page_title: Population of Canada
section_title: British Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Population of Canada / Historical population overview / British Canada
caption_attribution_description: English: The maps and graphs on this plate show the distribution of population in what is now Canada for the years 1851, 1871, 1901, 1921 and 1941. The five maps display the boundaries of the various colonies, provinces and territories for each date. Also shown on these five maps are the locations of principal cities and settlements. These places are shown on all of the maps for reference purposes even though they may not have been in existence in the earlier years. Each map is accompanied by a pie chart providing the percentage distribution of Canadian population by province and territory corresponding to the date the map is based on. It should be noted that the pie chart entitled Percentage Distribution of Total Population, 1851, refers to the whole of what was then British North America. The name Canada in this chart refers to the province of Canada which entered confederation in 1867 as Ontario and Quebec. The other pie charts, however, show only percentage distribution of population in what was Canada at the date indicated. Three additional graphs are included on this plate and show changes in the distribution of the population of Canada from 1867 to 1951, changes in the percentage distribution of the population of Canada by provinces and territories from 1867 to 1951 and elements in the growth of the population of Canada for each ten-year period from 1891 to 1951.
context_page_description: Canada ranks 38th by population, comprising about 0.5% of the world's total, with over 37 million Canadians as of 2019. Being, however, the fourth-largest country by land area, the vast majority of the country is sparsely inhabited, with most of its population south of the 55th parallel north and more than half of Canadians live in just two provinces: Ontario and Quebec. Though Canada's population density is low, many regions in the south such as the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, have population densities higher than several European countries. Canada's largest population centres are Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa with those six being the only ones with more than one million people. The large size of Canada's north which is not arable, and thus cannot support large human populations, significantly lowers the country's carrying capacity. Therefore, the population density of the habitable land in Canada can be modest to high depending on the region.
  The historical growth of Canada's population is complex and has been influenced in many different ways, such as indigenous populations, expansion of territory, and human migration.
context_section_description: During the late 18th and early 19th century Canada under British rule experienced strong population growth. In the wake of the 1775 invasion of Canada by the newly formed Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, approximately 60,000 of the 80,000 Americans loyal to the Crown, designated later as United Empire Loyalists fled to British North America, a large portion of whom migrated to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (separated from Nova Scotia) in 1784. Although the exact numbers cannot be certain because of unregistered migration At least 20,000 went to Nova Scotia, 14,000 to New Brunswick; 1,500 to PEI and 6,000 to Ontario(13,000 including 5,000 blacks went to England and 5,500 to the Caribbean). For the rest of the 1780s additional immigrants arrived from the south. From 1791 An additional 30,000 Americans, called "Late Loyalists," were lured into Ontario in the 1790s by the promise of land and swearing loyalty to the Crown. As a result of the period known as the Great Migration by 1831,  Lower Canada's population had reached approximately 553,000, with Upper Canada reaching about 237,000 individuals.  The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s had significantly increased the pace of Irish immigration to Prince Edward Island and the Province of Canada, peaking in 1847 with 100,000 distressed individuals. By 1851, the population of the Maritime colonies also reached roughly 533,000 (277,000 in Nova Scotia, 194,000 in New Brunswick and 62,000 in Prince Edward Island). To the west British Columbia had about 55,000 individuals by 1851. Beginning in the late 1850s, the immigration of Chinese into the Colony of Vancouver Island and Colony of British Columbia peaked with the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. By 1861, as a result of natural births and the Great Migration of Canada from the British Isles, the Province of Canada population increased to 3.1 million inhabitants. Newfoundland's population by 1861 reached approximately  125,000 individuals.
caption: Distribution of the population in Canada for the years 1851, 1871, 1901, 1921 and 1941
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