A map of Canada, superimposed over a map of Europe (time, areas)

[deneb78]

I can only wish that Canada's latitudinal spread was the same as that superimposed map... imagine Southern Italy at the same latitude as Southern Saskatchewan and Southern Ontario at the latitude of Israel/Egypt

[barneyg]

Let me suggest a few simple straight-line distances (source) between significant cities (arbitrarily defined):

(W-E) Vancouver to Montreal: 3690 km
(W-E) Vancouver to Halifax: 4434 km
(N-S) Inuvik to Vancouver: 2202 km
(N-S) Iqaluit to Montreal: 2055 km

(SW-NE) Lisbon to Moscow: 3910 km
(N-S) Stockholm to Palermo: 2385 km
(N-S) Helsinki to Athens: 2471 km

So the east-west distance is similar. The north-south distances (I've left out uninhabited places in Canada's extreme north) are similar, but for Canada that includes large stretches or largely uninhabited land -- it is well-known that almost all of Canada's population lives in a small sliver of land close to the US border.

I think the misconceptions from European visitors regarding Canada's size have nothing to do with the size of the whole country, but rather have to do with a travel plan that looks a priori reasonable:

Quebec City - Montreal - Ottawa - Toronto - Niagara Falls

That's over 1000 kms with a lot of open space... Edmonton-Calgary-Rocky Mountains-Vancouver would be even worse... compared with some hypothetical road trip in Western or Central Europe where you can always manage to see something historically or culturally significant between large cities with a lower total distance.

[botticelli]

^^ HAHA true, the entire Canadian population should ideally be located in a country the size of Spain or even the UK, yet we stretch so far to be 4000 km apart east-west.


If put in the US, this is what it would look like to fit Canada's population





Canada is geographically large but the real Canada is more accurately represented here, a sliver on top of the US.

[barneyg]

Your last map is super cool but unless there's something I don't know, there's something wrong about Antarctica.

[blktoptrvl]

I think this is a better tool...

http://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!...MTgwMDAwMDA)MA

[JedlaRoche]

Originally Posted by blktoptrvl

I think this is a better tool...

http://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!...MTgwMDAwMDA)MA

It's awesome !
Dragging Greenland on the equator or Brazil and the Republic of Congo on Canada really put things into perspective (no pun intended).

[forgotten username]

Originally Posted by botticelli

^^ HAHA true, the entire Canadian population should ideally be located in a country the size of Spain or even the UK, yet we stretch so far to be 4000 km apart east-west.


If put in the US, this is what it would look like to fit Canada's population





Canada is geographically large but the real Canada is more accurately represented here, a sliver on top of the US.

the USA look quite small compared to european countries....

[Davy-040]

Originally Posted by blktoptrvl

I think this is a better tool...

http://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!...MTgwMDAwMDA)MA

Thanks for this link, already knew about OverlapMaps but this one is even more fun.

[Ariete]

Originally Posted by Davy-040

OverlapMaps.com

That map is not in real scale.


Pro tip: If Italy and Finland are the same length the map is in scale. If not it's a Mercator projection.

[Lusitano_]

Canada is not as big as you guys are saying or these pictures suggest. As some have said before, Northern latitudes suffer from a lot of distortion.

Proving that is that Europe is actually bigger than Canada at 3,95 million square miles vs Canada's 3,83 million square miles