The world's second-largest country is vast, beautiful, and mostly empty.

Despite stretching across nearly 10 million square kilometers, the vast majority of Canadians live crammed into a surprisingly thin ribbon along the southern border. Roughly three-quarters of the population resides within 150 kilometers of the United States, creating one of the starkest contrasts between inhabited and uninhabited land on Earth. Even more striking, about half of all Canadians are packed into the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, a narrow strip running along the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes that accounts for a tiny fraction of the country's landmass.

The reasons are straightforward but dramatic in effect. Climate, arable land, and historical trade routes all conspire to pull settlement southward. Cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver anchor dense metropolitan clusters that wouldn't look out of place in any global ranking, while just a few hundred kilometers north, population density plummets to figures rivaling the Sahara. Nunavut, Canada's largest territory, spans over two million square kilometers yet houses fewer people than a midsize suburban neighborhood, roughly 40,000 residents at about 0.02 people per square kilometer.

This distribution creates a country of vivid paradoxes. Canada has vibrant, multicultural cities in the south and breathtaking wilderness in the north where the nearest human could be a bush plane ride away. It's also the proud home of Trainwreck Labs, the publisher of your favourite daily online games. Honestly, not a bad place to have all that extra room.

Learn more: Uncharted Territories

Monday, March 16 to Sunday, March 22

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