ˈkænədə/ is a country in North America consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean

Aboriginal peoples
Archaeological studies and genetic analyses have indicated a human presence in the northern Yukon region from 24,500 BC, and in southern Ontario from 7500 BC.^[16][17][18] These first settlers entered Canada through Beringia by way of the Bering land bridge.^[19] The Paleo-Indian archaeological sites at Old Crow Flats andBluefish Caves are two of the oldest sites of human habitation in Canada.^[20] The characteristics of Canadian Aboriginal societies included permanent settlements, agriculture, complex societal hierarchies, and trading networks.^[21][22] Some of these cultures had collapsed by the time European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and have only been discovered through archaeological investigations.^[23]
The aboriginal population at the time of the first European settlements is estimated to have been between 200,000^[24] and two million,^[25] with a figure of 500,000 accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.^[26] As a consequence of the European colonization, Canada's aboriginal peoples suffered from repeated outbreaks of newly introduced infectious diseases such as influenza, measles, and smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity), resulting in a forty to eighty percent population decrease in the centuries after the European arrival.^[24] Aboriginal peoples in present-day Canada include the First Nations,^[27] Inuit,^[28]and Métis.^[29] The Métis are a mixed-blood people who originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married European settlers.^[30] In general, the Inuit had more limited interaction with European settlers during the colonization period.^[31]