Canadian

Canadians are inhabitants of Canada, the region occupying much of upper North America, above the lands of Middle America. In the Old World this land was united into a single country of the same name, after the Collapse it fractured and experienced a dark age. In the present era of the post-Anthropocene restoration, the Canadian people have become known for their industries and the lush lands in which they live.

History

What would later become the nation of Canada was originally inhabited by numerous groups of Native Americans (commonly known as "First Nations" in later centuries), until European settlers began to travel inland and displace them. Old Canada was one of the largest countries in the world by land area, bordered on the South and West by Ancient America and its state of Alaska. Its people consisted mostly of so-called Anglo-Canadians, whose ancestors came from the Britic Isles of Europe, and French-Canadians in the province of Kebec.

During the Collapse the Canadians suffered much less than the peoples of other countries; no Death Zones or vast deserts opened up in their lands and their many inland cities escaped flooding, but technological regression and die-offs still ensued as global trade and essential infrastructure broke down. The Canadian nation, whose vast expanse could only be kept connected with fossil-fueled transportation, broke apart. Some members of the Ancient American and Canadian elite established refuges in the north of Canada, out of reach from the worst effects of climate warming and vast hordes of refugees, the Old World architecture of their houses and settlements can still be seen today. Many of them were augmented with ancient genetic engineering technology, and have great (and often snobbish) pain in preserving their bloodlines. These people form an elite subgroup of Canadians who continue to hold many important political and economic positions.

The Canadian Dark Age ended after the Long Flood as its population began to grow again, assisted by planetary warming opening up new farmland. Modern Canada's large area of habitable land, and the numerous deposits of natural resources (particularly metals and oil shales) in it which the Old World never fully depleted, resulted in the Canadians quickly reaching technological ascendancy in North America.

Modern Canadian technology is among the most advanced in North America, if not the entire known world—Europe's resources were depleted long ago, many regions of Southeast Asia were flooded, and Siberia never had a large concentration of Old World ruins for scavengers and historians to study. (Little has been heard from the southern hemisphere since the Collapse.) A visitor to a good-sized Canadian town or city can expect to see electric lighting, plumbing, and the occasional self-propelled vehicle. Most Canadian energy is derived from wood grown in their lands' vast forests, felled and converted into gas and charcoal, and most Canadians serve a term or two in the Fuel Corps to keep this system chugging. Canadian universities and inventors have also experimented with springs and chemical batteries to store small amounts of energy. (Handheld radios powered by windup springs manufactured in Canadian factories are ubquitous throughout Middle America.) Canadians have also seen some success in making photopanels to generate electricity straight from sunlight, though their efficiency is not as good as those of the Old World, and easy storage is lacking.

Canadians' fuel supplies allow them to operate a far-reaching, though expensive, railroad transportation network which connects many of Western Canada's major cities with each other and parts of Middle America as well. Aviation has also been revived thanks to liquid fuels, with Canada being a hub for the Couriers' Guild.

Political Divisions

Most of the modern Canadian population lives in Western Canada, among various nations and city-states overseen by the northern elites with various levels of control. Canadian settlements across the Rocky Mountains, such as the portside city of Coover, are often closer to their American counterparts to the south than the rest of Canada, isolated across a series of treacherous mountains. The Kebec region retains its ancient French heritage and is usually understood as being separate from "Canada" in general—even in the Old World, many of the people there did not feel much commonality with their English-speaking countrymen. South of Kebec is the former hub of Tario, containing many settlements built on the ruins of Old World cities such as Ronto. East of this are a series of provinces known as the Maritimes for their ancient seafaring history. Even today, sailing ships still depart from its ports on voyages to faraway Europe.

Culture

Canadian culture shares many similarities with that of many Middle American polities, to the point where an average Canadian can travel there and not feel too out of place. There is perhaps less of an emphasis on individualism among the Canadians, however.