That makes parks like Mount Royal in Montreal and Stanley Park in Vancouver a critical part of Canadian urban life. Today, the picture of Canada is inverted: More than four out of five people live in cities, and parks are the closest thing to a forest that most of them will see on a regular basis.
At the start of the Second World War, close to half the population still lived in rural areas.īut this changed rapidly thereafter. Forests, most of all.Īt Confederation, 154 years ago, this was true for most people. There is a vestigial image of Canada – a raw and vast land of forests, lakes and mountains.
