Canada is the second largest country in the world, smaller only to Russia. Niagara Falls is one of Canada's best known tourist attractions. It is the largest falls in the world, measured in volume of water. Toronto, Ontario's CN Tower, which is ranked as one of the seven wonders of the modern world by the American Society of Civil Engineers, is the world's tallest self-supporting structure at 1,815 feet. At 5.3 million square feet (492,000 m2), West Edmonton Mall is the world's largest shopping mall. Canada is the United States' largest trading partner and is responsible for the greatest number of tourists to the U.S. (over 15 million annually). Canada was officially a colony of Britain and was legally subordinate to the British parliament until 1931.

Canada is a country of immigrants and therefore it is a multicultural blend of different people, different backgrounds, different races and different religions. Canada has two important political documents, the Canadian Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which directly speak too many of the ideals and values that Canada upholds. Almost all ethnic backgrounds are represented in Canada making Canada one of the most multicultural countries in the world.

Canada's history dates back for thousands of years. First nation's peoples lived across the country and there were many different aboriginal groups and peoples. European settlers arrived in Canada about 400 years ago beginning the political foundations that have become the basis for the government and social structure that we think of when we refer to Canada today. Canada spans over 9,220,970 sq km, and is slightly larger than the United States.

There was never a "conquest" of New France. The union of Upper and Lower Canada was the result of horse-trading between Imperial powers in Europe, the French ultimately preferring the island of Guadeloupe to the land Voltaire dismissed as "several acres of snow."

Because Canada has always been a country dependent on the fate and fortune of foreign powers, its history has, to a large extent, never been its own. As European influence waned, that of America waxed. Today one could make a strong argument that Canada is less independent than it was before Confederation. Ours is a tradition of being taken for granted and falling into line - reaffirmed as recently as Bosnia, or the last time the Bank of Canada matched the Federal Reserve's move on interest rates.

Canadian history also seems uneventful because that is the way we wanted it. Canadians have been described as Americans who didn't rebel, a definition which makes inertia into a virtue. And yet the charge sticks: Canadians are a people of the status quo. Our comfort with establishments - political, financial, and artistic - is the major cultural difference between us and the United States. Instability - revolution - is foreign to our understanding. Commenting on Laurier's first election victory Morton writes: "Like most revolutions, the political upheaval between 1886 and 1896 changed symbols, not substance." Coming from anyone other than a Canadian historian such a statement would be incomprehensible.

Our greatest Prime Ministers, according to a recent survey, were simply the ones who managed to hang around the longest (and we have a habit of keeping them for a long, long time). More often than not they were merely the safe, familiar choice.

The key to political survival in Canada is usually regarded as a mix of situational ethics - see our long history of hypocrisy over free trade - and compromise - a cherished Canadian euphemism for doing nothing and simply hoping things will get better. The Manitoba Schools Question was punted by a succession of administrations in the nineteenth century, and was still being tinkered with in the late1970s. In both World Wars conscription was avoided like the proverbial third rail until after the issue had become practically irrelevant.

Yet, paradoxically, it is this very continuity that makes Canadian history relevant. Our history is nothing if not predictable, not repeating itself so much as staying on course. Things don't happen in Canada; Canada is always happening (albeit slowly). Even our Constitution remains a work in progress. Arguing for the relevance of Canadian history Morton writes "The choices Canadians can make today have been shaped by history." As an example, "The governors of New France launched arguments that federalists and sovereignties repeat in present-day Quebec." But even this may be less a repetition shaped by history than the same argument being continued.

Canada is a good overview for the general reader and is the kind of book one would like to see in every Canadian home. Yet one also wishes Morton would stop with the revisions and make a final edition, perhaps taking Canada up to 2000.

The revisions Morton has made fall into two categories. The first are mainly cosmetic adjustments of style. Yet even slight changes in wording can result not only in different emphases but different meanings. There is more here than an attempt to spruce up the language and it is not obvious that even the style is an improvement.

In some cases these have been inserted into the text, reflecting new understandings of the past. In an earlier edition, sticking with the example of post-War population growth, we read that "Between 1945 and 1957, a million and a half people came to Canada, including war brides, concentration camp victims, even thirty-five thousand refugees from the 1956 Hungarian uprising." After "concentration camp victims" in the new edition Morton adds "perhaps some of their oppressors," an attempt to deal with recent headlines that is too vague and qualified to be an improvement.

The all-new material takes us to Lucien Bouchard's retirement from the political stage. But revised editions that attempt to bring the story up to the minute are ill advised. The events of 2001 are too fresh to be dealt with effectively in a general history. As a result, the book moves much too quickly through its final chapters, rattling off information without any real attempt at analysis and dissolving into banalities like "Canada's climate and scenery make it a good place to live."

Canada has a very large and diverse range of geographic features. Canada is divided into 10 provinces and 2 territories. Canada stretches from the Pacific Ocean on the west, to the Atlantic Ocean on the east. Northern Canada reaches into the Arctic Circle, while southern Canada stretches below the northern points of the United States.

Canada has a very small population, 28 million people, for its geographic size. Much of Canada is still wilderness, cover by forests. The Rocky Mountains cover a major part of western Canada -- British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and the western part of Alberta.

• West-central Canada is mostly prairie, consisting of large grain farms.


• The east-central parts of Canada are the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. These are major population and industrial areas.


• The Maritime Provinces on the east coast rely very heavily on the Atlantic Ocean for their way of life. Basic Details about Canada