1.
Northern Canada
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Northern Canada, colloquially the North, is the vast northernmost region of Canada variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to three territories of Canada, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, similarly, the Far North may refer to the Canadian Arctic, the portion of Canada north of the Arctic Circle and lies east of Alaska and west of Greenland. This area covers about 39 percent of Canadas total land area, for some purposes, Northern Canada may also include Northern Quebec and Northern Labrador. These reckonings somewhat depend on the concept of nordicity, a measure of so-called northernness that other Arctic territories share. Canada is the northernmost country in the Americas and roughly 80% of its 35 million inhabitants are concentrated along its border with the United States. Combined with the fact that all of the country experiences severely cold winters along with short and relatively cool summers. Due to the concentration of its population along the border. Southern Canada is therefore considered to be a region only when it is contrasted against or viewed from the North, as a social rather than political region, the Canadian north is often subdivided into two distinct regions based on climate, the near north and the far north. The different climates of these two regions result in different vegetation, and therefore very different economies, settlement patterns. The near north or subarctic is mostly synonymous with the Canadian boreal forest and this area has traditionally been home to the Indigenous peoples of the Subarctic, that is the First Nations, who were hunters of moose, freshwater fishers and trappers. This region was involved in the North American fur trade during its peak importance. The area was part of Ruperts Land or the North-Western Territory under the nominal control of the Hudsons Bay Company from 1670–1869. The HBCs claim was purchased by the Canadian government in 1869 and this opened the region to non-Native settlement, as well as to forestry, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Today several million people live in the north, around 15% of the Canadian total. The far north is synonymous with the north of the tree line. This area is home to the various sub-groups of the Inuit and these are people who have traditionally relied mostly on hunting marine mammals and caribou, mainly barren-ground caribou, as well as fish and migratory birds. This area was somewhat involved in the fur trade, but was influenced by the whaling industry. Very few non-Aboriginal people have settled in areas, and the residents of the far north represent less than 1% of Canadas total population
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Queen Elizabeth Islands
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The Queen Elizabeth Islands are the northernmost cluster of islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, split between Nunavut and Northwest Territories in Northern Canada. The Queen Elizabeth Islands contain approximately 14% of the global glacier, the islands, together 419,061 km2 in area, were renamed as a group after Elizabeth II on her coronation as Queen of Canada in 1953. The islands cover an area approximating to the shape of a triangle, bounded by the Nares Strait on the east, Parry Channel on the south. Most are uninhabited although the Natural Resources Canadas Climate Change Geoscience Program Earth Sciences Sector, has monitors on the islands. In 1969 Panarctic Oils, now part of Suncor began operating exploration oil wells in the Sverdrup and Franklinian basins and it ceased production in the 1970s. At the 2013 GeoConvention the Arctic Islands region were called Canadas perpetual last petroleum exploration frontier and these islands were known as the Parry Archipelago for over 130 years. They were first named after British Arctic explorer Sir William Parry, since the renaming of the archipelago in 1953, the term Parry Islands continued to be used for its southwestern part. The regional break down of the archipelago is therefore as follows, Ellesmere Island Sverdrup Islands Parry Islands Ellesmere Island is the northernmost, the Sverdrup Islands are located west of Ellesmere Island and north of Norwegian Bay. South of Lancaster Sound, Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait are the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Many of the islands are among the largest in the world and they consist of Silurian and Carboniferous rocks covered with tundra. With a population of less than 400, the islands are nearly uninhabited, there are only three permanently inhabited places in the islands. The two municipalities are the hamlets of Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, and Grise Fiord, on Ellesmere Island, eureka, a small research base on Ellesmere Island, has a population of zero but at least 8 staff on a continuous rotational basis. Abandoned Permanent Settlement Seasonally Occupied Formerly manned stations were Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island, Isachsen on Ellef Ringnes Island, abandoned settlements are Dundas Harbour on Devon Island and Craig Harbour on Ellesmere Island. Until 1999, the Queen Elizabeth Islands were part of the Baffin Region of the Northwest Territories, the rest remained with the now-reduced Northwest Territories. Borden Island, Mackenzie King Island and Melville Island were divided between the two territories, Prince Patrick Island, Eglinton Island and Emerald Island are the only notable islands that are now completely part of the Northwest Territories. Below the level of the territory, there is the level of administration. On that level, there are two municipalities, Resolute and Grise Fiord, with an aggregate area of 450 km2. The remaining 99.89 percent are unincorporated area, with a census 2006 population of five, according to the Atlas of Canada there are 34 larger and 2,092 smaller islands in the archipelago
4.
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
5.
Nunavut
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Nunavut is the newest, largest, and northernmost territory of Canada. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canadas political map since the incorporation of the province of Newfoundland, Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada, and most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Its vast territory makes it the fifth-largest country subdivision in the world, the capital Iqaluit, on Baffin Island in the east, was chosen by the 1995 capital plebiscite. Other major communities include the regional centres of Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay and it is Canadas only geo-political region that is not connected to the rest of North America by highway. Nunavut is the largest in area and the second least populous of Canadas provinces and territories. One of the worlds most remote, sparsely settled regions, it has a population of 35,944, mostly Inuit, spread over an area of just over 1,750,000 km2, Nunavut is also home to the worlds northernmost permanently inhabited place, Alert. A weather station farther down Ellesmere Island, Eureka, has the lowest average temperature of any Canadian weather station. Nunavut means our land in Inuktitut, Nunavut covers 1,877,787 km2 of land and 160,935 km2 of water in Northern Canada. This makes it the fifth largest subnational entity in the world, if Nunavut were a country, it would rank 15th in area. It also shares borders with Greenland and the provinces of Quebec, Ontario. Nunavuts highest point is Barbeau Peak on Ellesmere Island, the population density is 0.019 persons/km2, one of the lowest in the world. By comparison, Greenland has approximately the area and nearly twice the population. Nunavut experiences a climate in most regions, owing to its high latitude. In more southerly continental areas very cold climates can be found. The region now known as Nunavut has supported an indigenous population for approximately 4,000 years. Most historians identify the coast of Baffin Island with the Helluland described in Norse sagas, the materials were collected in five seasons of excavation at Cape Tanfield. Scholars determined that these provide evidence of European traders and possibly settlers on Baffin Island and they seem to indicate prolonged contact, possibly up to 1450. So you have to consider the possibility that as remote as it may seem, the ore turned out to be worthless, but Frobisher made the first recorded European contact with the Inuit
6.
Regions of Nunavut
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The three regions of Nunavut serve as census divisions, although Statistics Canada uses the names Baffin Region for the Qikiqtaaluk Region and Keewatin Region for the Kivalliq Region. Though the regions have no autonomous governments, Nunavuts territorial government services are highly decentralized on a regional basis and it is a misconception that Nunavut is made up of some of the former regions of the Northwest Territories, separated in their entirety. This is not the case, the line did not follow region boundaries. Nunavut encompasses the entirety of the District of Keewatin, the majority of the District of Franklin and a small portion of the District of Mackenzie
7.
Qikiqtaaluk Region
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The Qikiqtaaluk Region, Qikiqtani Region or Baffin Region is the easternmost administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. Qikiqtaaluk is the traditional Inuktitut name for Baffin Island, although the Qikiqtaaluk Region is the most commonly used name in official contexts, several notable public organisations, including Statistics Canada prefer the older term Baffin Region. With a population of 18,988 and an area of 989,879.35 km2 it is the largest and most populated of the three regions, the regional seat, and territorial capital, is Iqaluit. The Qikiqtaaluk Region spans the northernmost, easternmost, and southernmost areas of Nunavut, before 1999, the Qikiqtaaluk Region existed under slightly different boundaries as the Baffin Region, District of Keewatin, Northwest Territories. Canada claims Hans Island as part of Qikiqtaaluk, while Denmark considers it to be part of the Greenlandic municipality of Qaasuitsup, all of Qikiqtaaluks thirteen communities are located on tidal water and just under half of its residents live in Nunavuts capital and only city, Iqaluit. The majority of the rest live in twelve hamlets—Arctic Bay, Cape Dorset, Clyde River, Grise Fiord, Hall Beach, Igloolik, Kimmirut, Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet, Qikiqtarjuaq, Resolute, alert and Eureka are part of the Baffin, Unorganized areas in Qikiqtaaluk. Formerly there was a town at Nanisivik. However, it and the Nanisivik Mine closed in 2002, with Nanisivik Airport closing in 2010, like the majority of Canadas Inuit communities, the regions traditional country food includes seal, Arctic char, walrus, polar bear and caribou-which are abundant. Iqaluit has the Astro Hill Complex, the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum and the Legislative Building of Nunavut, according to anthropologists and historians, the Inuit are the descendants of the Thule people who displaced the Dorset culture. By 1300 the Inuit had trade routes with more southern cultures, about 1910 Europeans markets increased their interest in white fox pelts. The distribution and mobility of Inuit changed as the expanded their traditional hunting and fishing routes to participate in the fox fur trade. Traditional food staples—such as seal and caribou—were not always found in the regions as white fox. The Hudsons Bay Company—which was chartered in 1670—had been opening fur trading posts throughout Inuit, by 1910, the HBC was restructured into a lands sales department, retail and fur trade. The HBC dominated the fur trade under minimal supervision from the Canadian government, by 1922 most of imported goods acquired by Inuit were from the HBC. Between 1950 and 1975 thirteen northern communities were relocated, in the 1950s and 1960s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and others in authority undertook the widespread killing of sled dogs. Canada 2016 Census Population,18,988 Population change, +12. 1% Private dwellings,6,556 Area,989,879.35 km2 Density,0
8.
Arctic Ocean
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The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the worlds five major oceans. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean, located mostly in the Arctic north polar region in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic Ocean is almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America. It is partly covered by sea ice throughout the year and almost completely in winter, the summer shrinking of the ice has been quoted at 50%. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center uses satellite data to provide a record of Arctic sea ice cover. The Arctic may become ice free for the first time in human history within a few years or by 2040, for much of European history, the north polar regions remained largely unexplored and their geography conjectural. He was probably describing loose sea ice known today as growlers or bergy bits, his Thule was probably Norway, early cartographers were unsure whether to draw the region around the North Pole as land or water. The makers of navigational charts, more conservative than some of the more fanciful cartographers, tended to leave the region blank and this lack of knowledge of what lay north of the shifting barrier of ice gave rise to a number of conjectures. In England and other European nations, the myth of an Open Polar Sea was persistent, john Barrow, longtime Second Secretary of the British Admiralty, promoted exploration of the region from 1818 to 1845 in search of this. In the United States in the 1850s and 1860s, the explorers Elisha Kane, even quite late in the century, the eminent authority Matthew Fontaine Maury included a description of the Open Polar Sea in his textbook The Physical Geography of the Sea. Nevertheless, as all the explorers who travelled closer and closer to the reported, the polar ice cap is quite thick. Fridtjof Nansen was the first to make a crossing of the Arctic Ocean. The first surface crossing of the ocean was led by Wally Herbert in 1969, in a dog sled expedition from Alaska to Svalbard, with air support. The first nautical transit of the pole was made in 1958 by the submarine USS Nautilus. Since 1937, Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations have extensively monitored the Arctic Ocean, scientific settlements were established on the drift ice and carried thousands of kilometres by ice floes. In World War II, the European region of the Arctic Ocean was heavily contested, the Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about 14,056,000 km2, almost the size of Antarctica. The coastline is 45,390 km long and it is surrounded by the land masses of Eurasia, North America, Greenland, and by several islands. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait and to the Atlantic Ocean through the Greenland Sea, countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are, Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States. There are several ports and harbours around the Arctic Ocean In Alaska, in Canada, ships may anchor at Churchill in Manitoba, Nanisivik in Nunavut, Tuktoyaktuk or Inuvik in the Northwest territories
9.
Ellesmere Island
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Ellesmere Island is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Lying within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, it is considered part of the Queen Elizabeth Islands and it comprises an area of 196,235 km2 and the total length of the island is 830 kilometres, making it the worlds tenth largest island and Canadas third largest island. The Arctic Cordillera mountain system covers much of Ellesmere Island, making it the most mountainous in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Arctic willow is the only woody species to grow on Ellesmere Island. The first human inhabitants of Ellesmere Island were small bands drawn to the area for Peary caribou, muskox, vikings from the Greenland colonies reached Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island, and Ruin Island during hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups. Unusual structures on Bache peninsula may be the remains of a late-period Dorset stone longhouse, the first European to sight the island after the height of the Little Ice Age was William Baffin in 1616. Ellesmere Island was named in 1852 by Edward Inglefields expedition after Francis Egerton, the US expedition led by Adolphus Greely in 1881 crossed the island from east to west, establishing Fort Conger in the northern part of the island. The Greely expedition found fossil forests on Ellesmere Island in the late 1880s, Stenkul Fiord was first explored in 1902 by Per Schei, a member of Otto Sverdrups 2nd Norwegian Polar Expedition. In 1906 Robert Peary led an expedition in northern Ellesmere Island, during Pearys expedition, the Ice Shelf was continuous, a modern estimate is that it covered 8,900 km2. In 2011, Jon Turk and Erik Boomer completed the first known circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island, Ellesmere Island contains Canadas northernmost point, Cape Columbia at 83°6′41″N. Barbeau Peak, the highest mountain in Nunavut is located in the British Empire Range on Ellesmere Island, the most northern mountain range in the world, the Challenger Mountains, is located in the northeast region of the island. The northern lobe of the island is called Grant Land, in July 2007, a study noted the disappearance of habitat for waterfowl, invertebrates, and algae on Ellesmere Island. The researchers noted that In the 1980s they often needed to wear hip waders to make their way to the ponds. while by 2006 the same areas were dry enough to burn. The northwest coast of Ellesmere Island was covered by a massive,500 km long ice shelf until the 20th century. A1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km2 or 3.3 km3 of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining section of thick landfast sea ice along the coastline of Ellesmere Island. It further decreased by 27% in thickness between 1967 and 1999, Schei and later Nathorst described the Paleocene-Eocene fossil forest in the Stenkul Fiord sediments. The Stenkul Fiord site represents a series of deltaic swamp and floodplain forests, the trees stood for at least 400 years. Individual stumps and stems of >1 m diameter were abundant, and are identified as Metasequoia, well preserved Pliocene peats containing abundant vertebrate and plant macrofossils characteristic of a boreal forest have been reported from Strathcona Fiord
10.
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
