13 incredible facts about Canada

canada fans
O Canada! Mark Blinch/Reuters

With the 11th-largest GDP, Canada has one of the biggest economies in the world.

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Here are 13 incredible facts about its economy, consumers, culture, and resources. Check them out below.

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Canada produces enough maple syrup to fill 14 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Maple syrup
Shawn Patrick Ouellette / Getty Images

Canada produced 9.486 million gallons of maple syrup in 2014, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. A whopping 8.58 million were produced in Quebec.

An Olympic-size swimming pool can hold 660,000 gallons of liquid.

Source: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

 

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Quebec is called "the Saudi Arabia of syrup."

maple syrup
Serge Lachance taps a maple tree at the Chemin du Roy maple grove in St-Augustin, Quebec, April 11, 2008. According to a local newspaper, close to 80% of the worldwide production of maple syrup comes from Quebec. Mathieu Belanger/Reuters

Quebec accounts for 71% of global syrup production, making it the "Saudi Arabia of syrup," according to the Economist. There's even a Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (FPAQ) that tries to control the price of maple syrup like OPEC tries to control the price of oil.

But the "OPEC of maple syrup" is starting to see problems as consumers switch to natural sweeteners, US producers jump into the market, and producers are encouraged to go to the black market, according to Bloomberg.

Source: The Economist

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A chunk of Canada has lower gravity than other parts of the world.

Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton Wikimedia Commons

The weakness in gravity is slight: A 150-pound person would weigh a tenth of an ounce less in the area near Hudson's Bay. (Although the person's mass would not change!)

Measurements taken by a pair of satellites known as GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) revealed that the weaker gravity was due to "the crust there rebounding slowly after the end of the last ice age [and] a deeper issue involving convection in the Earth’s mantle," according to The New Scientist.

Source: The New Scientist

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Canada's forests could fill all of Japan, Italy, Cambodia, Nicaragua, France, Germany, Ghana, Cameroon, Sweden, South Korea, Uruguay, and UK.

forest canada
Gondolas on the Peak 2 Peak pass each other between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains in Whistler, British Columbia December 11, 2008. At 3,024 metres, the Peak 2 Peak has four support towers and is the world's longest unsupported span. Whistler will be the site of the alpine and nordic events of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Andy Clark/Reuters

Canada has 348 million ha of forest land, which translates to about 1,343,635.5 square miles.

According to the NRCAN, these forests cover so much area that they would be able to fully cover all the aforementioned countries.

 

Source: NRCAN

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About 500-600 moose-vehicle collisions are reported annually on the island of Newfoundland.

moose newfoundland park
Wikimedia

Newfoundland has the highest concentration of moose in the world. According to The Globe and Mail, Newfoundland sees somewhere between 500 and 600 collisions between moose and vehicles annually. About 5 to 10 result in serious injuries, with an average of one human death per year.

Newfoundland recently launched a five-year moose-management plan, "partly aimed at reducing moose-vehicle crashes," The Globe and Mail reported last year.

Source: The Globe and Mail

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Canadians eat 55% more Kraft Macaroni & Cheese than Americans.

Kraft
Spencer Green/AP

Step aside, poutine. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese — known as "Kraft Dinner" in Canada — is the most purchased grocery item in the country. Canadians eat 3.2 boxes each year, which is 55% more than Americans, according to 2012 data.

Bonus fact: In Canadian band Barenaked Ladies' song "If I Had a Million Dollars," there's one lyric that goes, "If I had a million dollars / we wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner / but we would eat Kraft Dinner / of course we would, we'd just eat more."

Source: The Walrus

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The name "Canada" comes from a 16th-century linguistic misunderstanding.

Jacques_Cartier_by_Hamel
Wikimedia

In 1536, French explorer Jacques Cartier overheard the Iroquois referring to their settlements as "kanata," which most closely means "village" or "settlement." Because of how often they used the word, he assumed it was the name of the country.

Source: Natural Resources Canada

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Canada's crude oil reserves could fill up almost 26,100 Empire State Buildings.

canada oil sands
Pipelines run at the McKay River Suncor oil sands in-situ operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, September 17, 2014. In 1967 Suncor helped pioneer the commercial development of Canada's oil sands, one of the largest petroleum resource basins in the world. Picture taken September 17, 2014. Todd Korol/Reuters

Canada has 172 billion barrels of proven crude-oil reserves, or 7.22 trillion gallons, the third-largest in the world.

The Empire State Building's volume is 37 million cubic feet, or 276,779,000 gallons. 

Source: US Energy Information Administration

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Approximately 15% of Canadians visit Tim Hortons daily.

tim hortons coffee
Tim Hortons employees prepare coffee before the company's annual general meeting in Toronto, May 8, 2014. Peter Jones/Reuters

According to 2014 estimates from Tim Hortons, 15% of Canadians (or about 5.3-5.4 million people) visit the coffee-and-donut chain every day.

Moreover, Tim Hortons serves 2 billion cups of coffee a year, which is about eight out of every 10 coffees sold in Canada. This accounts for 60% of the Canadian coffee market, according to Tim Hortons.

Source: BAI

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75% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.

obama trudeau
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington March 10, 2016. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Canada is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. Most of Canada's north is relatively empty because of the cold temperatures.

Source: National Geographic

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There are more people living in California than in Canada, even though Canada is about the same size as the US.

mike myers wayne's world
Mike Myers, left, was born in Canada. Mario Anzuoni /Reuters

Canada has a population of 36 million, and California has a population of 39.14 million. The total US population is 324 million.

Canada's total area is 3.855 million square miles; the US's is 3.79 million square miles.

Source: World Bank, US Census, Statistics Canada

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Canada has the 4th-largest French-speaking city in the world.

poutine
Poutine comes from Quebec. Shutterstock/Foodio

The three largest French-speaking cities are Paris, France; Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo; and Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire.

The Montreal, Canada, metro area comes in fourth place overall, with 4.02 million people, according to 2014 estimates.

Source: TouristMaker

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Canada has a national park that's larger than the entire country of Switzerland.

Wood Buffalo NP_Waldbison_98 07 02
Wikimedia

Wood Buffalo National Park sits in Alberta and is about 17,300 square miles (44,807 square km). It is home to the largest population of wild bison in North America.

By comparison, Switzerland has an area of 15,490 square miles (41,284 square kilometers).

Source: UNESCO

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