Canada 🇨🇦

Canada lies in North America, part of the Americas. The short and official forms of the name are the same. Government sits in Ottawa.

The land area is 9,984,670 km², which ranks it 3rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Antarctica and just ahead of China. That makes it almost exactly the same size as China.

It is home to roughly 41.3 million people, placing it 37th of 249 by population — between Afghanistan above it and Yemen below. Within North America alone it is the 1st largest of 7 and the 3rd most populous.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 60.0° N, 95.0° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 6,679 km from the equator, in what geographers would call high-latitude latitudes.

The Arctic Circle runs through or very close to it. Russia, Sweden and Norway sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 1 neighbour: the United States.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Spread across 9,984,670 km², that works out at about 4.1 people per square kilometre, which makes it very thinly populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from Canada are called Canadians.

2 languages carry official status: English and French. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 6th most populous of 55 entries, and it accounts for 8.1% of everyone living in North America.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Canada ranks 3rd of 249 by area and 37th by population. That works out at 6.7% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.51% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Canada in the size ordering are Antarctica at 14,000,000 km² and China at 9,706,961 km², against Canada's 9,984,670 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Canada averages 4 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it among the emptiest places on the list — 232nd of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to North America and Canada sits 3rd of 7 by population and 1st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Mexico just above and Bermuda just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

United States is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in North America has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇲🇽 Mexico
• 🇧🇲 Bermuda
• 🇺🇸 United States

The Canadian dollar (CAD) is used only in Canada among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Canada among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Canadian dollar ($, CAD). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

The top-level domain is .ca. The international dialling code is +1. Its ISO codes are ca and CAN, which is what most databases and flag files use.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Canada, the answer is Ottawa.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.