"Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area, and shares land borders with the United States to the south and northwest.The lands have been inhabited for millennia by various groups of aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled the 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. This began an accretion of additional provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster in 1931 and culminating in the Canada Act in 1982 which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament." (Quote from wikipedia.org)About the Author "Sir Edward William Watkin (26 September 1819 - 13 April 1901) was a Victorian railway chairman and politician.Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.Watkin began to show an interest in railways and at age 26, also in 1845, he took on the secretaryship of the Trent Valley Railway, which was sold the following year to the London & Birmingham and Grand Junction railways (which were about to amalgamate to form the London and North Western Railway (LNWR)), for 438,000. He then became assistant to Captain Mark Huish, General Manager of the LNWR. He visited USA and Canada and published a book about the railways in these countries in 1852. Back in Great Britain h