Canada (Canadian Republic)

Canada (i/ˈkænədə/; French: [ka.na.dɑ]; Spanish: Canadá [ ka.naˈða ]) is a country in North America. Its twelve provinces and capital district extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, northward into the Arctic Ocean, and southward into the Caribbean. covering 10 million square kilometres (3.86 million square miles), making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's border with the United States is the world's longest binational land border. The majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but areas close to the US border are warm in summer. The province of the West Indies experiences a warm tropical climate year-round. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land territory being dominated by forest and tundra and the Rocky Mountains. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 40.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. One third of the population lives in the three largest cities: Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa-Hull, and other major urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kingston and Port of Spain.

Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century, Spanish, British and French claims were made on the area, with the colony of Santiago (now Jamaica) being officially established in 1509 by conquistador Juan de Esquivel. Meanwhile, the colony of Canada was first established by the French in 1535 during Jacques Cartier's second voyage to New France. As a consequence of various conflicts, Great Britain gained and lost territories within British North America until it was left, in the late 18th century, with what mostly geographically comprises Canada today. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1, 1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia joined to form the semi-autonomous federal Dominion of Canada. 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.