33 Interesting And Weird Facts About Canada You Never Knew
These fun facts about Canada present a country much more eclectic — and weirder — than you may have ever thought.
Canada’s oil reserves are the third largest in the world.Wikimedia Commons St. Paul, Alberta is home to the world's first official U.F.O. landing pad and welcome site.Bryan C. Passifiume/Wikimedia The Canada-U.S. border cuts straight through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, making it the only library in the world that exists in two countries at once.Thomson M/Wikimedia The Canada–U.S. border is the longest international border in the world. Jimz47/Wikimedia Alberta, Canada, is the only region in the entire world free of the common brown rat.Jean-Jacques Boujot/Flickr Canada produced collectable quarters with glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs and other animals on them.James H/Wikimedia Commons Approximately 90 percent of the Canadian population is concentrated within 100 miles of the U.S. border.Sakeeb Sabakka/Wikimedia Commons Canada's 15,000-mile Great Trail links all the country's hiking trails, footpaths, and boardwalks to form the longest trail in the world.Pixabay Canada has the world's highest proportion of working-age adults who have been through higher education.Sakeeb Sabakka Canada has more fresh water than any other country on Earth.Tobias Alt/Wikimedia Canada is home to at least 2 million lakes and possibly more than 3 million — which is more than all other countries combined.Edwin van Buuringen Canada has the longest coastline of any nation on Earth by a wide margin.Dennis Jarvis/Wikimedia Commons To celebrate Canada’s 150th “birthday” last year, the Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) Botanical Garden planted tulips in the shape of a maple leaf. The plan was thwarted, however, by a hungry moose that ate almost all of the plants before the big day.Kham Tran The town of Churchill, Manitoba, "the polar bear capital of the world," is home to a polar bear holding cell. If a migrating bear is thought to pose a threat to the local population, it will be trapped and placed in “polar bear jail” before being airlifted to a release site after serving its time.NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research A temperature of -81.4 F was recorded in the small village of Snag on Feb. 3, 1947. That’s roughly the same temperature as the surface of Mars!Pixabay When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation asked Canadians to pick the greatest-ever Canadian in 2004, they chose Tommy Douglas. He almost lost a leg to a bone infection as a boy because his parents couldn’t afford his medical treatment. When he became premier of Saskatchewan in 1944, he implemented a universal health-care system that became the model for the rest of the country.Lieut. G. Barry Gilroy Since the inaugural race of 1967, the City of Nanaimo has become home to the Great International World Championship Bathtub Race.Kam Abbott Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec is the only place in the world to have not one, but two exclamation marks in its name.Konstantin Ryabitsev People in Churchill leave their car doors unlocked in case their neighbors need to make a quick escape from polar bears.Ansgar Walk For one day in 1943, Ottawa designated a hospital room to be "extraterritorial" (international) ground so a Dutch princess could be born a full Dutch citizen.Dutch National Archives/The Hague/Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau The University of Victoria offers a course called the "Science of Batman” which seeks to explain “The extreme range of adaptability of the human body explored through the life of the Caped Crusader.”Shed on the Moon Kraft Dinner is the top-selling grocery item in the country. Canadians consume 55 percent more of it than Americans do.BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons Quebec City is the only city north of Mexico that still has fortified walls – known as the Fortifications of Quebec.Greymouser/Wikimedia Dawson in the Yukon Territory is famous for a drink called the Sour Toe Cocktail, which contains an actual alcohol-preserved human toe.TravelingOtter The Canadian Arctic Archipelago consists of 36,563 islands, several of them some of the world's largest.NASA Earth Observatory Between 2008 and 2014, Canada’s adult literacy rate remained stable at about 99 percent.Pixabay Canada is the world’s second largest producer of uranium.United States Department of Energy In Whistler, British Columbia, there is a body of water known as Lost Lake, where tens of thousands of tiny, dime-sized toads breed every year.Walter Siegmund/Wikimedia Canada has the world's largest per-capita concentration of donut shops in the world – five times more than the U.S.Pixabay
33 Facts About Canada That Reveal The Country Of Human Toe Cocktails And Bathtub Races View GalleryCanada's natural beauty – from its vast landscapes and secluded lakes to snow-capped peaks and almost endless coastlines – is well known across the globe, but there's a whole slew of facts about Canada that extend beyond its scenic vistas.
For example, did you know that Canada has a literacy rate of around 99 percent? Or that the Canadian city of Alberta is home to the world's first official U.F.O. landing pad and welcome site?
Beyond the more well-known facts about Canada are a host of other peculiar tidbits and quirky factoids. You may be aware that Canada's economy is among the top 20 strongest in the world, but did you know that the country once minted a run of collectible quarters with glow-in-the-dark animals on them?
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While Canada and its eclectic inhabitants are often the butt of American jokes – South Park encouraged us to "blame Canada" while Weird Al Yankovic suggested that Canadians "all live off donuts and moose meat" – the stereotyped humor bypasses much of the real interesting facts about Canada like the country's cultural diversity and appeal.
Under current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada's cabinet is one of the most diverse ever seen. It boasts an equal number of men and women and many of both sexes are also minorities. With cosmopolitan cities that range from multicultural Ottawa to the sparsely populated territories in the north, tourists can indulge in some wonderfully odd and varied cultural experiences.
FacebookIt's called the "sour toe cocktail" — for obvious reasons.
Visitors can chug a cocktail in the Yukon garnished with a preserved human toe or visit the only place in the world with two exclamation marks in its name. Another fun fact about Canada we bet you didn't know is that there is actually a city in the country where polar bears have to occasionally be rounded up and locked in a "holding cell" to avoid conflict with the local inhabitants.
Best of all, you can plan your next trip to the north armed with these facts about Canada.
Canada's breathtaking landscapes and cosmopolitan cities stretch across six timezones and almost 10 million square kilometers, so a single list of fun facts about Canada hardly does the country much justice. But we've compiled 33 pretty interesting ones in the list above to get you started.
After this look at some fun facts about Canada, try to memorize all 77 of these amazing facts that'll make you the most interesting person in the room. Then, take a journey inward with these awesome facts about the human body.
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