Although it is often claimed that 90 percent of the people of Canada live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, this assertion is of dubious validity. Reputable sources put the figure closer to 80 percent. Statistics Canada more convincingly claims that 66 percent of Canadians live within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the border, based on the 2016 census. An excellent population-density map, derived from 2006 census data, depicts this “100 kilometer” limit, which passes through Winnipeg and Quebec City.
But if Canada’s population is not as clustered along the U.S. border as many people think, the lack of habitation across the northern three-quarters of the county is still noteworthy. Significantly, the zone of extremely low population density – defined on the map posted above as fewer than 0.4 persons per square kilometer – extends to the country’s southern limit in central and western Ontario. Demographically speaking, Canada is thus divided into western and eastern segments. As a result, population-based cartograms of Canada have a strange if not disconcerting shape, depicting the country as two imbalanced lobes. This demographic division is of some relevance to the separatist movements of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
As a cartographic experiment, I took the Wikipedia map of the results of Canada’s 2025 election and eliminated most areas of extremely low population density. This electoral map, like most others, exaggerates support for the Conservative Party and Bloc Quebecois, as these two parties find much of their support in agricultural areas of relatively low-density population density.
Even though Canada’s population is concentrated in the far south, density of settlement increases along most of the border as one heads north out of the United States. Consider, for example, the map detail posted below (taken from the second map posted below). From “Point A” in sparsely settled northern New York, for example, a trip into Canada would quickly take one into the densely inhabited Montréal metro area, with more than four million inhabitants. A trip south, in contrast, would take one into the sparsely settled Adirondak Mountains. From “Point B” in the wilds of northern Maine, a trip to the north, west, east, southwest, or southeast would take one into more densely inhabited areas in Canada. One would have to travel considerably farther to the south to reach areas of comparable population density in the United States.
Canada’s trans-border demographic advantage is also pronounced in the northern Great Plains, as is depicted in the “five-state, three-province” map posted below. Alberta alone has a larger population than Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska combined. Canada’s Prairie provinces are also more urbanized than the northern Plains states of the United States. Calgary, Edmonton, and even Winnipeg far exceed any cities of the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. It is also notable that the largest cities on the U.S. side of this trans-national region are on or near its eastern flank, unlike those of Canada.
In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, rural population density increases markedly a few hundred kilometers north of the U.S. border. It does so largely because soil fertility and moisture also increase in this area, allowing more productive farming. Here one finds – or found, before agricultural settlement – the Aspen Parkland, a transitional biome between the grasslands of the Great Plains and the northern boreal forest (taiga). This agriculturally favorable zone terminates abruptly in north-central Alberta and Saskatchewan, as is reflected on the population density map. Farming is not feasible across most of the northern halves of the Prairie Provinces not because of climate but rather because of soil. But to the northwest of the belt of continuous agricultural settlement lies a secondary zone of fertile Aspen Parkland in the so-called Peace River Country, which is home to roughly a quarter-million persons.
The main body of the Peace River Country forms a relatively compact zone of settlement, but far to the north lies a smaller farming region, located to the east and southeast of the town of High Level. Approximately 20,000 persons live here, cultivating some 350,000 acres of rich farmland 455 miles (733 kilometers) north of Edmonton. This northernmost extension of the Peace River Country was first settled by farmers after World War II, perhaps making it the final agricultural frontier of North America. It also has two large oil and gas fields and two lumber mills.
