Canada has a vast geography that occupies much of the continent of North America, sharing a land border with the contiguous United States to the south and the U.S. state of Alaska to the northwest. Canada stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west; to the north lies the Arctic Ocean. Greenland is to the northeast with a shared border on Hans Island. To the southeast Canada shares a maritime boundary with France's overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the last vestige of New France. By total area, Canada is the second-largest country in the world, after Russia. By land area alone, however, Canada ranks fourth, the difference being due to it having the world's largest proportion of fresh water lakes. Of Canada's thirteen provinces and territories, only two are landlocked while the other eleven all directly border one of three oceans.
The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, is a geologic shield, a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks. It forms the North American Craton, the ancient geologic core of the North American continent. Glaciation has left the area with only a thin layer of soil, through which exposures of igneous bedrock resulting from its long volcanic history are frequently visible. As a deep, common, joined bedrock region in eastern and central Canada, the Shield stretches north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, covering over half of Canada and most of Greenland; it also extends south into the northern reaches of the United States.
Ellesmere Island is Canada's northernmost and third largest island, and the tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of 196,236 km2 (75,767 sq mi), slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total length of the island is 830 km (520 mi).
Quttinirpaaq National Park is located on the northeastern corner of Ellesmere Island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is the second most northerly park on Earth after Northeast Greenland National Park. In Inuktitut, Quttinirpaaq means "top of the world". It was established as Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve in 1988, and the name was changed to Quttinirpaaq in 1999, when Nunavut was created, and became a national park in 2000. The reserve covers 37,775 km2 (14,585 sq mi), making it the second largest park in Canada, after Wood Buffalo National Park.
Baffin Bay, located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland, is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization as a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is sometimes considered a sea of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is connected to the Atlantic via Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. The narrower Nares Strait connects Baffin Bay with the Arctic Ocean. The bay is not navigable most of the year because of the ice cover and high density of floating ice and icebergs in the open areas. However, a polynya of about 80,000 km2 (31,000 sq mi), known as the North Water, opens in summer on the north near Smith Sound. Most of the aquatic life of the bay is concentrated near that region.
Barbeau Peak is a mountain in Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut, Canada. Located on Ellesmere Island within Quttinirpaaq National Park, it is the highest mountain in Nunavut and the Canadian Arctic. The mountain was named in 1969 after Marius Barbeau, a Canadian anthropologist whose research into First Nations and Inuit cultures gained him international acclaim.
The United States Range is one of the northernmost mountain ranges of the Arctic Cordillera and in the world, surpassed only by the Challenger Mountains to the northwest. The range is located in the northeastern region of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, and is part of the Innuitian Mountains. The highest mountain in the range is Mount Eugene with an elevation of 1,860 metres (6,100 ft). The British Empire Range is immediately to the west of the United States Range.
Ellef Ringnes Island is an uninhabited island and one of the Sverdrup Islands in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. A member of the Queen Elizabeth Islands and Arctic Archipelago, it is located in the Arctic Ocean, east of Borden Island, and west of Amund Ringnes Island. It has an area of 11,295 km2 (4,361 sq mi), making it the 69th largest island in the world and Canada's 16th largest island. Its highest mount is 260 m (850 ft).
The British Empire Range is a mountain range on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. The range is one of the most northern ranges in the world and the Arctic Cordillera, surpassed only by the Challenger Mountains which lies immediately to the northwest and the United States Range slightly further east. The highest mountain in the range is Barbeau Peak.
Mount Whisler is a mountain of the British Empire Range on Canada's Ellesmere Island. It is the second highest peak of the British Empire Range, of Ellesmere Island, and of the Arctic Cordillera. It is located about 12 km (7.5 mi) northeast of Barbeau Peak, the highest peak in the Cordillera. The Henrietta Nesmith Glacier completely surrounds Mount Whisler.
The Arctic Lands is a physiographic region located in northern Canada. It is one of Canada's seven physiographic regions, which is divided into three divisions—the Innuitian Region, Arctic Coastal Plain, and Arctic Lowlands.
The Arctic Cordillera is a terrestrial ecozone in northern Canada characterized by a vast, deeply dissected chain of mountain ranges extending along the northeastern flank of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from Ellesmere Island to the northeasternmost part of the Labrador Peninsula in northern Labrador and northern Quebec, Canada. It spans most of the eastern coast of Nunavut with high glaciated peaks rising through ice fields and some of Canada's largest ice caps, including the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island. It is bounded to the east by Baffin Bay, Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea while its northern portion is bounded by the Arctic Ocean.
Exploration for petroleum in the Arctic is expensive and challenging both technically and logistically. In the offshore, sea ice can be a major factor. There have been many discoveries of oil and gas in the several Arctic basins that have seen extensive exploration over past decades but distance from existing infrastructure has often deterred development. Development and production operations in the Arctic offshore as a result of exploration have been limited, with the exception of the Barents and Norwegian seas. In Alaska, exploration subsequent to the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield has focussed on the onshore and shallow coastal waters.
Mount Odin is a mountain in Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in Auyuittuq National Park along the Akshayuk Pass, 46 km (29 mi) north of Pangnirtung and south of Mount Asgard. Mount Odin is the highest mountain on Baffin Island.
The Innuitian orogeny, sometimes called the Ellesmere orogeny, was a major tectonic orogeny of the late Devonian to early Carboniferous, responsible for the formation of a series of mountain ranges in the Canadian Arctic and Northernmost Greenland. The episode started with the earliest Paleozoic rifting, extending from Ellesmere Island to Melville Island. However, the cause of the orogen remains poorly understood.
The Innuitian Region is a physiographic division of Canada's far north. It is one of three physiographic divisions of the Arctic Lands physiographic region, along with the Arctic Coastal Plain, and the Arctic Lowlands.The Queen Elizabeth Islands comprise most of the region, which is also considered to be part of the Arctic Archipelago.
Within the petroleum industry, proven crude oil reserves in the United States was 44.4 billion barrels (7.06×109 m3) of crude oil as of the end of 2021, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency is a policy initiative announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Federal Conservative Party in August 2009. The purpose of the agency is to promote economic development and prosperity while protecting national sovereignty in Northern Canada. CanNor is situated in Iqaluit, Nunavut. By centralizing this economic program in the Northern region of Canada, the Federal Government believes that it will contribute to increased participation by local communities and government in federal policy. From this, CanNor is also responsible for the Northern Projects Management Office (NPMO), which serves as a review board for economic developments in Northern Canada. As of July 2, 2014, the current President of CanNor is Paula Isaak. The Government of Canada is responsible for CanNor, with Dan Vandal, Minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, overseeing the developments within the agency. In various programs, CanNor promotes the growth of the economy, education, infrastructure development, and culture in Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. CanNor was created from the policy initiative "Northern Strategy," developed to exercise sovereignty, promote social and economic development, protecting the heritage surrounding Native peoples in the Arctic region, as well as asserting continual governance.
The Roosevelt Range or Roosevelt Mountains is a mountain range in Northern Greenland. Administratively this range is part of the Northeast Greenland National Park. Its highest peak is the highest point in Peary Land.
The Tundra of North America is a Level I ecoregion of North America designated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in its North American Environmental Atlas.
