Why 50% of Canadians Live South of This Line

In fact, roughly 70% of all Canadians live south of the 49th in this land shaded red. But we can go even lower, a full 50% of all Canadians live south of this line in this relatively tiny area shaded red. This means that most Canadians live further south than pretty much the entire U.S states of Washington, Montana, North Dakota and obviously, Alaska too.

But I'm not done embarrassing Canada just yet. This is the southernmost point of Canada on a middle island in Lake Erie, zooming out to view more of the North American continent would it surprise you if I told you that there are in fact, more Americans who live north of this island than Canadians. Well, it shouldn't because there are and this is how.

Here's the line of latitude drawn precisely over the middle island's southernmost location, clearly all of Canada exists above this line but a surprising amount of the United States does as well, including this tiny sliver of California. If you're from California, you can legitimately claim that some of your states goes further north than Canada's southernmost point does.

With the line this far south though a lot of America's largest urban areas exist above Canada's southernmost point, like the entirety of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Alaska and most of Wyoming, Michigan, New York State and Massachusetts. Added up together, this means that more Americans live north of Canada's southernmost point than Canadians do, which is kind of weird.

In fact, approximately 80% of the entire Canadian population lives within just 100 miles of the United States border, but why Canada is huge? Why do most Canadians live so close to the American border? Well, let's start off with the fact that despite being a continent-sized country that's roughly the same size as all of Europe, Canada's population is small. Europe's population is around 750 million, while the almost equivalently sized Canada has a population of only 38 million, that's less people than live in California, and about the same amount as people who live in Poland.

38 million people can't possibly settle densely across an area of this huge size, and they haven't. Instead, Canada's small population exists in far away spread out pockets of population, like Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and most significantly, the dense urban and industrialized corridor. Here between Quebec City in the northeast and Windsor in the southwest. Half of Canada's entire population simply lives within this 700-mile stretch of land, that includes Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City, and it's all because of geography and history.