While the 49th parallel is often thought of as the border between the US and Canada, the vast majority of Canadians (roughly 72%) live below it, with 50% of Canadians living south of 45°42′ (45.7 degrees) north or the red line above.
Toronto (43°42′N) and Montreal (45°30′N), Canada’s biggest and second biggest cities respectively, both lie just below the line as does Ottawa (45°25′N), the capital and 4th largest city.
If you’d like to learn more about Canada have a look at the following books:
- How to Move to Canada: A Primer for Americans
- So, You Want to Be Canadian: All About the Most Fascinating People in the World and the Magical Place They Call Home
- The U.S. of EH?: How Canada Secretly Controls the United States and Why That’s OK
- Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Canada
- Lonely Planet Discover Canada (Travel Guide)
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melanerpes says
The Mercator projection increasingly exaggerates area with increasing latitude. How very convenient for you.
ASR says
Convenient for whom?
fake666 says
Do not ask me why I did so, but I simply could not believe this fact so I did research and proved that only 15.7 million people generously live bellow the line. Making it roughly 44.6 % of Canada’s population. There are most likely less people that live bellow the line than I have estimated, however either way there is still less than half of the population that lives bellow it.
Thomas says
Did you include the 800.000 Canadians living in the US? 🙂
Lennerd says
And between 75% and 90% live within 100 miles of the US border depending on whose stats you read. From what I’ve read it’s closer to 90%. Not sure why the stat is in miles. Either the stat predates the introduction of the metric system, an American created it, or 100 miles sounds better than 160.9 km.
Peter Brancato says
A HUGE portion of what is below the red line is water, specifically Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Why are the Great Lakes represented as Land. The map would be even more impressive if you showed land as land and water as water. This map really sucks. Incompetence.
Confused says
What are you talking about? The Great Lakes are not “represented as land” in the map above. They’re all right, there, in blue, as opposed to the land, which is green.
Steve says
The maps shows those bodies of water as water asshat.
Teemu Mykkänen says
Most of the population in Sweden and Norway live below N60 latitude.
50% of the world’s population living to the north of N60 latitude is Finns.
TheFearlessEducator says
The Finns can thank the Gulf Stream for that. To put it into perspective, the coldest month in Helinski, Finland (just north of N60 latitude) is in February with average temps of -5.5°C (22°F). Follow that line across to Canada and there just are no large communities. But let’s pick Fort Smith, Alberta, which is just south of N60. There, the coldest month is January with average temps around -22.22°C (-8°F). The low temps in Helinksi are closer to low average temps in cities like Toronto, ON in Canada or Milwaukee, WI or Manchester, NH in the US, all around N43 latitude.
Fun fact: At the discovery of the “new world,” explorers from England, landing in what became the New England colonies of the US, were surprised to find the winters unforgiving and deadly. The reason is because they had sailed southwest from England, to about the same latitudinal level of Spain, and expected a warmer climate.
Dave Ruuskanen says
You are dreaming Toronto’s low, avg and high monthly temperatures are significantly higher than Helsinki’s especially in spring, summer and fall. Even the coldest winter months are a coupe of degrees warmer.
jamesjoy says
Regina as a city has the seventh biggest population of Aboriginal individuals in Canada at 8.3%. Among the Aboriginals, most outrageous of them are First Nations. 94% of individuals in the city are Canadian local people while 5.5% are born outside Regina. http://canadapopulation2019.com
Mimi Shea says
They also made a companion map where they drew a vertical line north-south just to the west of Toronto. And 50 percent of Canadians lived to the east of that line. So all this goes to prove is, when you draw random lines through Canada, if you put Toronto and Montreal on the same side of that line, at least 50 percent of Canadians will live on that side. Toronto and Montreal are not just the two biggest cities in Canada, they’re the fourth and sixth biggest cities in North America. They’re very high concentrations of population in a huge country with very low population density. Plus these random lines capture other cities like Ottawa and Halifax. The fact Canadians had enough common sense to concentrate most of the population in the southern parts where the ecology had the carrying capacity to support it is news to no one except those who had stereotypes of most Canadians living in igloos. (Seriously I’ve been to the States and had Americans ask me where were my huskies and dog sled. I answered I had to leave them at the border because U.S. immigration would not allow them in and they totally believed it.) Anyway, trust me, I am one of the 17+ million Canadians who live north of the Random Red Line, but I have lived in Toronto and Montreal and winters there are still brutal. For example, check out the Great Ice Storm (around 1998) which occurred below the Random Red Line. Latitude is but one variable among many in the equation. For example, Chicago is far to the south of Seattle but has much harsher winters. As another poster said, Europe is far to the north of Canada’s big cities, yet is much warmer and milder because while we get the icy Labrador Current straight from the Arctic, they get the toasty Gulf Stream from Florida across the North Atlantic. For now anyway: scientists have seen signs that, as they have long feared, the Gulf Stream is coming to a standstill–which will be catastrophic for Europe and the world. In the coming decades you may be glad we have so much open space in northern Canada: scientists say it will be a “lifeboat” for humanity when most of the world has become uninhabitable.
E.Sidola says
If the line was placed so that half of all Canadians lived below it then it is hardly random. It is a deliberately placed, purposeful line…..random Canadian.
Bill C says
If half the citizenry live in that one area that proves Canada is ripe for invasion. Their power for defense is concentrated into a small area by the looks of things. They couldn’t stand a chance in the western provinces if we sent in Hell’s Angels and some WWE teams led by Jack Nicholson and Nicholas Cage. I’m all for making Alberta and Manitoba our 51’st and 52’nd states. We can decide what to do with British Columbia and Saskatchewan later.