Northern Canada - Sub-divisions

Sub-divisions

As a social rather than political region, the Canadian north is often subdivided into two distinct regions based on climate, the near north and the far north. The different climate of these two regions results in vastly different vegetation, and therefore much different economies, settlement patterns, and histories.

The "near north" or subarctic is mostly synonymous with the Canadian boreal forest, a large area of evergreen-dominated forests with a subarctic climate. This area has traditionally been home to the sub-Arctic First Nations: moose hunters, freshwater fishers and trappers. This region was heavily involved in the North American fur trade, and is home to many Métis people who originated in that trade. The area was subsequently part of the Numbered Treaties and become part of Canada, and then was opened non-Native settlement, and to forestry, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Today several million people live in the near north, around 15% of the Canadian total. Large parts of the near north are not part of Canada's territories, but rather are the northern parts of the provinces, meaning they have a much different political history as minority regions within larger units.

The "far north" is synonymous with the areas north of the tree line: the barren grounds and tundra. This area is home to the various sub-groups of the Inuit, a people unrelated the other Aboriginal people of Canada. These are people who have traditionally rely mostly on huting marine mammal and barren-ground Caribou. This area was somewhat involved in the fur trade, but more influenced by the whaling industry. This areas was not part of the early twentieth-century treaty process and aboriginal title has acknowledged by the Canadian government with creation autonomous territories instead of the Indian reserves of further south. Very few non-Aboriginal people have settled in these areas, and they represent less than 1% of Canada total population. The far north is also often broken into west and eastern halves. The eastern Arctic which means the self-governing territory of Nunavut (much of which is in the true Arctic, being north of the Arctic Circle), as well as Nunavik, an autonomous part of the province of Quebec, and Nunatsiavut an autonomous part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and perhaps a few parts of the Hudson Bay coast of Ontario and Manitoba. The western Arctic is the northernmost portion of the Northwest Territories (roughly Inuvik Region) and a small part of Yukon, together called the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.