10 Provinces, 3 Territories

I know I should have posted this yesterday but I was really busy doing a whole lot of nothing. I mean what are you supposed to do with a holiday in the middle of the week? You can’t go nuts cuz you won’t have a day to recoup and nothing was open. I really shouldn’t say I did nothing. I slept for just over half the day and spent the second half organizing and assembling Swedish furniture. Hopefully I won’t start a fight club. Even if I did I wouldn’t be able to talk about it.

Anyways, it was Canada Day yesterday. We are supposed to celebrate the country and it’s past. From what I saw on TV that involved a lot of random show marathons. I call that lazy broadcasting. But I will pay tribute by sharing some fun facts about Canada I have complied.

Oh Canada

July 1 2009 will be the 142 year of confederation in Canada

July 1 1867 would have been a Monday

There were originally only 4 provinces in Canada. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Upper Canada (Quebec) and Lower Canada (Ontario)

The original 4 provinces had an area of 419,345 square miles which is about 1,086,098 square kilometers.

Canada officially adopted the metric system in 1970. And in 1971 Metric Commision Canada was appointed by the government to plan and manage all conversions in daily life from imperial to the metric system.

The current area of Canada is 9,093,507 square kilometers

The population of Canada would have been approximately 3,463,000 that is just above 1/10 of Canada’s current population 33,212,696

Basketball was invented in Canada by James Naismith, a physical education instructor, in 1891. There were no official rules for the game until 1892.

Toque is derived from the French meaning “Cap that knocked”. That was usually because it had long droopy ends that knocked against the neck or shoulders. This is also clost to the Italian word tocca that simply means “cap”.

On April 1 1999 Nunavut became Canada’s newest territory.

Nunavut’s area makes up 1/5 of Canada but with only 29,000 people it makes up less that 1% of the population

Canada has hosted the Olympics only twice, 1976 in Montreal and 1988 in Calgary. It will be hosting it for the third time in Vancouver 2010.

Canada is the second largest country in the world.

Canada has 2 official languages, English and French. English is spoken by about 59.3% or the population and French by about 23.2%. The other 17.5% speak other languages. Much of the population is at least bilingual.

So there you go some facts about Canada. Hope you had a great Canada Day.

Tra