Northern America · CAN
Canada
The story · 12 chapters
How it was drawn
Indigenous nations, French and British colonies, a confederation of four provinces in 1867 that grew to span a continent, completed by Newfoundland in 1949.
Play the story Take the first lessonThrough the ages
Rivals in history
The kingdoms, empires and states Canada fought or stood against, from the first to today.
- Norse Greenlanders1000 to 1020
Norse voyagers from Greenland reached Newfoundland around 1000. The sagas tell of trade and then fighting with the people they called Skraelings, and the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows was abandoned after a few years.
- Haudenosaunee Confederacy1609 to 1701
Champlain fought the Mohawk in 1609, starting nearly a century of war between New France and its allies and the Five Nations. Haudenosaunee attacks destroyed the Wendat confederacy in 1649. The Great Peace of Montreal ended the wars in 1701.
- Kingdom of England1629 to 1713
English privateers, the Kirke brothers, captured Quebec in 1629 and held it until 1632. England and France then fought over Acadia, Newfoundland and Hudson Bay, and the Treaty of Utrecht gave all three to Britain in 1713.
- Kingdom of Great Britain1744 to 1763
Britain and France fought for North America. Louisbourg fell in 1745 and again in 1758, Quebec in 1759 after the battle of the Plains of Abraham, Montreal in 1760, and in 1763 France ceded Canada.
- United States1775 to 1815
American rebels invaded Quebec in 1775 and failed to take its capital on the last night of the year. In the War of 1812 American armies invaded again and were driven back, and the 1814 peace left the border unchanged.
- United States1844 to 1903
Americans demanded all of Oregon up to latitude 54 40 before the 1846 treaty settled on the 49th parallel. A dispute over the San Juan Islands was arbitrated in 1872, and the Alaska panhandle border was decided for the United States in 1903.
- Metis and Cree resistance1869 to 1885
The Metis of Red River resisted Canada's takeover of their land in 1869 and 1870, winning the creation of Manitoba. In 1885 Metis and Cree fighters in the North-West took up arms again and were defeated at Batoche.
- German Empire1914 to 1918
Canada fought Germany in Flanders and France, at Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. About sixty thousand Canadians died, a heavy toll for a country of eight million.
- Nazi Germany1939 to 1945
Canada declared war on Germany in September 1939. Its navy escorted Atlantic convoys against German submarines, and its army fought in Italy, landed at Juno Beach in 1944 and helped liberate the Netherlands in 1945.
Canada says the Northwest Passage is its internal waters, while the United States calls it an international strait. The voyage of the American tanker Manhattan in 1969 sharpened the quarrel, and a wedge of the Beaufort Sea is also disputed.
- Denmark1973 to 2022
The 1973 boundary treaty with Denmark left Hans Island, a rock between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, undecided. For decades both sides planted flags there, until a 2022 agreement split it in two.
Today
Canada now
A land of vast distances and rich natural resources, Canada became a self-governing dominion in 1867, while retaining ties to the British crown. Canada gained legislative independence from Britain in 1931 and formalized its constitutional independence from the UK when it passed the Canada Act in 1982. Economically and technologically, the nation has developed in parallel with the US, its neighbor to the south across the world's longest international border.
- Capital
- Ottawa
- Government
- federal parliamentary democracy (Parliament of Canada) under a constitutional monarchy; a Commonwealth realm; federal and state authorities and responsibilities regulated in constitution
- Head of government
- Mark Carney
- Head of state
- Charles III
- Languages
- English, French
Through time
Then and now
- Population39.3 million2023 · 13.7 million in 1950
- Life expectancy82.6 years2023 · 68.2 years in 1950
- GDP per person$45,5292022 · $11,622 in 1950
- Living in cities83%2025 · 62% in 1950
- Literacy98%1950
- Political regimeElectoral democracy2025 · Electoral democracy in 1950
- Military alliancesNATO2024 · NATO in 1950
- Military spending1.6% of GDP2025 · 2.4% of GDP in 1950
- War deathsNone2025
Population: HYDE 3.3, Gapminder and UN WPP. GDP per capita: Maddison Project Database 2023. Urban share: UN WPP. Life expectancy: Riley, HMD, UN WPP. Literacy: OWID historical estimates, World Bank, UNESCO. Military spending: SIPRI. War deaths: UCDP. Political regime: V-Dem, Regimes of the World. All via Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0). Alliances and organization memberships: compiled by Atlas. Satellites in orbit: CelesTrak SATCAT. Modern borders, backcast.
Relations
Close partners and tensions
Close partners
- United States
Summarised from World Bank and Wikipedia data, updated 23 October 2026.