5 things others don't know about Canada
 

I was asked by Nancy, over in the Europe forum, to create a 5 things people don't know about Canada... She (and apparently others) want to know more about us...


Here are mine, what are yours?


1) Canada's head of state is the Queen of England (but she's only a figurehead).
2) Canada didn't get its official flag until the 1960s and it was really hot political debate. Oddly, for such a cool design, it was choosen by committee.
3) The price of the average home in downtown Toronto is C$260,000, the average price of a home in Winnipeg C$88,500...
4) Some interestng Canadian inventions: Film Colourization, IMAX film, Insulin, MacIntosh Apples, Odometer, the Robertson Screw (best screw ever IMO - I hate slotted and phillips screws), Standard Time, Trivial Pursuit, the Television Camera, the Zipper...
5) Our official national sport is not hockey but rather Lacrosse.http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Lacrosse

very interesting facts Charlatan!

Can't wait to learn more about Canada! :D

Yay facts!

I love the official sport one, able to get most people with that one

Dun ferget the telephone..

Same here. :D

Even tricked me. Damnit. Well, no it didn't. I just rushed through a tshirt quiz :lol:

Learn me more about Canada guys :D

Some more interesting facts:

1) We have productive wine regions in BC and Southwestern Ontario and are best know internationally for our Ice Wine (made from grapes left on the vine until after the first frost - the cold concentrates the sugars making a very sweet dessert wine)
2) Approximately 90% of total population is concentrated within 300km of the US border
3) Canada spends more of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education and less on health care than the United States.
4) Canadians consume more Kraft Dinner (aka Kraft Macaroni & Cheese) per capita than any other nationality on earth.
5) Canada is really big! Canada is the world's second-largest country (9 970 610 km2), surpassed only by the Russian Federation.

By the way... hockey is our official "winter" sport and lacrosse is our official "summer" sport.

I just double checked. ;)

:lol:

how about your mounties? what's the story of those guys?

Ah..beat me to it. I was looking into that a while back and noticed that it had changed. In my opinion that is the way to do it...winter and summer sports (although with the Stanley cup going into June and the World Cup in August...you could almost consider hockey a summer sport :p )

OK, I am going to try to come up with 5 things off the top of my head that Charlatan has not already mentioned...

1. (to Nancy) Every member of the RCMP (the mounties) has been trained in Regina, Saskatchewan since their inception in the early 1900's.
2. Canada and the US have the longest undefended border in the world (the 45th Parallel).
3. Canada has North America's oldest street in Quebec City, PQ.
4. Our national animal is the beaver (seriously).
5. During the second world war the CDN goverment interred (locked up) almost every Canadian citizen of Japanese heritage. We're not really proud of that fact, but we're not afraid to admit our mistakes.

I did all this drunk and w/o google so I gladly invite any corrections.

**Edit...49th parallel---doh!**

Hope these aren't repeats:

1) Canada has more fresh water than any other nation on earth. That is why the US wants to invade!

2) The last province to join the nation was Newfoundland, in 1949, when that bastion of the British Empire narrowly voted to join in the fun

3) The tallest free standing structure in the world is the CN Tower, in Toronto (which also happens to be the centre of the universe). It is over 1800 feet high!

4) Canada is golf crazy. More per capita golfers in this country than any other, despite the short playing season.

5) The largest French speaking city in the world other than Paris is Montreal!

I see. But are they like rangers or like the police or what?

The RCMP or Royal Canadian Mounted Police are a national police force. They conduct regular police duties in towns and areas without their own force and also do a lot of work on a national scale - fighting smuggling, terrorism, counterfeiting, and international trafficing.

The Mounties are an excellent force, and well trained.

isnt the border on the 49th parralel???

Did you know that the Bluenose Schooner, Built here in NS was never beaten in a race.

1) Yonge Street (pronounced Young) is the longest street in the world at 1,896 km
2) Toronto is as far south as the French Riviera (but sadly not as warm all year)
3) More people live in Toronto than in all the four Atlantic Provinces combined (Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick)
4) Toronto has the fifth largest government in Canada
5) Toronto is one of the most racially diverse cities in the world:

Population of 2.48 million in the City and roughly 5 million in the Greater Toronto Area

Over 100 languages and dialects are spoken here

43 per cent of Toronto's population (1,051,125 people) reported themselves as being part of a visible minority, up from 37 per cent (882,330) in 1996.

The top four visible minority groups in Toronto were:
Chinese at 259,710 or 10.6 per cent of our population
South Asian at 253,920 or 10.3 per cent
Black at 204,075 or 8.3 per cent
Filipino at 86,460 or 3.5 per cent

49 per cent of Toronto's population was born outside of Canada, up from 48 per cent in 1996

New immigrants to Toronto since 1991 number 516,635, representing 21 per cent of our population.

Fully one in five Toronto residents arrived in this country during the 1990s

One in four children between 5 and 16 in the City of Toronto are new immigrants having arrived between 1991 and 2001

While the City of Toronto had 48.7 per cent of the GTA's population in 2001, we were home to:
57.8 per cent of all GTA immigrants (1,214,625)
64.4 per cent of all new immigrants that arrived in the GTA during the 1990s (516,635)
60.4 per cent of all GTA residents identified as belonging to a visible minority (1,051,125)

Toronto has 79 ethnic publications

Found this website, it hasn't been updated in quite sometime but hopefully it is of some help. http://www.icomm.ca/emily/facts.html

Thank's for the link silent_jay :)

Now I know how to get the middle part out of a toonie. And I'm damn sure going to try!

1. Hey, we're not lumberjacks, or fur traders....

2. We don't live in an igloo or eat blubber, or own a dogsled....

3. We don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I'm certain they're really really nice.

4. We have a Prime Minister, not a president.

5. We speak English and French, not American.

6. We pronounce it 'about', not 'a boot'.

7. We can proudly sew our country's flag on our backpacks.

8, We believe in peace keeping, not policing, diversity, not assimilation,

9. The beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.

10. A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch.

11. And it is pronounced 'zed' not 'zee', w. 'zed' !!!!

12. Canada is the second largest landmass!

13. The first nation of hockey!

14. And the best part of North America

My name is Daval!!
And I am Canadian!!!




(modified the rant a bit, but all you Canadians know where its from :)

Actually I know all of you guys are going to hate this, but the US actually has the oldest known record of hockey being played.
I remember reading that in the Calgary Sun.
Do I need to google it?

Definately google that. I thought we invented that.,

The whole "we invented hockey" thing has been debated for years. There are at least 3 towns in Canada who claim to be the home of hockey and probably just as many US towns.

In my mind "the first nation of hockey" doesn't really refer to the birthplace of hockey, rather it refers to the current center of the hockey universe.

(Basketball was invneted by a Canadian tho, there is no debate on that one)

Ill get around to googling it later.
I just remember reading an article that said right after the Hall of fame put a picture on display supposed to be the first record of hockey being played I forget where (Canada)
a new picture 43 years older was found in vermont showing hockey being played.
This article was printed around 6 months or so ago.
???

You know, that sounds familar...

And basketball may have been invented by a Canadian, but he invented it in the States :D

Take that Canada :p

I really dont care about the sports and where they were invented.. I'll concentrate on the whole Insulin thing..

I think once people started taking out the middle part of the toonie, the Mints made it so that it can't happen again. I don't know why I'm thinking that though. Must have been something I read. Give it a try though.

Here's some good info on Banting and insulin @

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Banting

Here's a small history of hockey, hope it helps, but it doesn't really matter where it was invented because Canadians perfected it. http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/...60/hockey.html

Thats illegal you know... you want to deface Canadian government property... for shame

for shame.

The bay of fundy has the largest tides in the world, swelling over forty feet in a period of 8 hours.

1) We don't pay taxes on lottery winnings. That's right, we get to keep it all.
2) Our junk food consists of such oddities as Smarties (kinda like M&M's, only better), and Coffee Crisp (think of a cup of chocolate coffee, only in bar form). We also buy our milk in 1 litre plastic bags (3 1-litre bags sold in one big bag), which we place in plastic milk bag containers, cut open the plastic bag at the corner with scissors, and put it back into the fridge unsealed. Ew.
3) The Trans-Canada highway (Highway 1) is the longest highway in the world. It starts on one coast, remains at least a double lane highway all the way to the other coast and travels 4860 km.
4) The actual North Magnetic Pole currently resides in Canadian Territory, although the Russians are poised to take it from us any day now.
5) Canada's capital was originally going to be either Kingston, Ontario (too English), or Quebec City, Quebec (too French), before they decided on making Ottawa our capital.

As for the RCMP, think of them as Canada's version of the FBI. The only difference, as was mentioned above, is that the RCMP act as a municipal police force for areas that don't have their own police.

[edit:] Oh yeah, and we have a really big mall in Edmonton called the West Edmonton Mall. How big is it? It's so big, it has its own rollercoaster, aquarium with sub ride, waterslides, and hockey rink, and still has room for stores.

By the by, Edmonton was recently hit by a major storm that broke through the glass ceiling at the mall, and flooded the place. Last I heard, crews were dealing with the problem by extending the sub ride to the rest of the mall. :D

I can drink a liter of milk before scum forms on the opening anyway, so no worries there. :p

will repost some other time....

And you should go river rafting in it when the tides come in..what a blast...

River Rafting


The day we were out last year the Bore was about 8 feet or so
and the waves in the river were about 20 to 25'.

They stop on a sand bar that is as big as 10 football fields.. You stand on it and see how long u can stand there before the rush of water is too much..in about 30 seconds, its shin high and u can't stand there anymore..its amazing

my milk comes in a plastic 4 l jug... you people are strange...

Smarties are only in Canada? Man I had no idea the rest of the world didn't get to try these tasty treats.

Milk in Jugs

http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/dairy/graphics/filljug2.jpg

Milk in a bags and in a pitcher...

http://www.perth.igs.net/~ianlloyd/milksys.JPG

Created a need for these devices used to cut the tip off the bag...

http://www.perth.igs.net/~ianlloyd/cutters.JPG

We can get our milk in either cartons, bags or jugs... though jugs are not as common as they used to be...

Wow.... that milk in a bag looks so repulsive. I believe I'll be taking a trip to a Canadian grocery store this weekend :D

I took a trip to an american grocery store to get cinamon and brown sugar pop tarts



Isnt that a letter opener next to that crazy bag of milk?

btw, my milk comes straight from the cow, saves on transportation and refrigeration.. lol (Im kidding, I Hardly drink milk anyways)