Canada
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147 free Canada trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
14 free Canada trivia questions with answers. Canada trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Canadian trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01What is the capital city of Canada?
Ottawa
Ottawa was Queen Victoria's choice in 1857: rivalry between the bigger cities made any pick politically dangerous for local leaders, so the decision was handed to her.
Q 02Which two languages are the official languages of Canada?
English and French
English and French became official under the Official Languages Act of 1969, which requires every federal institution to serve the public in either language on request.
Q 03What animal is widely recognized as Canada's national animal?
Beaver
Beaver pelts, prized in Europe for felt hats, drove the fur trade that pushed exploration across the continent, which made the animal an emblem of Canada older than the maple leaf.
Q 04Which river from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean forms Canada's longest river system?
Mackenzie
The Mackenzie is named for Alexander Mackenzie, who canoed it in 1789 hoping it led to the Pacific and came out on the Arctic coast instead; with its headwaters the system runs 4,241 km.
Q 05Which mountain is the highest peak in Canada?
Mount Logan
Mount Logan was long thought to stand 6,050 metres until a 1992 survey expedition fixed its summit at 5,959; it is named for William Logan, founder of the Geological Survey of Canada.
Q 06Which 1867 law, passed in London, created Canada?
British North America Act
The British North America Act united three colonies into one country; renamed the Constitution Act, 1867 in 1982, it is still the core of Canada's constitution.
Q 07What is Canada's national summer sport?
Lacrosse
Lacrosse grew out of First Nations ball games; a young dentist, William George Beers, wrote its first rules in 1860 and campaigned for it as the national game, a status made official for summer in 1994.
Q 08Which sport is officially recognized as Canada's national winter sport?
Ice Hockey
Ice hockey's first organized indoor game, in 1875, swapped the ball for a flat wooden disc that was less likely to fly off and injure spectators; that disc became the puck.
Q 09Canada's banknotes switched in the 2010s from paper to which material?
Polymer
Polymer bills replaced paper ones because the plastic is more durable and harder to counterfeit; each note costs more to print but was expected to stay in use far longer.
Q 10How many territories does Canada have, alongside its ten provinces?
Three
Three territories, all in the far north, hold only the powers Parliament delegates to them, while the ten provinces draw their authority directly from the constitution.
Q 11Which territory was carved from the Northwest Territories in 1999 for Inuit self-government?
Nunavut
Nunavut, 'our land' in Inuktitut, grew out of a 1993 land-claims agreement, the largest in Canadian history, in which Inuit negotiated a territory of their own along with title to their lands.
Q 12Which flag did the Maple Leaf replace as Canada's de facto national flag in 1965?
Red Ensign
The Red Ensign, a British merchant flag with Canada's shield added, was never formally adopted: a 1945 order let it fly on federal buildings as a stopgap until Parliament chose a flag.
Q 13Which Canadian province is the largest by area?
Quebec
Quebec kept French civil law and freedom of Catholic worship under Britain's Quebec Act of 1774, and it remains the only province with a French-speaking majority.
Q 21'O Canada' was first sung in 1880 with lyrics in which language?
French
French came first: with music by Calixa Lavallée and words by Adolphe-Basile Routhier, the song was written for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec City, and the best-known English words only followed in 1908.
Q 22What did a 2018 change to its English lyrics make 'O Canada'?
Gender-neutral
Gender-neutral wording replaced a line about 'sons' in 2018; the song itself only became the official anthem on July 1, 1980, a full century after it was written.
Q 23The Maple Leaf flag design was chosen by a committee formed under which prime minister?
Lester B. Pearson
Q 14Which Canadian, having lost a leg to cancer, set out on a 1980 cross-country run for cancer research?
Terry Fox
Terry Fox ran about a marathon a day for 143 days and 5,373 km on an artificial leg before cancer in his lungs stopped him outside Thunder Bay; he died the following June, aged 22.
Q 15The name Canada is thought to come from kanata, an Iroquoian word meaning what?
Village
Village or settlement is the accepted meaning: in 1535 Indigenous guides used kanata to point French explorers to Stadacona, and the visitors applied the word to the whole region.
Q 16Which French explorer planted a cross in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in 1534 for Francis I?
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier raised a cross at Gaspé in July 1534 to claim the land for France, then sailed home with two sons of the Iroquoian chief Donnacona, whom he had seized.
Q 17Which people built a short-lived camp around 1000 AD at L'Anse aux Meadows on Canada's Atlantic coast?
The Norse
The Norse were there in exactly 1021: a solar storm in 993 left a radiocarbon spike in tree rings, letting scientists date wood at the site that had been cut with metal tools.
Q 18Splitting the Province of Canada created which two provinces?
Ontario and Quebec
Ontario and Quebec were split apart to end years of political deadlock between the united province's two halves; with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick they made four founding provinces.
Q 19Which province became the tenth to join Confederation, in 1949?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland had governed itself until bankruptcy in 1934 put it under a British-appointed commission; in 1948 its voters chose Canada over a return to independence by 52.3% to 47.7%.
Q 20The Canada Act 1982 patriated the constitution and simultaneously created which document?
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was proclaimed by Elizabeth II at a rainy ceremony on Parliament Hill on April 17, 1982; since then courts have struck down laws that violate it.
Lester B. Pearson pitched a new flag to a hostile Royal Canadian Legion convention in 1964; after six months of bitter debate Parliament chose a single-leaf design over his own three-leaf favourite.
Q 24What surpassed the CN Tower as the world's tallest free-standing structure in 2007?
Burj Khalifa
Burj Khalifa in Dubai overtook the CN Tower's 553 metres in September 2007 while still under construction, more than two years before the skyscraper opened.
Q 25Which fur-trading company, chartered in 1670, once held about a third of what is now Canada?
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company ruled Rupert's Land under a 1670 charter from Charles II until Canada bought the territory in 1870 for £300,000, the largest land deal in the country's history.
Q 26Traditional poutine tops fries and gravy with which ingredient?
Cheese curds
Cheese curds came first: a Warwick snack bar is credited with adding them to fries in the late 1950s, and a Drummondville drive-in claims the gravy; several towns still dispute the invention.
Q 27Frederick Banting and his assistant Best first isolated insulin in 1921 in which city?
Toronto
Toronto's university lab produced insulin in 1921 under J.J.R. Macleod, who shared the 1923 Nobel Prize with Banting; Banting then split his prize money with Best, who had been left out.
Q 28Which Canadian-American gym teacher invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891?
James Naismith
James Naismith, born in Almonte, Ontario, needed an indoor winter game for a restless class in December 1891, so he nailed up the two peach baskets the building's janitor had to spare.
Q 29Canada's gold-coloured one-dollar coin, introduced in 1987, is nicknamed after which bird?
The loon
The loon was a stand-in: the dies for the planned voyageur canoe design were lost in transit to the Winnipeg mint, so a new reverse by Robert-Ralph Carmichael was struck instead.
Q 30Which Canadian bay has the world's highest tidal range?
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy narrows like a funnel and its water rocks in step with the ocean tide, a resonance that lifts the range to about 16 metres, the highest in the world.