Canada (in English: Canada, pron. AFI: kænÉ™dÉ™, in French: Canada, pron. AFI: kanada) is a sovereign country of North America, whose form of government is the federal parliamentary monarchy. Its territory is organized in ten provinces and three territories. Its capital is the city of Ottawa and the most populated city is Toronto.
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Located on the northern tip of the North American subcontinent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and north to the Arctic Ocean. It shares border with the United States to the south, and to the northwest with its federated state Alaska. It is the second largest country in the world after Russia, and also the northernmost. It occupies about half of the territory of North America.
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The territory occupied by Canada was inhabited by various groups of its aboriginal population for millennia. Since the end of the 15th century, numerous British and French expeditions explored along the Atlantic coast, where they later settled. France ceded almost all of its American colonies in 1763 after the Franco-Indian War.
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In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through the Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal domain of four provinces.6 7 This led to the beginning of an accumulation of provinces and territories, and a process of autonomy from the United Kingdom. . This growing autonomy was highlighted in the Westminster Statute of 1931 and culminated in the 1982 Constitution Act of Canada, which broke the vestiges of legal dependence in the British parliament.