"Basic information
Canada - comes from Indian word „Kanata“ which means „village“ or „settlement“
The capital city of Canada is Ottawa (it has 775 000 people)
Canada is the second largest country in the world – 10 mil. Square kilometers and 34 milion people.
A large percentage of Canadians live in cities alongthe Canada-US border. The three largest urban centres : Toronto (5.5 milion people), Montreál (4 milion people), Vancouver (2.5 milion people) are very ethnically diverse.
Canada also has the world´s longest coastline (more than 250 000 km).
Borders on the USA in the south, on the Arctic ocean in the north.
It is a bilingual country – English and French spoken there as official languages.
It is a huge country with a great distances and cold winters with lots of snow.

Political system
It is a member of British Commonwealth of Nations – the head of the state is the British monarch, represented by the Governor-General. He must sign all new laws before they can be passed.
But British royal family has very little influence on Canadian government today. In 1982 was signed the first document which enabled full political independence for Canada from Britain.
Like in Britain there are two chambers : the House of Commons and the Senate.
Canada has a party system in parliament with the majority party as the government. Their party leader is the prime minister.

It is a federal state – divided into 10 provinces and 3 teritories.
Provinces
• The four provinces on the Atlantic are Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island (the smallest of the Canadian provinces) , New Brunswick (only province that is officially bilingual)
• Québec – is the country´s largest province by area and is officialy Canada´s only French-speaking province.
• Ontario is the original British province (Niagara falls)
• The three prairie provinces Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta
-these provinces produce most of the wheat and other grains in Canada
• British Columbia (Its largest city Vancouver was home to the 2010 Winter Olympic games)
Territories
• The Yukon Territory
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut (consist mainly of ice and tundra, there is dogsledding races)
-largest city in all of territories is Whitehorse, Yukon with a population of 21 000 people"