Portal:Canada
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Introduction
 The land that is now Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. Canada is a federation that is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual nation with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. One of the world's highly developed countries, Canada has a diversified economy that is reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon trade—particularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. It is a member of the G7, G-20, NATO, OECD, WTO, Commonwealth, Francophonie, OAS, APEC, and UN. Selected article -
The Canadian Pacific Railway was instrumental in Banff's early years, building the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise, and attracting tourists through extensive advertising. In the early 20th century, roads were built in Banff, at times by war internees, and through Great Depression-era public works projects. Since the 1960s, park accommodations have been open all year, with annual tourism visits to Banff increasing to over 5 million in the 1990s. Millions more pass through the park on the Trans-Canada Highway.As Banff is one of the world's most visited national parks,the health of its ecosystem has been threatened. In the mid-1990s, Parks Canada responded by initiating a two-year study, which resulted in management recommendations, and new policies that aim to preserve ecological integrity. Selected biography -
As part of the Manhattan Project, Slotin performed experiments with uranium and plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values. After World War II, Slotin continued his research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. On May 21, 1946, Slotin accidentally began a fission reaction, which released a burst of hard radiation. He was rushed to hospital, and died nine days later on May 30, the second victim of a criticality accident in history. Slotin was hailed as a hero by the United States government for reacting quickly enough to prevent the deaths of his colleagues. However, some physicists argue that this was a preventable accident. The accident and its aftermath have been dramatized in fiction. Selected images -
Symbols of Canada -
Did you know... -
Selected cuisine - Oka cheese is a semi-soft washed rind cheese that was originally manufactured by Trappist monks located in Oka, Quebec, Canada. Cheese has been produced in Canada since Samuel de Champlain brought cows from Normandy in either 1608 or 1610, The Canadienne breed of cattle is thought to descend from these and other early Norman imports. New France developed soft, unripened cheeses characteristic of its metropole, France. Later British settlers and Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution introduced British styles such as cheddar. Read more... |
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Selected panorama -Winnipeg photographed from top of Union Bank Building, 1907
What are Portals? ·
List of Canadian portals
Associated Wikimedia - |
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