Canada Has Been Above The United States This Whole Time
The map has never been subtle about this.
Canada shares the longest undefended international border in the world at 8,891 kilometres, all of it running along the top. The country has universal health coverage for its 38.2 million residents and sits on roughly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. The United States is directly below all of that.
Nunavut, Canada
Created in 1999, Nunavut is Canada's newest and largest territory, covering approximately 2.09 million square kilometres — larger than Western Europe. It sits entirely above the 60th parallel, a latitude that does not intersect the United States at any point.
Alaska gets close, but close is a different country.
The Trans-Canada Highway
Completed in 1962, the Trans-Canada Highway runs 7,821 kilometres from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John's, Newfoundland, connecting a country that stretches across six time zones entirely without leaving Canada. It was the longest national highway in the world at the time of its completion.
It does not require a passport at any point.
Lake Superior
The largest of the Great Lakes by surface area at 82,103 square kilometres, Lake Superior sits on the Canada–US border, though roughly 27,000 square kilometres of it belong to Ontario. It contains ten percent of the world's surface fresh water.
Canada has 20 percent of the world's fresh water in total, which the map also does not hide.
Alert, Nunavut
Alert is the northernmost permanently inhabited place on Earth, located on Ellesmere Island at 82.5° N latitude. The nearest equivalent American settlement is roughly 3,000 kilometres to the south.
There is no competition for this title.
Mockup in production.
Mockup in production.
Mockup in production.
Mockup in production.
Mockup in production.
The United States is a country of 335 million people, 50 states, and one very long northern border it shares with Canada — all 8,891 kilometres of it, the longest international land boundary in the world. It has built the world's tallest freestanding structure several times over, yet the CN Tower, completed in 1976, held the record for 34 years from a country with roughly one-ninth the population. Route 66 is famously called the Main Street of America, which is a reasonable thing to call a road that does not go to Canada.
Descend From The North
- Begin at the corner of Portage and Main in Winnipeg, Manitoba — once measured as one of the windiest intersections in Canada, a country that has several cities colder in January than Moscow. Note your coordinates: 49.8954° N.
- Travel south on Highway 75 through the Red River Valley until you reach the Canada–US border at Emerson, crossing from a province larger than Texas into a state, North Dakota, that most Americans cannot place on a map.
- Continue to the 49th parallel marker and observe that this line, agreed upon in 1818, has been doing the work of explaining the situation ever since.
