A Little Essay on Big: Towards a History of Canada’s Size

 
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Canada is best known for being big. It is the second largest nation on earth, almost ten million square kilometers, stretching across six time zones, eighty-eight degrees of longitude and forty-two degrees of latitude. And yet despite a long national tradition of historical geography and a developing one in environmental history, there is no literature on Canada’s size. What have Canadians thought about living in a big country? How has that size informed the nation’s development? This article looks back in time to understand the relationship of Canada’s population to its territory.

DOI: doi.org/10.5282/rcc/5616