The Maritimes

The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces or the Canadian Maritimes, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,813,102 in 2011.

The Maritimes, along with a fourth province; Canada's easternmost province, Newfoundland and Labrador, make up Atlantic Canada.

Located along the Atlantic coast, various aquatic sub-basins are located in the Maritimes, such as the Gulf of Maine and Gulf of St. Lawrence. The region is located northeast of New England, southeast of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, and southwest of the island of Newfoundland.

The notion of a Maritime Union has been proposed at various times in Canada's history; the first discussions in 1864 at the Charlottetown Conference contributed to Canadian Confederation which instead formed the larger Dominion of Canada.

The Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy people are indigenous to the Maritimes, while Acadian and British settlements date to the seventeenth century.

Canada

Coordinates: 60°N 95°W / 60°N 95°W / 60; -95

Canada (ⁱ/ˈkænədə/; French: [ka.na.da]) is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles), making it the world's second-largest country by total area and the fourth-largest country by land area. Canada's border with the United States is the world's longest land border. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land territory being dominated by forest and tundra and the Rocky Mountains; about four-fifths of the country's population of 35 million people live near the southern border. The majority of Canada has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer.

The land now called Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the 15th century, British and French colonies were established on the Atlantic coast, with the first establishment of a region called "Canada" occurring in 1537. As a consequence of various conflicts, the United Kingdom gained and lost territories within British North America until left, in the late 18th century, with what mostly geographically comprises Canada today. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1, 1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia joined to form the autonomous federal Dominion of Canada. This began an accretion of provinces and territories to the self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. In 1931, Canada achieved near total independence from the United Kingdom with the Statute of Westminster 1931, and full sovereignty was attained when the Canada Act 1982 removed the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the British parliament.

Maritime

Maritime is primarily an adjective that describes objects or activities related to the sea.

Maritime or Maritimes as a noun may also refer to:

Geography

Music

See also

Related terms

Trousers

Trousers (pants in North America) are an item of clothing worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, and dresses).

In the UK the word "pants" generally means underwear and not trousers.Shorts are similar to trousers, but with legs that come down only to around the area of the knee, higher or lower depending on the style of the garment. To distinguish them from shorts, trousers may be called "long trousers" in certain contexts such as school uniform, where tailored shorts may be called "short trousers", especially in the UK.

In most of the Western world, trousers have been worn since ancient times and throughout the Medieval period, becoming the most common form of lower-body clothing for adult males in the modern world, although shorts are also widely worn, and kilts and other garments may be worn in various regions and cultures. Breeches were worn instead of trousers in early modern Europe by some men in higher classes of society. Since the mid-20th century, trousers have increasingly been worn by women as well. Jeans, made of denim, are a form of trousers for casual wear, now widely worn all over the world by both sexes. Shorts are often preferred in hot weather or for some sports and also often by children and teenagers. Trousers are worn on the hips or waist and may be held up by their own fastenings, a belt or suspenders (braces). Leggings are form-fitting trousers, of a clingy material, often knitted cotton and spandex (elastane).

Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canada is the region of Canada comprising the four provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec: the three Maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia – and the easternmost province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The population of the four Atlantic provinces in 2011 was about 2,327,650.

History

The first Premier of Newfoundland, Joey Smallwood, coined the term "Atlantic Canada" when Newfoundland joined the Dominion of Canada in 1949. He believed that it would have been presumptuous for Newfoundland to assume that it could include itself within the existing term "Maritime Provinces", used to describe the cultural similarities shared by New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The three Maritime provinces entered into confederation during the 19th century: New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were founding members of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, and Prince Edward Island joined in 1873. Today Atlantic Canada is a culturally distinct region of Canada, with the original founding cultures of Celtic, English and French remaining strong and vibrant to this day.