50 Fun Facts About Canadian Provinces and Territories

Which animal has Alberta kept out since the early 1950s, making it the only province free of the pest?

Rats are even illegal to keep as pets in Alberta, where only zoos, universities and research labs may have them.

Licence plates in the Northwest Territories have been cut in the shape of which animal since 1970?

Polar bear plates were introduced for the territory's 1970 centennial, and the shape is now a registered trademark of its government.

Which Prairie capital is the namesake of the real bear that gave A. A. Milne's best-known character his name?

Winnipeg was the adopted home of army vet Harry Colebourn, who bought the cub on his way to war, called her Winnie and left her at London Zoo in 1914.

Which province, Canada's largest by area, has a capital that is the only walled city north of Mexico?

Quebec owes its capital's surviving ramparts to Lord Dufferin, Canada's viceroy in the 1870s, who stepped in to stop them being demolished.

Which province was the last to join Canada, entering in 1949 after a referendum won with just 52 percent?

Newfoundland joined at midnight on March 31, 1949, and officially added 'and Labrador' to its name in 2001.

Which province, the smallest in both area and population, is the setting of the novel Anne of Green Gables?

Prince Edward Island still draws fans to Cavendish, where the farm that inspired L. M. Montgomery's 1908 novel is kept as a heritage site.

Which part of Canada was made a separate territory in 1898 because of the Klondike Gold Rush?

Yukon was split from the Northwest Territories to bring government to the goldfields; about 100,000 people set out for the Klondike, but fewer than half arrived.

Which city, wrecked in 1917 when a munitions ship blew up in its harbour, is Nova Scotia's capital?

Halifax suffered the largest artificial explosion before nuclear weapons, and a Christmas tree still goes to Boston every year in thanks for the help that city sent.

Which territory, created in 1999, is Canada's newest and largest, with a land area almost the size of Mexico?

Nunavut has almost no road or rail links to the rest of Canada, so fuel and supplies arrive from the south by plane or boat.

Which city hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics, the only Summer Games ever held in Canada?

Montreal faced debts for 30 years after the Games, despite its mayor's boast that the Olympics could no more lose money than a man could have a baby.

Which province, home to nearly four in ten Canadians, touches four of the five Great Lakes?

Ontario is the only province on the Great Lakes, and the one it never touches, Lake Michigan, lies entirely inside the United States.

Which province is the only one without a natural border, giving it a near-rectangular outline on the map?

Saskatchewan's edges follow lines of latitude and longitude, so its top and bottom borders are actually gentle curves, not straight lines.

Which province is the only one that is officially bilingual, giving English and French equal status?

New Brunswick made both languages official in 1969, and about a third of its people are French speakers.

Which province was so small when it was created in 1870 that it was nicknamed the 'postage stamp province'?

Manitoba began as a square just one-eighteenth of its present size, and only grew to its current borders in 1912.

Which city at the southern tip of Vancouver Island is the capital of British Columbia?

Victoria began as a trading post in 1843 and sees so little snow that roughly one winter in three passes with almost none.

Which city, home to a shopping mall that was the world's largest until 2004, is the capital of Alberta?

Edmonton was named capital when Alberta became a province in 1905, though Calgary to the south is the larger city.

Which provincial capital, known as York until 1834, has grown into Canada's most populous city?

Toronto was still the small town of York when American troops captured it and set fire to its parliament buildings during the War of 1812.

Which city, known as Bytown until 1855, is Canada's national capital but not the capital of any province?

Ottawa was first named for Colonel John By, the engineer in charge of building the Rideau Canal, and was picked as the capital in 1857.

Which Prairie capital, first known as Pile of Bones, is the only place where the RCMP trains its cadets?

Regina was renamed in 1882 with the Latin word for queen, replacing a name that came from the heaps of bison bones beside its creek.

Which city on Great Slave Lake, founded after a 1934 gold find, is the capital of the Northwest Territories?

Yellowknife is named after a local Dene people once called the Copper Indians, who traded tools made from copper found near the Arctic coast.

Which provincial capital on the Saint John River is smaller than both Moncton and the port of Saint John?

Fredericton was made capital of the new colony because its inland site was judged easier to defend than the larger port downriver.

Which capital city hosted the 1864 conference that earned it the motto 'Birthplace of Confederation'?

Charlottetown's conference was called to discuss a smaller union of the Atlantic colonies until delegates from the Province of Canada asked to join and widened the plan.

Which capital, North America's easternmost city, is where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal?

St. John's appears as São João on a Portuguese map of 1519, and Marconi caught his signal on Signal Hill, above its harbour, in December 1901.

Which capital city on Baffin Island was officially known as Frobisher Bay until 1987?

Iqaluit means 'place of many fish', and it is the only Canadian capital with no highway linking it to any other settlement.

Which capital city on the Alaska Highway is home to about seven in ten people in its territory?

Whitehorse is named after river rapids that resembled a white horse's mane; they vanished under a reservoir when a hydro dam was built in 1958.

Which bay on Nova Scotia's western shore has the highest tidal range in the world?

The Bay of Fundy's long funnel shape makes its water resonate with the Atlantic tide, piling it up far higher than on an ordinary coast.

Which Alberta park, set aside in 1885 around mountain hot springs, was Canada's first national park?

Banff was only the third national park in North America, after Yellowstone and Mackinac, and began as a small reserve around the Cave and Basin springs.

Which mountain range carries the Continental Divide along much of the border between Alberta and British Columbia?

The Rocky Mountains mark the boundary only in the south; farther north the border leaves the peaks and runs straight up the 120th meridian.

Which inland sea, bordered by three provinces and a territory, is named for an explorer cast adrift by mutineers?

Hudson Bay is the world's second-largest bay after the Bay of Bengal, and Henry Hudson's crew left him adrift there in a small boat in 1611.

Which peak in Kluane National Park, named for a Canadian geologist, is the highest mountain in Canada?

Mount Logan stands second in North America only to Denali, and tectonic uplift is still raising it by about a third of a millimetre a year.

Which lake in the Northwest Territories is the largest lying entirely within Canada?

Great Bear is ice-covered from late November to July, and only Lakes Superior and Huron, which straddle the US border, are larger in Canada.

Which 12.9-kilometre crossing, opened in 1997, is the world's longest span over ice-covered water?

Confederation Bridge takes about 12 minutes to drive and gave Canada's smallest province its first fixed link to the mainland.

Which island at the northern end of Nova Scotia is looped by the scenic Cabot Trail?

Cape Breton is joined to the mainland by the Canso Causeway, and the Cabot Trail runs a 298-kilometre loop around its northern highlands.

Which river, the heart of Canada's longest river system, flows from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean?

The Mackenzie is named for explorer Alexander Mackenzie, who followed it in 1789 hoping to reach the Pacific and ended up at the Arctic instead.

Which Nova Scotia racing schooner, launched in 1921, is the ship shown on the Canadian dime?

Bluenose won the International Fishermen's Trophy in her first season, and in 2002 the government officially declared her to be the ship on the coin.

Which town's airport took in 38 diverted airliners on September 11, 2001, inspiring the musical Come From Away?

Gander's residents volunteered to house, feed and entertain nearly 6,700 stranded passengers, a welcome that reached Broadway in 2017.

Which Ellesmere Island station, 817 km from the North Pole, is the world's northernmost continuously inhabited place?

Alert takes its name from HMS Alert, a British ship that wintered nearby in 1875, and its census count of permanent residents is zero.

Which UNESCO site in Canada's easternmost province preserves a Norse settlement about 1,000 years old?

L'Anse aux Meadows has been dated by tree rings to the year 1021, proving Europeans reached the Americas almost five centuries before Columbus.

Canada is divided into three northern territories and how many provinces, from the Atlantic to the Pacific?

10 provinces make up Canada today, up from just four when the country was formed in 1867.

Unlike a province, a Canadian territory has only the powers delegated to it by which body?

Parliament of Canada can change a territory's powers by itself, while shifting powers to or from a province takes a constitutional amendment.

What title is held by the head of government in each Canadian province, usually the leader of the largest party?

Premier is also the title in all three territories, though two of them have no political parties and pick their leader by a vote of the assembly.

What title is held by the monarch's representative in each Canadian province, who gives royal assent to its laws?

Lieutenant Governor is a post the three territories lack: each has a commissioner instead, who represents the federal government rather than the Crown.

Which regional name covers three small east-coast provinces but leaves out Canada's easternmost province?

The Maritimes are Nova Scotia and its two small neighbours; add the easternmost province and the region is called Atlantic Canada instead.

British Columbia joined Canada in 1871 after the federal government promised to build which link to the east?

A railway was more than the delegates expected: they had hoped for a wagon road, and the last spike was not driven until 1885.

Which Métis leader headed the Red River Resistance of 1869–70, which led to the creation of Canada's fifth province?

Louis Riel was hanged for treason after a second uprising in 1885, yet in 1992 the House of Commons recognised him as a founder of his province.

Which pink prairie flower, found in almost every region of Alberta, has been its official floral emblem since 1930?

The wild rose is Alberta's flower, while the other two Prairie provinces chose the western red lily and the prairie crocus.

Which people, expelled from Nova Scotia by the British from 1755, are the ancestors of Louisiana's Cajuns?

Acadians were deported for refusing an oath of allegiance to Britain, and those who reached Spanish Louisiana saw their name worn down to 'Cajun'.

Which Indigenous people make up more than four in five residents of Canada's newest territory?

Inuit negotiated the territory into existence through a land claims agreement that nearly 85 percent of local voters approved in 1992.

Which gemstone did the Ekati mine begin producing in the Northwest Territories in 1998, a first for Canada?

Diamonds were discovered in the territory in 1991, setting off a new mining rush just as its old gold mines were closing.

Which waterfall, the largest of three at Niagara, carries about 90 percent of the water that goes over them?

Horseshoe Falls stretches from Goat Island in New York to Table Rock on the Canadian shore, and about half the river is diverted above it for hydropower.