Canada (ShErBrOoKe/QuEbEc)

Canada:
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9.9 million square kilometres, Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.

The land that is now Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.

Canada is a federal state that is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual nation with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. One of the world's most highly-developed countries, Canada has a diversified economy that is reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon trade – particularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. It is a member of the G7, G8, G20, NATO, OECD, WTO, Commonwealth of Nations, Francophonie, OAS, APEC, and UN. With the sixth-highest Human Development Index globally, Canada has one of the highest standards of living in the world.

The name Canada comes from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement". In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village, but also the entire area subject to Donnacona (the chief at Stadacona); by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this region as Canada.

In the 17th and early 18th centuries, "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River and the northern shores of the Great Lakes. The area was later split into two British colonies, Upper Canada and Lower Canada. They were re-unified as the Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country, and the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. However, as Canada asserted its political autonomy from the United Kingdom, the federal government increasingly used simply Canada on state documents and treaties, a change that was reflected in the renaming of the national holiday from Dominion Day to Canada Day in 1982. Capital:Ottawa! :D Some Photos:

Sherbrooke/Quebec:

Sherbrooke is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. Sherbrooke is situated at the confluence of the Saint-François (St. Francis) and Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is also the name of a territory equivalent to a regional county municipality (TE) and census division (CD) of Quebec, coextensive with the city of Sherbrooke. With 155,583 residents in 2010, Sherbrooke was the sixth largest city in the province of Quebec. The Sherbrooke Census Metropolitan Area had 197,299 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest metropolitan area in Quebec and twentieth largest in Canada.
Sherbrooke is the primary economic, political, cultural and institutional centre of Estrie, and was known as the Queen of the Eastern Townships at the beginning of the 20th century.
Sherbrooke is an important university center with eight institutions educating 40,000 students and employing 11,000 people (3,700 of whom are professors, teachers and researchers). The direct economic impact of these institutions exceeds 1 billion dollars. The proportion of university students is of 10.32 students per 100 inhabitants. In proportion to its population, Sherbrooke has the largest concentration of students in Quebec.
Since the nineteenth century, Sherbrooke has also been an important manufacturing center, although this segment of the economy has experienced a considerable transformation in recent decades as a result of the decline of the city's traditional manufacturing sectors. Today, the service sector occupies a prominent place in the economy of the city, as well as a growing knowledge-based economy.
The Sherbrooke region is surrounded by mountains, rivers and lakes. There are several ski hills nearby and various tourist attractions in regional flavor. Mont-Bellevue Park, a large park in the city, is used for downhill skiing.
Originally known as Hyatt's Mill, it was renamed after Sir John Coape Sherbrooke (1764-1840), a British soldier who was Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (1812-1816), and Governor General of British North America (1816-1818).