Canada became a country on July 1, 1867, when the British North America Act was passed by the British Parliament.
The Mounted Police were formed in 1873, with nine officers. In 1920, the Mounted Police merged with the Dominion Police to become the famous Royal Canadian Mounted Police, an organization that now has more than 28,000 members.
Ice hockey is Canada's official national game. The modern game of ice hockey was developed in Canada, based on games that have been played since the tenth century. The rules were first published in the Montreal Gazette in 1877.
Canadian James Naismith invented basketball to give his physical education students at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, an indoor team sport to play during the long winters.
The capital city, Ottawa, was originally named Bytown after Colonel John By, who headquartered there while building the Rideau Canal to connect the Ottawa River with Lake Ontario.
Canada has the longest coastline of any country in the world at 151,600 miles.
The regent of England, currently Queen Elizabeth II, is the Canadian head of state.
North America's earliest undisputed evidence of human activity, 20,000-year-old stone tools and animal bones have been found in caves on the Bluefish River in northern Yukon.
North America's lowest recorded temperature was -81.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 C) at Snag, Yukon Territory, on February 3, 1947.
Canada is known as the home of large animals like the moose and grizzly bear, but it is also home to about 55,000 species of insects and about 11,000 species of mites and spiders.
Canada contains 9% of the world's renewable water supply.
The official languages of Canada are English and French. Throughout Canada's history up to the current time, there have been conflicts between English and French-speaking Canadians.
Tensions between French Canada and English Canada reached a head in October 1970, when the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ)a terrorist organization that had bombed cities, robbed banks, and committed a number of other crimeskidnapped the U.K. Trade Commissioner, Richard Cross. The army put an end to the revolt and arrested several hundred suspects.
In 1527, John Rut of St. John's, Newfoundland, sent a letter to King Henry VIIIthe first letter sent from North America.
Charles Fenerty, a poet from Halifax, Nova Scotia, was the first person to use wood fibers to make paper. He started experimenting in 1839 and produced paper from wood pulp in 1841.
Canadians have made many important inventions, including Kerosene, the electron microscope, the electronic organ, insulin, the IMAX film system, the snowmobile, and the electric cooking range.