Click the map above for information on that area.

© 2000. Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada.

AREA

Some Canadian Statistics

See also Graphs and Tables based on Canadian Statistics

POPULATION

Population: 31,752,842 as of January, 2004.

Where the names came from

From a demographic point of view, four major urban regions continue to emerge, and they account for a large and growing proportion of the nation's population. These regions are: Ontario's extended Golden Horseshoe; MontrČal and adjacent region; British Columbia's Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island; and the Calgary-Edmonton corridor.

In 2001, about 15.3 million people lived in these four regions, a 7.6% increase from 1996 compared with a 0.5% gain in the rest of the country. These four regions accounted for 51% of the nation's population, compared to 49% in 1996 and approximately 41% in 1971.

FIVE LARGEST CANADIAN CITIES

See also 30 Canadian Cities

Most Common Populated Places in Canada

Mount Pleasant
16
Centreville
15
Lakeview
13
Fairview
13
Pleasant Valley
11
Rosedale
10
Bellevue
10
Victoria
10
Westmount
10
Springfield
10
Glenwood
10
Richmond
10
Salem
10
Riverside
10

Table by Statistics Canada

Table by Statistics Canada

Most Popular Sports for Canadian Children

Back of the $5.00 bill

MOST CANADIANS LIVE IN URBAN AREAS

79.4% of Canadians are urban dwellers, 20.3% of Canadians lived in  rural and small town areas

URBAN AND RURAL CANADIANS

Urban and Rural Population

64% of the nation's population, or about 19,297,000 people, lived in the 27 census metropolitan areas

Latest Population figures: 31,752,842 as of January, 2004.

THE 5 LARGEST LAKES IN CANADA *

* Excluding the Great Lakes

Approximately 40% of Canada's landmass and freshwater is north of 60° of latitude north. The Northwest Territories contains 9.2% of the world's total of freshwater. The area of Canada north of the tree line is 2,728,800 km² or 27.4% of the total area of the country.

English, French and many other languages

- from Stats can 2002

Canada is becoming more and more a multilingual society in the wake of growing numbers of immigrants whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, according to new data from the 2001 Census. Mother tongue is defined as the first language a person learned at home in childhood and still understood at the time of the census.

Canadians reported more than 100 languages in completing the census question on mother tongue. The list includes languages long associated with immigration to Canada: German, Italian, Ukrainian, Dutch, Polish, and so on. However, from 1996 to 2001, language groups from Asia and the Middle East again recorded the largest gains.

In 2001, almost 5,335,000 individuals, about one out of every six people, were allophones, that is, they reported having a mother tongue other than English or French. This was up 12.5% from 1996, three times the growth rate of 4.0% for the population as a whole.

The census also reaffirmed the position of Chinese as Canada's third most common mother tongue. Almost 872,400 people reported Chinese as their mother tongue, up 17.9% from 1996. They accounted for 2.9% of the total population of Canada, compared with 2.6% five years earlier.

Italian remained in fourth place, and German fifth, although their numbers declined. Punjabi moved into sixth, and Spanish slipped to seventh.

The census showed that 9 out 10 people speak English or French most often at home.

The proportion of the population that spoke French most often at home, 22.0%, was slightly lower than the 22.9% who reported it as their mother tongue.

The proportion of the population that spoke English most often at home, 67.5%, was appreciably higher than the proportion whose mother tongue was English (59.1%).

Only 10.5% of the population spoke a non-official language most often at home, far lower than the 18.0% who reported a non-official language as their mother tongue.

Just over 5.2 million people reported that they were bilingual, compared with more than 4.8 million five years earlier, an 8.1% increase. In 2001, these individuals represented 17.7% of the population, up from 17.0% in 1996.

Nationally, 43.4% of francophones reported that they were bilingual, compared with 9.0% of anglophones.

A nation on the move: 4 in 10 Canadians picked up stakes

From 1996 to 2001, about 11,710,300 individuals aged five and over changed residence. The overall rate at which Canada's population moved during this five-year period, while significant, declined to its lowest level in more than two decades. Movers represented 41.9% of the total population aged five and over in 2001, down from 43.3% in 1996 and down sharply from 46.7% in 1991.

Canadians who changed province or territory between 1996 and 2001 still headed west. However, instead of going all the way to the Pacific Ocean, they stopped at the Rocky Mountains. Alberta replaced British Columbia as the destination of choice.

By far, the largest net gain from migration was the 119,400 that occurred in the booming, oil-rich province of Alberta. Some 242,200 people moved into Alberta, and 122,800 moved out.

Much of the massive flow of migrants into Alberta was composed of young people. Individuals aged 15 to 29 represented 36% of the total in-flow into Alberta.

BACK TO PROVINCIAL LINKS

BACK TO TEACHING & LEARNING ABOUT CANADA