加拿大文化英文介绍.doc

Canada If one has to use two words to describe Canada, they might be “large” and “diverse”. With a total land area of 9,976,140 square kilometers, Canada is the second largest country in the world, just behind Russia. A nation “from sea to sea”, it is bordered by three oceans: the Pacific to the west, the Arctic to the north, and the Atlantic to the east! To the south, it is bordered by the United States, and together the two share the longest undefended border in the world. Across the country, the landscape changes variously from rolling plains and mountains to the cold tundra of the north. Geographically, Canada can be divided into five major regions: the Pacific Region, the Prairie Provinces, Central Canada, the Atlantic Province and the North.As for the history, a book named A Short History of Canada said that “Canadians believe that their history is short, boring, and irrelevant. They are wrong on all counts. The choices Canadians can make today have been shaped by historyIn each generation, Canadians have had to learn how to live with each other in this big, rich land. It has never been easy. For those who ignore history, it is doubly difficult.”Compared to some other countries, Canada is young. But to include an account of the history of this young nation in just a few pages is a daunting task. Listed here are some major events happened in Canadian history. Hopefully they will shed some light on understanding Canada as a nation and Canadians as a people.Archaeologists believe the earliest inhabitants of Canada come from Asia by way of the Bering Strait more than 10,000 years ago. The native peoples lived in harmony with nature before the Europeans arrived. With the development of trading, the Europeans settled there and in the 1860s, as the colonies expanded and trade increased, a possible union of all the British North American colonies was discussed. The idea of Confederation, a union of the colonies under a central government, was propose at a conference at Charlottetown. On July 1,1867, the four colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Canadian were united under the British North America Act as the Dominion of Canada. Today, July1 is celebrated as Canadas National Day. Later they built the transcontinental railway. The completion of the railway was a very important event in Canadian history. It eventually brought almost a million settlers, including those from Britain, the United States and Europe. As Canada gradually gained economic power, the World War I broke out in 1914. Canada played an important role in it to provide the western Allies with wartime supplies. Canada also suffered greatly in the Great Depression and it was the efforts undertaken to aid the allies in World War II that helped save Canada from the Depression. World War II had a profound impact on Canadian history that it helped Canada to fully recover from the Depression and the increasing the process of industrialization. In addition, the war had facilitated Canada in develop