sherbrooke is situated at the confluence of the Saint-François and Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is the name of a territory equivalent to a regional county municipality and census division of Quebec, coextensive with the city of Sherbrooke. With 161,323 residents at the 2016 census, Sherbrooke was the sixth largest city in the province of Quebec and the thirtieth largest in Canada; the Sherbrooke Census Metropolitan Area had 212,105 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest metropolitan area in Quebec and nineteenth largest in Canada. Known as Hyatt's Mill, it was renamed after Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, a British general, Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, Governor General of British North America. Sherbrooke is the primary economic, political and institutional centre of Estrie, was known as the Queen of the Eastern Townships at the beginning of the 20th century. There are eight institutions educating 40,000 students and employing 11,000 people, 3,700 of whom are professors and researchers.
The direct economic impact of these institutions exceeds 1 billion dollars. The proportion of university students is 10.32 students per 100 inhabitants. In proportion to its population, Sherbrooke has the largest concentration of students in Quebec. Since the nineteenth century, Sherbrooke has been a manufacturing centre; this segment of the economy has experienced a considerable transformation in recent decades as a result of the decline of the city's traditional manufacturing sectors. The service sector occupies a prominent place in the economy of the city, as well as a growing knowledge-based economy; the Sherbrooke region is surrounded by mountains and lakes. There are various tourist attractions in regional flavour. Mont-Bellevue Park, a large park in the city, is used for downhill skiing; the First Nations were the first inhabitants, having settled the region between 8,000 and 3,000 years ago. Traces of seasonal camps, characterized by arrowheads and other similar tools have been found. Ceramic objects dating from the Woodland period were found, indicating that the region continued to be occupied by nomadic people during this period.
Upon the arrival of Samuel de Champlain in Quebec in 1608, this region was under the control of the Mohawks. France created an alliance through its missionaries with the Abenaki, located in Vermont; the French were driven to the valley of the St. Lawrence River near Trois-Rivières after a Mohawk victory in the war of 1660; the area around present-day Sherbrooke became a battlefield between the two peoples who had to travel to the region, both of whom sought to obtain control of the territory. For the Abenaki, the confluence of Pskasewantekw and Alsigôntekw, present day Sherbrooke, which they named Shacewanteku, was an important resting point during the seasonal passages. During the Seven Years' War between France and Britain, the Abenaki, still allied with the French, travelled along the rivers of the Eastern Townships near present-day Sherbrooke, during raids against British forts; the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, ending the Revolutionary War and recognizing the Independence of the United States.
During this time, the Eastern Townships were under Abekani control for a few years, having practised hunting and fishing for centuries. However, the American Revolution attracted British loyalists from America to the region, who began to covet the land and obtain government grants; the first European settler to reside in the Sherbrooke region was a French Canadian named Jean-Baptiste Nolain, of whom few details are known, except that he arrived in 1779 to engage in agriculture. The first attempts at colonization occurred in 1792 on the banks of the St. Francis River; this settlement was known as Cowan's Clearance. In 1793, loyalist Gilbert Hyatt, a farmer from Schenectady, New York, established his farm not far from the confluence of the Massawippi River and Coaticook River, before the governor of Lower Canada awarded the land. Over the next two years, 18 families came to live on the site; the Crown acknowledged Hyatt's ownership of the land in 1801. Hyatt built the first dam on the Magog River, in collaboration with another loyalist named Jonathan Ball, who had bought land on the north bank of the river.
Hyatt built a gristmill in 1802 on the south bank of the river, while Ball built a sawmill on the north shore. By constructing the mill, Hyatt founded the small village that became known as "Hyatt's Mills"; the village was named "Hyatt's Mills" until 1818, when the village was renamed after Governor General Sir John Sherbrooke at the time of his retirement and return to Britain. In 1832, the village attracted most of the activities of the British American Land Company and benefited from the injection of British capital into the region. Manufacturing activities were established. From 1835 Sherbrooke began to seek government support to establish a railway line, but this only became a reality in 1852 through the line connecting the cities of Montreal and Portland. From 1867 to 1892, the manufacturing system was based on hydraulic power; the Gorge of the Magog River is considered one of the best industrial sites in Quebec, since the waters never freeze there, allowing year-long production of energy.
At that time, BALC invested significant sums in the reconstruction of several dams in the gorge upstream to Magog Lake, in order to regulate the flow of the river, an
Quebec City
Quebec City Québec, is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. The city had a population estimate of 531,902 in July 2016, the metropolitan area had a population of 800,296 in July 2016, making it the second largest city in Quebec after Montreal, the seventh largest metropolitan area and eleventh largest city in the country; the Algonquian people had named the area Kébec, an Algonquin word meaning "where the river narrows", because the Saint Lawrence River narrows proximate to the promontory of Quebec and its Cape Diamant. Explorer Samuel de Champlain founded a French settlement here in 1608, adopted the Algonquin name. Quebec City is one of the oldest European cities in North America; the ramparts surrounding Old Quebec are the only fortified city walls remaining in the Americas north of Mexico. This area was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 as the "Historic District of Old Québec"; the city's landmarks include the Château Frontenac hotel that dominates the skyline and the Citadelle of Quebec, an intact fortress that forms the centrepiece of the ramparts surrounding the old city and includes a secondary royal residence.
The National Assembly of Quebec, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée de la civilisation are found within or near Vieux-Québec. According to the Government of Canada, the Government of Quebec and the Geographical Names Board of Canada, the names of Canadian cities and towns have only one official form. Thus, Québec is spelled with an accented é in both Canadian English and French. In English, the city and the province are distinguished by the fact that the province does not have an accented é and the city does. Informally, the accent is omitted in common usage, so the unofficial form "Quebec City" is used to distinguish the city from the province. In French, the names of provinces are gendered nouns and the names of cities are not, so the city and the province are distinguished by the presence or absence of a definite article in front of the name. For example, the concept of "in Quebec" is expressed as "à Québec" for the city and "au Québec" for the province. Quebec City is one of the oldest European settlements in North America and the only fortified city north of Mexico whose walls still exist.
While many of the major cities in Latin America date from the 16th century, among cities in Canada and the U. S. few were created earlier than Quebec City. It is home to the earliest known French settlement in North America, Fort Charlesbourg-Royal, established in 1541 by explorer Jacques Cartier with some 400 persons but abandoned less than a year due to the hostility of the natives and the harsh winter; the fort was in the suburban former town of Cap-Rouge. Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer and diplomat, on 3 July 1608, at the site of a long abandoned St. Lawrence Iroquoian settlement called Stadacona. Champlain called "The Father of New France", served as its administrator for the rest of his life; the name "Canada" refers to this settlement. Although the Acadian settlement at Port-Royal was established three years earlier, Quebec came to be known as the cradle of North America's Francophone population; the place seemed favourable to the establishment of a permanent colony.
The population of the settlement remained small for decades. In 1629 it was captured by English privateers, led during the Anglo-French War. Samuel de Champlain argued that the English seizing of the lands was illegal as the war had ended, worked to have the lands returned to France; as part of the ongoing negotiations of their exit from the Anglo-French War, in 1632 the English king Charles agreed to return the lands in exchange for Louis XIII paying his wife's dowry. These terms were signed into law with the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye; the lands in Quebec and Acadia were returned to the French Company of One Hundred Associates. In 1665, there were 550 people in 70 houses living in the city. One-quarter of the people were members of religious orders: secular priests, Ursulines nuns and the order running the local hospital, Hotel-Dieu. Quebec City was the headquarters of many raids against New England during the four French and Indian Wars. In the last war, the French and Indian War, Quebec City was captured by the British in 1759 and held until the end of the war in 1763.
It was the site of three battles during Seven Years' War: a French victory. France ceded New France, including the city, to Britain in 1763. At the end of French rule in 1763, villages and pastures surrounded the town of 8,000 inhabitants; the town distinguished itself by its monumental architecture and affluent homes of masonry and shacks in the suburbs of Saint-Jean and Saint-Roch. Despite its urbanity and its status as capital, Quebec City remained a small colonial city with close ties to its rural surroundings. Nearby inhabitants traded their farm surpluses and firewood for imported goods from France at the two city m
Multimedia
Multimedia is content that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, images, animations and interactive content. Multimedia contrasts with media that use only rudimentary computer displays such as text-only or traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia can be recorded and played, interacted with or accessed by information content processing devices, such as computerized and electronic devices, but can be part of a live performance. Multimedia devices are electronic media devices used to experience multimedia content. Multimedia is distinguished from mixed media in fine art. In the early years of multimedia the term "rich media" was synonymous with interactive multimedia, "hypermedia" was an application of multimedia; the term multimedia was coined by singer and artist Bob Goldstein to promote the July 1966 opening of his "LightWorks at L'Oursin" show at Southampton, Long Island. Goldstein was aware of an American artist named Dick Higgins, who had two years discussed a new approach to art-making he called "intermedia".
On August 10, 1966, Richard Albarino of Variety borrowed the terminology, reporting: "Brainchild of songscribe-comic Bob Goldstein, the'Lightworks' is the latest multi-media music-cum-visuals to debut as discothèque fare." Two years in 1968, the term "multimedia" was re-appropriated to describe the work of a political consultant, David Sawyer, the husband of Iris Sawyer—one of Goldstein's producers at L'Oursin. In the intervening forty years, the word has taken on different meanings. In the late 1970s, the term referred to presentations consisting of multi-projector slide shows timed to an audio track. However, by the 1990s'multimedia' took on its current meaning. In the 1993 first edition of Multimedia: Making It Work, Tay Vaughan declared "Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound and video, delivered by computer; when you allow the user – the viewer of the project – to control what and when these elements are delivered, it is interactive multimedia. When you provide a structure of linked elements through which the user can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia."The German language society Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache recognized the word's significance and ubiquitousness in the 1990s by awarding it the title of German'Word of the Year' in 1995.
The institute summed up its rationale by stating " has become a central word in the wonderful new media world". In common usage, multimedia refers to an electronically delivered combination of media including video, still images and text in such a way that can be accessed interactively. Much of the content on the web today falls within this definition; some computers which were marketed in the 1990s were called "multimedia" computers because they incorporated a CD-ROM drive, which allowed for the delivery of several hundred megabytes of video and audio data. That era saw a boost in the production of educational multimedia CD-ROMs; the term "video", if not used to describe motion photography, is ambiguous in multimedia terminology. Video is used to describe the file format, delivery format, or presentation format instead of "footage", used to distinguish motion photography from "animation" of rendered motion imagery. Multiple forms of information content are not considered modern forms of presentation such as audio or video.
Single forms of information content with single methods of information processing are called multimedia to distinguish static media from active media. In the fine arts, for example, Leda Luss Luyken's ModulArt brings two key elements of musical composition and film into the world of painting: variation of a theme and movement of and within a picture, making ModulArt an interactive multimedia form of art. Performing arts may be considered multimedia considering that performers and props are multiple forms of both content and media. Multimedia presentations may be viewed by person on stage, transmitted, or played locally with a media player. A broadcast may be a recorded multimedia presentation. Broadcasts and recordings can be digital electronic media technology. Digital online multimedia streamed. Streaming multimedia may be on-demand. Multimedia games and simulations may be used in a physical environment with special effects, with multiple users in an online network, or locally with an offline computer, game system, or simulator.
The various formats of technological or digital multimedia may be intended to enhance the users' experience, for example to make it easier and faster to convey information. Or in entertainment or art, to transcend everyday experience. Enhanced levels of interactivity are made possible by combining multiple forms of media content. Online multimedia is becoming object-oriented and data-driven, enabling applications with collaborative end-user innovation and personalization on multiple forms of content over time. Examples of these range from multiple forms of content on Web sites like photo galleries with both images and title user-updated, to simulations whose co-efficients, illustrations, animations or videos are modifiable, allowing the multimedia "experience" to be altered without reprogramming. In addition to seeing and hearing, haptic technology enables virtual objects to be felt. Emerging technology involving illusions of taste and smell may enhance the multimedia experience. Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories: Linea
Canadians
Canadians are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, several of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Canadian. Canada is a multilingual and multicultural society home to people of many different ethnic and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. Following the initial period of French and the much larger British colonization, different waves of immigration and settlement of non-indigenous peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continue today. Elements of Indigenous, French and more recent immigrant customs and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada, thus a Canadian identity. Canada has been influenced by its linguistic and economic neighbour—the United States. Canadian independence from the United Kingdom grew over the course of many years since the formation of the Canadian Confederation in 1867.
World War I and World War II in particular, gave rise to a desire among Canadians to have their country recognized as a fully-fledged sovereign state with a distinct citizenship. Legislative independence was established with the passage of the Statute of Westminster 1931, the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1946 took effect on January 1, 1947, full sovereignty was achieved with the patriation of the constitution in 1982. Canada's nationality law mirrored that of the United Kingdom. Legislation since the mid-20th century represents Canadians' commitment to multilateralism and socioeconomic development; as of 2010, Canadians make up only 0.5% of the world's total population, having relied upon immigration for population growth and social development. 41% of current Canadians are first- or second-generation immigrants, 20% of Canadian residents in the 2000s were not born in the country. Statistics Canada projects that, by 2031, nearly one-half of Canadians above the age of 15 will be foreign-born or have one foreign-born parent.
Indigenous peoples, according to the 2011 Canadian Census, numbered at 1,400,685 or 4.3% of the country's 33,476,688 population. While the first contact with Europeans and indigenous peoples in Canada had occurred a century or more before, the first group of permanent settlers were the French, who founded the New France settlements, in present-day Quebec and Ontario. 100 Irish-born families would settle the Saint Lawrence Valley by 1700, assimilating into the Canadien population and culture. During the 18th and 19th century; this arrival of newcomers led to the creation of the Métis, an ethnic group of mixed European and First Nations parentage. The British conquest of New France was preceded by a small number of Germans and Swedes who settled alongside the Scottish in Port Royal, Nova Scotia, while some Irish immigrated to the Colony of Newfoundland. In the wake of the British Conquest of 1760 and the Expulsion of the Acadians, many families from the British colonies in New England moved over into Nova Scotia and other colonies in Canada, where the British made farmland available to British settlers on easy terms.
More settlers arrived during and after the American Revolutionary War, when 60,000 United Empire Loyalists fled to British North America, a large portion of whom settled in New Brunswick. After the War of 1812, British and Irish immigration was encouraged throughout Rupert's Land, Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Between 1815 and 1850, some 800,000 immigrants came to the colonies of British North America from the British Isles as part of the Great Migration of Canada; these new arrivals included some Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots displaced by the Highland Clearances to Nova Scotia. The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s increased the pace of Irish immigration to Prince Edward Island and the Province of Canada, with over 35,000 distressed individuals landing in Toronto in 1847 and 1848. Descendants of Francophone and Anglophone northern Europeans who arrived in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries are referred to as Old Stock Canadians. Beginning in the late 1850s, the immigration of Chinese into the Colony of Vancouver Island and Colony of British Columbia peaked with the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.
The Chinese Immigration Act placed a head tax on all Chinese immigrants, in hopes of discouraging Chinese immigration after completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The population of Canada has risen, doubling every 40 years, since the establishment of the Canadian Confederation in 1867. In the mid-to-late 19th century, Canada had a policy of assisting immigrants from Europe, including an estimated 100,000 unwanted "Home Children" from Britain. Block settlement communities were established throughout western Canada between the late 19th and early 20th centuries; some were planned and others were spontaneously created by the settlers themselves. Canada was now receiving a large number of European immigrants, predominantly Italians, Scandinavians, Dutch and Ukrainians. Legislative restrictions on immigration that had favoured British and other European immigrants were a
Internet access
Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals and other devices. Internet access is sold by Internet service providers delivering connectivity at a wide range of data transfer rates via various networking technologies. Many organizations, including a growing number of municipal entities provide cost-free wireless access. Availability of Internet access was once limited, but has grown rapidly. In 1995, only 0.04 percent of the world's population had access, with well over half of those living in the United States, consumer use was through dial-up. By the first decade of the 21st century, many consumers in developed nations used faster broadband technology, by 2014, 41 percent of the world's population had access, broadband was ubiquitous worldwide, global average connection speeds exceeded one megabit per second; the Internet developed from the ARPANET, funded by the US government to support projects within the government and at universities and research laboratories in the US – but grew over time to include most of the world's large universities and the research arms of many technology companies.
Use by a wider audience only came in 1995 when restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic were lifted. In the early to mid-1980s, most Internet access was from personal computers and workstations directly connected to local area networks or from dial-up connections using modems and analog telephone lines. LANs operated at 10 Mbit/s, while modem data-rates grew from 1200 bit/s in the early 1980s, to 56 kbit/s by the late 1990s. Dial-up connections were made from terminals or computers running terminal emulation software to terminal servers on LANs; these dial-up connections did not support end-to-end use of the Internet protocols and only provided terminal to host connections. The introduction of network access servers supporting the Serial Line Internet Protocol and the point-to-point protocol extended the Internet protocols and made the full range of Internet services available to dial-up users. Broadband Internet access shortened to just broadband, is defined as "Internet access, always on, faster than the traditional dial-up access" and so covers a wide range of technologies.
Broadband connections are made using a computer's built in Ethernet networking capabilities, or by using a NIC expansion card. Most broadband services provide a continuous "always on" connection. Broadband provides improved access to Internet services such as: Faster world wide web browsing Faster downloading of documents, photographs and other large files Telephony, radio and videoconferencing Virtual private networks and remote system administration Online gaming massively multiplayer online role-playing games which are interaction-intensiveIn the 1990s, the National Information Infrastructure initiative in the U. S. made broadband Internet access a public policy issue. In 2000, most Internet access to homes was provided using dial-up, while many businesses and schools were using broadband connections. In 2000 there were just under 150 million dial-up subscriptions in the 34 OECD countries and fewer than 20 million broadband subscriptions. By 2004, broadband had grown and dial-up had declined so that the number of subscriptions were equal at 130 million each.
In 2010, in the OECD countries, over 90% of the Internet access subscriptions used broadband, broadband had grown to more than 300 million subscriptions, dial-up subscriptions had declined to fewer than 30 million. The broadband technologies in widest use are ADSL and cable Internet access. Newer technologies include VDSL and optical fibre extended closer to the subscriber in both telephone and cable plants. Fibre-optic communication, while only being used in premises and to the curb schemes, has played a crucial role in enabling broadband Internet access by making transmission of information at high data rates over longer distances much more cost-effective than copper wire technology. In areas not served by ADSL or cable, some community organizations and local governments are installing Wi-Fi networks. Wireless and satellite Internet are used in rural, undeveloped, or other hard to serve areas where wired Internet is not available. Newer technologies being deployed for fixed and mobile broadband access include WiMAX, LTE, fixed wireless, e.g. Motorola Canopy.
Starting in 2006, mobile broadband access is available at the consumer level using "3G" and "4G" technologies such as HSPA, EV-DO, HSPA+, LTE. In addition to access from home and the workplace Internet access may be available from public places such as libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available; some libraries provide stations for physically connecting users' laptops to local area networks. Wireless Internet access points are available in public places such as airport halls, in some cases just for brief use while standing; some access points may provide coin-operated computers. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", "Web payphone". Many hotels have public terminals fee based. Coffee shops, shopping malls, other venues offer wireless access to computer networks, referred to as hotspots, for users who bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA; these services may be free to all, free to customer
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