8 Canada Square (also known as HSBC Group Head Office, or HSBC Tower) is a skyscraper located at Canary Wharf in London Docklands, Borough of Tower Hamlets. The building serves as the global headquarters for the HSBC Group, the world's largest company by the Forbes Global 2000 in 2008 and houses around 8,000 staff.

The tower was designed by Sir Norman Foster's team of architects. Construction began in 1999 and was completed in 2002. There are 45 floors in the 200 metres (656 ft) high tower, the joint fourth tallest in the United Kingdom with the Citigroup Centre.

With the movement of HSBC Group's headquarters from Hong Kong to London in 1993, the firm decided that having thousands of employees scattered across the City of London was not an ideal situation. Between 1995 and 1997 a number of proposals were considered, including the redevelopment of the previous Group Head Office at 10 Lower Thames Street, London, however the DS-2 plot at Canary Wharf was chosen for the location and space available.

Canada Square is a public square at Canary Wharf, on the Isle of Dogs in London's Docklands. It is in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the eastern end of Central London along the River Thames. Canada Square is surrounded by three of the tallest buildings in the United Kingdom^[specify], including One Canada Square, which has been the tallest building since 1990. The Canadian connection is from the original developers of the site, Olympia and York, owned by the Paul Reichmann family of Toronto.

The complex and the square is served by the Canary Wharf tube station on the Jubilee Line and the Canary Wharf DLR station on the Docklands Light Railway.

Coordinates: 51°30′18″N 0°01′10″W / 51.504936°N 0.019423°W / 51.504936; -0.019423

Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) 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 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), 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 has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial 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; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.

Melvin Douglas "Mel" Lastman (born March 9, 1933), nicknamed "Mayor Mel", is a former businessman and politician. He is the founder of the Bad Boy Furniture chain. He served as the mayor of the former city of North York, Ontario, Canada from 1972 until 1997. At the end of 1997, North York, along with five other municipalities, was amalgamated with the city of Toronto. Lastman ran for and won the mayoral race for the new "megacity", defeating incumbent Toronto mayor Barbara Hall. Re-elected in November 2000, he served until his retirement after the 2003 municipal election.

Lastman was born in Toronto in 1933, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. He began his sales career as a child, hawking fruit and vegetables at his family's Kensington Market grocery store.

He met Marilyn Bornstein when he was 16 and she was 13, and they were married five years later. He left school after Grade 12 and, with Marilyn's help, got a job at a College Street furniture store. He quickly established himself as a successful salesman. He switched to selling appliances and promoted himself as "Mr. Laundry" (alias the "Bad Boy"). He opened a small frame building at Kennedy Road and Eglinton in Scarborough, selling used applicances, and then, at age 22, bought out Heather Hill Applicances and established Bad Boy Furniture in 1955.

Sarah MacDougall is a Swedish Canadian singer/songwriter currently living in Vancouver, Canada. She recently released her second cd, Across the Atlantic, on the Vancouver based indie label Copperspine Records.