Canada Population

THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION

The distribution reflects, as in the United States, the immediacy of the relationship that has been established between man and the environment. According to a2zcamerablog, Canada is a country located in North America. The average density is 3.77 residents / km²: this makes Canada the country with the lowest population density in North America. However, the greatest concentrations occur on the Atlantic side, between the San Lorenzo and the Great Lakes, a climatically temperate region, open to the ocean and well disposed with respect to communications with the interior. Nearly three-quarters of the entire population is concentrated there, with significantly higher average densities around Toronto and Québec, as in Nova Scotia. The population thins out towards the interior, where the axes of human attraction are the great railway lines that connect the Atlantic to the Pacific side. In this last, near the southern coast and in front of Vancouver Island, there is another relevant concentration, with densities higher than 10 residents / km². About 90% of Canadians live in the southern part of the country, within 160 km of the US border, mainly due to climatic conditions, while the population thins north, where more or less extensive appendages are pushed, especially in the Central Plains. in agricultural function. For the rest in the N there are isolated centers, which play a pioneering role in the field of mining and forestry activities. In April 1999 Canada redefined its internal borders with the establishment of a new autonomous territory, Nunavut (until then part of the Yukon), which was placed under the inuit. The creation of Nunavut, which occupies an area equal to about one fifth of the total area of ​​the country, was made to meet the needs of a minority, which has long been demanding a return to its cultural roots and traditional economic activities, transformed by expansion of the oil and gas extraction industry on its territory. This area has a very low population density, around 0.02%. Similarly, the Canadian parliament assigned portions of territory to two other communities, which will be managed with ample margins of autonomy: in 1999 it was the turn of the Nisga’a to whom an area of ​​2000 km² was attributed while in 2003 it was the turn of the Nisga’a to the Tlicho who was given an area of ​​39,000 km².

FORMS OF SETTLEMENT

As in the United States, cities arose as focal centers of territorial organization: that is, they were the basis from which human occupation of the vast territory began. Their development was determined by the essentially commercial setting of the Canadian economy, more recently by industrial functions; they welcome 81.4% of the population, against 50% in 1921. This percentage is destined to increase as new immigrants hardly choose rural residences and prefer to settle on the outskirts of large conurbations. The structure of large cities is similar to that of the United States, with the City in the center and residential areas all around. Big cities like Montreal, Toronto etc., have incorporated, in their continuous expansion, various neighboring centers and have assumed the character of vast urban agglomerations. Small towns perform commercial and administrative functions in relation to more or less large agricultural territories and are characterized by isolated farms. Except in the Atlantic provinces, they have a structural functionality in which any psychological and sentimental motivation is lacking, present instead in the small towns of the old European countries; in the cereal plains, for example, these centers are dominated by the large silos along the railway and are made up of rows of houses lined up on parallel roads. Geometry characterizes the whole territory, which is divided into rectangles (rangs) in the French areas, into squares (townships) in the Anglo-Saxon ones. Geometricism also prevails in cities, although some of them, such as Québec and Ottawa, as well as the old Atlantic centers, retain their original aspects which are affected by the “European” mentality of their founders. The most “American” cities are Toronto, a sort of Chicago with a very composite population, including many Italians, attracted by the industrial, financial and commercial fortunes of the capital of Ontario, and Montréal, a very modern, dynamic, vitalized metropolis from its port and its happy position in the Canadian East. Québec, on the other hand, is a historic city, typically French, while Ottawa, an important communications hub, has received significant impulses from its role as capital. The major cities of the Atlantic provinces have port functions since their origin; the great “terminus” of the Trans-Canadian railway line is Halifax, while more local duties perform Charlottetown and Saint John’s. In the plains of Alsama the cities are the vital centers of large territories and therefore have multiple activities, commercial, administrative, industrial; also important communication nodes are: Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary which are on the transcontinental railway line and Edmonton, the northernmost, which connects the same line to the north. Vancouver is the terminus of the Pacific Railroad and has leading port functions, as well as being the main center of British Columbia and the third largest by population in Canada; smaller Victoria, capital of the same province. In the North there are numerous isolated mining centers such as Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon located on the Alaska road, Yellowknife, on the Great Slave Lake, and the more northern Norman Wells and Inuvik, on the Mackenzie River.

Canada Population

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