The North: two fifths of the land, a third of one per cent of the people

The Dempster Highway, northern Yukon, at the Arctic Circle sign in August. Sophie Lacroix is thirty-six, a Franco-Manitoban nurse on rotation in Inuvik. Her passenger, Elijah Kunilusie, twenty-two, is Inuk, from Pangnirtung, studying heavy-equipment operation in Fort Smith. They are arguing about whether Nunavut or the Northwest Territories is bigger.

So here's the question. Three territories, two fifths of Canada's land, and one third of one per cent of its people. What is actually up here, and why does it look so enormous on the map on your phone?

Elijah wins. The Atlas of Canada tables give Nunavut just under 2.1 million km², the largest jurisdiction in Canada; the Northwest Territories about 1.35 million; Yukon about 480,000. Statistics Canada counted about 48,000 people in Yukon, 46,000 in the Northwest Territories and 42,000 in Nunavut in April 2026.

In the 2021 census, 85.8% of Nunavut's people identified as Indigenous, 49.6% in the Northwest Territories, 22.3% in Yukon. Nunavut is a territory, not a province, created on 1 April 1999 under the Nunavut Act. Crown-Indigenous Relations describes Inuit Nunangat as four regions, the Inuvialuit region, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut, covering about 40% of Canada's land mass.

The land holds the country's superlatives. Mount Logan, 5,959 m, in Kluane, where Parks Canada counts seventeen of Canada's twenty tallest peaks. The Mackenzie, 4,241 km to the Beaufort Sea, tenth-longest in the world. Great Bear Lake, about 31,000 km², the biggest entirely inside Canada, and Great Slave next door, 614 m deep, the deepest in North America.

Canada's Changing Climate Report of 2019 says permafrost lies under about 40% of the country's landmass. Yellowknife's January mean is minus 25.5 degrees and Iqaluit's July mean is 8.1 degrees, in the normals for 1991 to 2020. Natural Resources Canada ranks Canada fourth in the world for diamonds, all from three mines in the Northwest Territories.

Find it on the map. The North three times, all from Natural Earth data. On the left, the Mercator projection on most phone maps: Ellesmere Island balloons. In the middle, the Lambert conformal conic that the Atlas of Canada uses, with the North shrunk back to size. On the right, a view straight down on the pole. Natural Resources Canada's own words: any representation of the Earth on a flat surface involves distortion.

Let's change one fact. Draw Canada on Mercator only. Ellesmere Island swells until it looks bigger than Ontario; on the Atlas of Canada's conic map it is about a fifth of Ontario's area, and the tables agree: 196,000 km² against 1.08 million.

The mistake people make is saying most of Canada is Arctic, or that the North is empty. Statistics Canada's tables put 27% of the country north of the treeline, not most of it. And the land is lived in: fifty-one Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat, three territorial capitals, and Yukon the fastest-growing jurisdiction in Canada between 2016 and 2021.

Here's the rule, in one breath. Two fifths of the land, a third of one per cent of the people, the highest mountain, the longest river and the deepest lake, and never trust its size on a flat map.

This week, look at the North on your phone's map, then open the Atlas of Canada, and compare Baffin Island with Ontario on each. In the Atlas tables Baffin is about half of Ontario's area.

Next time, borders: the 8,891-kilometre line with the United States, our newest land neighbour, and the Arctic in official words.