Canada
These are the Canada facts the Canadian citizenship test draws on. Each one pairs the thing worth remembering with the reason it matters, so you are not memorising a list you cannot place.
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Who we are
- Three founding peoples
- Aboriginal, French and British.
- Three Aboriginal groups
- First Nations (about 65%), Métis (30%) and Inuit (4%).
- Inuit
- Means "the people" in Inuktitut. They live in small, scattered communities across the Arctic.
- Métis
- A distinct people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry, mostly in the Prairie provinces, who speak Michif.
- Acadians
- Descendants of French colonists who settled the Maritime provinces from 1604; more than two-thirds were deported in the "Great Upheaval".
- Official languages
- English and French. There are 18 million Anglophones and seven million Francophones; New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province.
Regions and capitals
- Five regions
- Atlantic Provinces, Central Canada, Prairie Provinces, West Coast, Northern Territories.
- Atlantic capitals
- Newfoundland and Labrador — St. John's; Prince Edward Island — Charlottetown; Nova Scotia — Halifax; New Brunswick — Fredericton.
- Central capitals
- Quebec — Québec City; Ontario — Toronto.
- Prairie and West Coast capitals
- Manitoba — Winnipeg; Saskatchewan — Regina; Alberta — Edmonton; British Columbia — Victoria.
- Northern capitals
- Nunavut — Iqaluit; Northwest Territories — Yellowknife; Yukon — Whitehorse.
- Ottawa
- Chosen as the capital in 1857 by Queen Victoria; on the Ottawa River; Canada's fourth largest metropolitan area.
- Superlatives
- Toronto — largest city; Montreal — second largest, and second largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris; Lake Superior — largest fresh water lake in the world; Mount Logan — highest mountain in Canada; Bay of Fundy — world's highest tides.
Symbols
- The maple leaf
- Canada's best-known symbol, adopted by French-Canadians in the 1700s and on uniforms since the 1850s.
- The flag
- Raised for the first time in 1965. The red-white-red pattern comes from the Royal Military College, Kingston; red and white have been the national colours since 1921.
- National motto
- A Mari Usque Ad Mare — Latin for "from sea to sea".
- The beaver
- A symbol of the Hudson's Bay Company, emblem of the St. Jean Baptiste Society from 1834, and on the five-cent coin.
- Sports
- Hockey — national winter sport and most popular spectator sport; lacrosse — official summer sport; soccer — most registered players; Canadian football — second most popular.
- Trophies
- The Stanley Cup, donated by Lord Stanley in 1892; the Grey Cup, donated by Lord Grey in 1909; the Clarkson Cup for women's hockey, 2005.
- Anthems
- O Canada — proclaimed the national anthem in 1980, first sung in Québec City in 1880. The Royal Anthem is "God Save the King".
- Highest honour
- The Victoria Cross, awarded to 96 Canadians since 1854. Canada's own honours system began with the Order of Canada in 1967.
Know these? Prove it.
A free 20-question mock test, timed and scored the way the real one is.