Updated September 30, 2004

The population

	Toronto Photo: Tony Fang

As if in response to accumulated winters of ice and snow and a desire to escape from the weight of the polar ice cap, the people of Canada press against their southern boundary. In 2002, most of Canada's population of 31.4 million lived within 200 kilometres of the United States. In fact, the inhabitants of our three biggest cities—Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver—can drive to the border in less than two hours. Thousands of kilometres to the north, our polar region—the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut—is relatively empty, embracing 41% of our land mass but only 0.3% of our population. Human habitation in the solitary north clings largely to scattered settlements: villages among vast expanses of virgin ice, snow, tundra and taiga. Canadians sometimes boast that, with only three people per square kilometre, we have one of the lowest population densities in the world. In our highly agricultural, industrial and urban south, however, population densities are similar to those of many regions in the United States.