Friday, July 8, 2016

30 Fun Facts About Canada

It is four in the morning where I live. My hubby is snoring, which means I am awake. I will need a nap later.

There is a moth attacking the television that my laptop is hooked to, something that seems to bother me more at night than in the daylight hours.

The tomato and pepper plants that I bought a couple of weeks back are loaded with fruit that is hopefully going to make it to harvest time.

Our small dog is settling into life without his "big sister"...  as are we. Swiffer is getting rather spoiled, in a good way. Life goes on without my girl, Niki and I miss her every day.


Although it is a week past Canada's birthday (July 1), I am a proud Canadian. I have traveled and have found many people outside of Canada to be quite ignorant about my country. I have always done my best to straighten out the fallacies I encountered as best I could.

My country is vast and the people are diverse. For the most part, Canadians are polite and nice... but we will defend our country strongly if push comes to shove. Although we are similar across this nation, what the people of Quebec or Ontario think or do is not necessarily what those of the other provinces or territories think or do. Although most Canadians experience snow for part of the year, we do not live in igloos nor get around with sled-dogs and some places either don't get snow at all, or get such a small amount that it is gone within a few hours of falling. Toronto, our largest city, sits on about the same latitude as Madrid, Spain while Calgary sits on about the same latitude as London, England. Alberta experiences Chinook winds during most winters, which clears away the snow for a day or two and brings quite warm, sometimes hot, weather. If you look on a map of North America that shows latitudes, you will see that there are 13 U.S. states that sit entirely north of Canada's most southerly point.

Those are just a few things that I've corrected over the years. Recently I discovered a few more things about my country that I found both interesting and rather fun. I thought I'd share them with everyone. Enjoy as you learn a bit about "my home and native land"...

  1. Canada is the second largest country in the world by area, second only to Russia. To put Canada’s size in perspective: It’s bigger than the entire European Union (33 times bigger than Italy and 15 times bigger than France), more than 30 per cent larger than Australia, five times as big as Mexico, three times as big as India and about the same size as 81,975 Walt Disney Worlds put together.
  2. Canada has the largest coastline in the world.  To put that in perspective, Canada has 202,080 of the world’s total 356,000 kilometres of oceanfront property.
  3. Canada  has a population of approximately 35 million. Our average life expectancy is about 82 years.
  4. Canada has two official languages - Canadian English and French Canadian.
  5. The Canada-USA border is the longest international border in the world and does not have military defense.
  6. The national Canadian police force is called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Their "dress" uniforms are the "reds", however most of the force do not wear that uniform except for special occasions.
  7. Canada consumes more macaroni and cheese than any other nation in the world.
  8. Canada is the World's Most Educated Country: over half its residents have at least college degrees.
  9. Canada is the third largest producer of diamonds in the world.
  10. Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world's lakes combined.
  11. Over 80% of the world's supply of maple syrup is produced in Canada - mainly in Quebec.
  12. Canada is the largest producer of natural uranium in the world.
  13. Scarborough, Ontario makes most of the world's Halls "cough" lozenges.
  14. New Brunswick-based McCain Foods makes one-third of the world's frozen French Fries.
  15. Canadian maple wood baseball bats are a Major League favourite.
  16. Canada is the largest exporter of green lentils in the world - 95% of them come from Saskatchewan.
  17. The Royal Canadian Mint in Winnipeg, Manitoba produces coins for 60 different countries.
  18. Toronto-based Cervélo Cycles have been called the world's fastest and lightest bikes.
  19. Winnipeg, Manitoba makes the most of the world's "Scratch n' Win" cards.
  20. World's Best Cymbals come from New Brunswick - SABIAN cymbals are sold in 120 countries around the world.
  21. Canada has a world-class submarine fleet, Atlantis Submarines, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia The company actually owns more submarines than many countries have in their navy - but the Atlantis fleet is used for tourism.
  22. Trenton, Ontario makes many of the world's dinosaurs - Research Casting International has created more than 750 of the prehistoric creatures for museums around the world.
  23. Thanksgiving was celebrated first in Canada in 1578 in Newfoundland, 43 years before the U.S. in 1621.
  24. Kelowna makes most of the world's water slides. Canada's Whitewater West Industries Ltd. is the largest water parks attraction company in the world.
  25. Peterborough is the Custom Aircraft Capital of Canada - they don't make the actual airplanes, but Flying Colour Corp. makes the inside totally unique for customers around the globe.
  26. Every Christmas, one million letters are addressed to Santa Claus
    at his own postal code: "H0H 0H0, North Pole, Canada."
  27. Roughly 30% of Canada's total landmass is covered by forest and most of that forest land is publicly owned.
  28. Canada has its own mysterious lake creature, Ogopogo, who reportedly lives in Lake Okanagan, British Columbia.
  29. There’s an estimated 249.67 billion accessible barrels of bitumen in the world and Canada has about 70.8 per cent of it — four times more than Kazakhstan and six times more than Russia.
  30. Our national and provincial parks are big, sometimes bigger than other countries. For instance, Wood Buffalo National Park, which is located partly in Alberta and partly in the Northwest Territories, is 44,807 square kilometres, which makes it bigger than Denmark or Switzerland.
So there you have them. Some of these things I knew... but some came as a surprise to me. How about you?