In , the Canadian railway system consisted of 48, km 30, mi of all standard gauge track. They compete in some areas but cooperate where duplication of service is not profitable. In addition to their railway operations, CNR and CP maintain steamships and ferries, nationwide telegraph services, highway transport services, and hotel chains. The populated sections are generally well supplied with roads and highways, but because of difficult winter weather conditions, road maintenance is a recurring and expensive task and puts a tremendous strain on road-building facilities.
As of , there are about 1,, km , mi of roads, , km , mi of which are paved, including 16, km 10, mi of expressways.
Canada ranks next to the United States in per capita use of motor transport, with one passenger car for every 2 persons. Motor vehicles in use in totaled 18,,, including 17,, passenger cars and , commercial vehicles. Bounded by water except for the Alaskan and southern land boundaries with the United States, Canada has many inland lakes and rivers that serve as traffic arteries. Canada has access to three oceans, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Arctic. Canada's merchant fleet was comprised of ships, totaling 1,, GRT, in Most overseas commerce is carried by foreign ships.
The St. The Athabasca and Slave rivers and the Mackenzie, into which they flow, provide an inland, seasonal water transportation system from the end of the railway in Alberta to the Arctic Ocean. The Yukon River is usually open from mid-May to mid-October. All Canadian inland waterways are open on equal terms to the shipping of all nations.
Canada had an estimated 1, airports in As of , a total of had permanent runways and there were also heliports. International air service is provided by government-owned Air Canada and Canadian Airlines. Regional service is provided by some smaller carriers. Air transport is the chief medium in the northern regions for passengers and freight. Canadian airlines transported The first inhabitants of what is now Canada were the ancient ancestors of the Inuit.
Exactly where they originated or when they arrived is uncertain, but they probably crossed from eastern Siberia to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland between 15, and 10, bc. Their descendants, the Dorset people, who inhabited the central Canadian Arctic region from about bc to ad , were primarily hunters of walrus and seal.
The shorter-lived Thule culture, which may have assimilated the Dorset, lasted from about to the first arrival of the Europeans. Although most Inuit lived near the coast, some followed the caribou herds to the interior and developed a culture based on hunting and inland fishing. Although the Norse had occupied a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland by ad , the first fully documented arrival by Europeans was in by the Italian-born John Cabot , who led an English expedition to the shore of a "new found land" Newfoundland and claimed the area in the name of Henry VII.
Lawrence River. The great St. Missionaries and fur traders soon arrived, and an enormous French territory was established. Between and , about 10, French settlers arrived in Canada.
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In the hope of protecting French settlers and the fur trade , Champlain supported the Huron Indians against their enemies, the Iroquois. When the Iroquois demolished the Hurons, the French colony was almost destroyed. In , New France became a royal province of the French crown. Thereafter, three important officials — the royal governor, the intendant, and the bishop — competed in exercising control of the government.
Under the seigneurial system, which had been founded in , large land grants were made to seigneurs, who made other grants to settlers. The actual farmers owed some quasi-feudal dues and could sell the property only by paying a large duty to the seigneur.
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The movement of exploration, discovery, commercial exploitation, and missionary enterprise, which had begun with the coming of Champlain, was extended by such men as Jacques Marquette , Louis Jolliet , and Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, reaching its climax in the last three decades of the 17th century.
At that time, French trade and empire stretched north to the shores of Hudson Bay, west to the head of the Great Lakes, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, a British enterprise, the Hudson's Bay Company, founded in , began to compete for the fur trade. These concessions, which reflected the sympathy of the British ruling class for the French upper classes, instituted the separateness of French-speaking Canada that has become a distinctive feature of the country.
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It also secured the loyalty of the French clergy and aristocracy to the British crown during the American Revolution. Some 40, Loyalists from the colonies in revolt fled northward to eastern Canada and did much to change the political character of their new country. In the s, the newly organized North West Company began to challenge the Hudson's Bay Company's fur-trade monopoly. The period was one of expansion, marked by Alexander Mackenzie 's journey to the Arctic Ocean in and his overland voyage to the Pacific Ocean in British mariners secured for Britain a firm hold on what is now British Columbia.
The War of , in which US forces attempting to invade Canada were repulsed by Canadian and British soldiers, did not change either the general situation or the US-Canadian boundary. After amalgamating the North West Company in , the Hudson's Bay Company held undisputed sway over most of the north and west.
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The continuing influx of immigrants stimulated demands for political reforms. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick the reformers had some early success, but in the two Canadas it was not until groups led by Louis Joseph Papineau in Lower Canada and William Lyon Mackenzie in Upper Canada had conducted separate futile rebellions in — 38 that the British government acted.
John George Lambton, Earl of Durham, was sent to Canada as governor-general in ; he resigned later that year, but in submitted a report to the crown in which he recommended the granting of some forms of self-government. He also advised the immediate union of the two Canadas for the express purpose of Anglicizing the French Canadians.
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Union of the two provinces was approved in , but responsible government was not achieved until , after strenuous efforts by leaders in the various provinces. There was, however, no single unified nation — only a string of provinces in the east and the Hudson's Bay Company domain in the west and north.
The movement for Canadian confederation — political union of the colonies — was spurred in the s by the need for common defense and the desire for a common government to sponsor railroads and other transportation. John Alexander Macdonald and George Brown , rival political leaders, agreed in to unite Upper Canada and Lower Canada under a common dominion government.
Already the Maritime provinces were seeking union among themselves; their Charlottetown Conference in was broadened to admit delegates from the Canadas. After two more conferences, in and , the dominion government was established under the British North America Act of There had been much opposition, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were brought to accept the union only through the efforts of Sir Charles Tupper and Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley and by the fear and indignation roused by the invasion of Canada by Fenians militant Irish nationalists from the United States in In , the province of Manitoba was established and admitted to the confederation, and the Northwest Territories were transferred to the federal government.
In , British Columbia, on the Pacific shore, joined the confederation, largely on the promise of a transcontinental railroad. Prince Edward Island did not join until The CP was given large grants of land in return for its promise to aid in settling these lands, a policy that is still being carried on.
Under the long administration — of the Liberal Party under Sir Wilfrid Laurier , immigration to the prairie provinces was greatly accelerated. The prairie agricultural empire bloomed. Large-scale development of mines and of hydroelectric resources helped spur the growth of industry and urbanization. Alberta and Saskatchewan were made provinces in In February , Norway formally recognized the Canadian title to the Sverdrup group of Arctic islands now the Queen Elizabeth Islands ; Canada thus held sovereignty in the whole Arctic sector north of the Canadian mainland.
Newfoundland remained apart from the confederation until after World War II ; it became Canada's tenth province in March Canadian contributions of manpower and resources were immensely helpful to the Allies when Canada joined the British side in World War I ; more than , Canadians served in Europe, and over 60, were killed.
The war contributions of Canada and other dominions helped bring about the declaration of equality of the members of the British Commonwealth in the Statute of Westminster of The wartime struggle over military conscription, however, deepened the cleavage between French Canadians and other Canadians. After the war, the development of air transportation and roads helped weld Canada together, and the nation had sufficient strength to withstand the depression that began in and the droughts that brought ruin to wheat fields.
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The farmers developed huge cooperatives, especially in Nova Scotia and the prairie provinces, and also took up radical political doctrines, notably through the Social Credit and the Socialistic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation parties. More than one million Canadians took part in the Allied war effort, and over 32, were killed.
The nation emerged from the war with enhanced prestige, actively concerned with world affairs and fully committed to the Atlantic alliance. The emergency measures, imposed on 16 October, were not lifted until 30 April Meanwhile, other provinces had their own grievances, especially over oil revenues. Alberta objected to federal control over oil pricing and to reduction of the provincial share of oil revenues as a result of the new National Energy Program announced in late ; the failure of Newfoundland and the federal government to agree on development and revenue sharing hindered the exploitation of the vast Hibernia offshore oil and gas field in the early s.
Since , when discussions first began on the question of rescinding the British North America Act, disagreements between the provinces and the federal government over constitutional amendment procedures had stood in the way of Canada's reclaiming from the United Kingdom authority over its own constitution. In , Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau made "patriation" of the constitution a principal priority of his administration.
On 26 October , however, the majority of Canadians chose not to support the Charlottetown Accord in a national referendum. The three nations came to an agreement in August and signed the text on 17 December In the Inuits approved an agreement by which the country's Northwest Territories would be divided in two, with the eastern part comprising the semiautonomous Nunavut territory, which would serve as an Inuit homeland. Other native groups also advanced land claims.
To overcome regional divisions within their own ranks, Canada's conservatives voted to create the new Canadian Alliance party early in , in an attempt to unite the western-based Reform Party with the Progressive Conservatives. In the late s, Canada's native peoples achieved two historic milestones in their quest for autonomy. In the Nisga'a Indians ratified a treaty according them sq km sq mi of land in British Columbia.
The following year, the Nunavut territory — occupying an area larger than Western Europe — was officially founded as a homeland for the Inuit in the Northwest Territories. Some people were affected and 33 died. That August, Toronto, Ottawa, and other parts of Ontario as well as many cities in the United States were affected by the largest power outage in North American history. In February , a financial scandal erupted over the misuse of government funds being used for advertising and sponsorship. Paul Martin ordered an official inquiry. In June , Martin was returned to power in parliamentary elections, but the Liberal Party was no longer in the majority.
That May, the government won a confidence motion in parliament by only one vote. In July , Canada became the fourth nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriages. The other countries having such laws at that time were Belgium , the Netherlands , and Spain. Canada has collaborated with the United States in its war against international terrorism. Securing the long border shared between the two countries in order to prevent possible terrorist infiltration has been a challenge, and has caused Canada and the United States to cooperate on sharing intelligence.
Canada is a federation of 10 provinces and three northern territories including the Nunavut territory formed in The British North America Act — which effectively served, together with a series of subsequent British statutes, as Canada's constitution — could be amended only by the British Parliament.