Ten provinces, three territories, fourteen capitals

Parliament Hill, Ottawa, a January evening, minus eighteen and the canal frozen. Tomasz Nowak is forty-one, a welder from Mississauga who was born in Poland. His citizenship test is next week, so he drove up to see the capital for himself. He's surprised. He had assumed, like a lot of people, that the capital of Canada was Toronto.

So here's the question. Thirteen provinces and territories, fourteen capitals. Why fourteen, why is the national one here, and what's the difference between a province and a territory?

Start with the count. Ten provinces and three territories, in Statistics Canada's Atlas of Canada tables. Nunavut is the largest of the thirteen, at 2,093,190 km², and Prince Edward Island the smallest, at 5,660. In the 2021 Census, Ontario held 38.5% of Canadians and Quebec 23.0%, so more than six in ten of us are in those two.

Now the capitals, as the official study guide lists them, east to west. St. John's, Charlottetown, Halifax, Fredericton. Quebec City, Toronto. Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, Victoria. Then the territories: Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Iqaluit. That's thirteen. The fourteenth is Ottawa, the capital of the whole country. The Constitution Act of 1867, s. 16, says the seat of government of Canada shall be Ottawa. Toronto is the capital of Ontario.

Find it on the map. The map now shows the thirteen provinces and territories from Statistics Canada's boundary files, each named, each capital marked with a star. Look at the legend first. A solid line is a provincial or territorial boundary. A dashed line is the international boundary. The star is the capital, and the largest star, on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River, is the national one. Find your own capital's star.

What about province versus territory? The Nunavut Act, s. 3, says there is hereby established a territory of Canada, to be known as Nunavut, from 1 April 1999. A territory gets its powers from a federal law passed by Parliament. A province gets its powers from the Constitution itself. New Brunswick, by the way, is the only province that is officially bilingual.

Let's change one fact. Make Nunavut a province. Its powers would then come from the Constitution rather than from an Act of Parliament, and changing them would need a constitutional amendment instead of a federal bill. That one sentence is the whole legal difference, and it's the kind of question Tomasz might meet next week.

The mistake people make is twofold. Toronto is not the capital of Canada. Ottawa is, and the Constitution says so. And Nunavut is not a province. It is a territory, and its own founding Act says so. Textbooks and quiz shows get both wrong, so don't feel bad if you did.

Here's the rule, in one breath. Ten provinces with powers from the Constitution, three territories with powers from Parliament, thirteen capitals, plus Ottawa for the whole country.

This week, print the blank map from the course page and say the thirteen capitals aloud twice, west to east, pointing to each one. Then do it once more without the names on the map.

Next time, six time zones, why Newfoundland is half an hour ahead, who still changes the clocks, and where everybody actually makes their home.