Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area,^[1] and shares land borders with the United States to the south and northwest.

The lands have been inhabited for millennia by aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada became a federal dominion. The country rapidly expanded, and a gradual process of increased autonomy from the United Kingdom culminated in the Canada Act 1982, severing the last vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.