The Ultimate Canadian Geography Quiz: Photo Edition

From northerly towns to southerly fiords, from satellite snaps to soaring skylines, 25 questions to test your photographic memory
By Nick Walker

Photo: Julien Schroder

With little more to go on than a satellite image, a snap from the International Space Station, a shot of a city skyline or a mountain ridge, do you think you can identify some of the most distinctive landscapes, standout features and communities in Canada and the world?

Probe the pictures and follow the clues ahead to uncover the answers. There’s often more to these photos than you might catch at first glance, so if you’re stumped, take the lay of the land: Tundra or prairie? West Coast mountains, eastern inlets or arid inland region? Evergreen boreal or deciduous temperate forest?

Good luck!

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SATELLITE VIEWS

1. Which of these images shows the Georgian Bay peninsula town of Tobermory, Ont.? (The rest are Bermuda and the Caribbean.)

Photos: © 2019 Google/DigitalGlobe

a
b
c
d

2. Hamlet at the ocean-end of our most northerly highway.

Photo: Landsat8/NASA

Inuvik, N.W.T.
Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T.
Nain, Labrador
Cambridge Bay, Nunavut

3. Founded: 1958. Population: undisclosed. Average annual temperature: -17.6 C.

Photo: © 2019 Google, Landsat/Copernicus

Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard
Alert, Nunavut
Nord, Greenland
Eureka, Nunavut

4. Province containing North America’s largest inland river delta.

Photo: Landsat8/NASA

Quebec
Ontario
Manitoba
Alberta

5. What’s happened to Lake Erie?

Photo: NASA

Oil spill
Algae bloom
Green dye factory explosion
Bioluminescent plankton

LAND FEATURES

6. When this volcano erupted in 1980, ash fell on British Columbia and Alberta, and may have been carried as far as Manitoba.

Photo: Landsat8/NASA

Mount St. Helens
Mount Baker
Mauna Loa
Mount Rainier

7. What’s the term for this physiographic feature? This one, about 6,000 square kilo­metres in size, sits atop Baffin Island.

Photo: © 2019 Google/DigitalGlobe

Ice sheet
Glacier
Ice cap
Ice chapeau

8. In Alberta, warm winds rushing down mountains’ eastern slopes are called Chinooks, but here they’re called by their Spanish name zonda. What South American country is this?

Photo: Landsat8/NASA

Brazil
Peru
Argentina
Chile

9. These waters hold the record for world’s foggiest place.

Photo: Landsat8/NASA

Cape Disappointment, Wash.
Severnaya Zemlya islands, Russia
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, Calif.
Grand Banks, N.L.

10. Coastal “place of spirits,” inhabited for 6,000 years.

Photo: Design Pics Inc/Alamy

Chic-Choc Mountains, Gaspesie, Que.
Torngat Mountains, northern Labrador
Baffin Mountains, Baffin Island, Nunavut
Coast Mountains, B.C.

11. What did miners name this mountain, now a centrepiece of a famous Yukon park?

Photo: Hemis/Alamy

The Monster
Cemetery Hill
Doom Peak
Tombstone Mountain

12. Where is this famed fiord?

Photo: Organisaction

Saguenay, Que.
Great Bear Rainforest, B.C.
Gros Morne, N.L.
Baffin Island, Nunavut

MAP CLUES

13. The Arctic Circle crosses through this many countries.

Photo: Chris Brackley/Can Geo

5
8
12
15

14. Where is the magnetic North Pole expected to be by 2020?

Photo: Chris Brackley/Can Geo

a
b
c
d

15. Judging only by this map (and what you know about the country’s big population centres), about what percentage of Canadians live on islands?

Photo: Chris Brackley/Can Geo

1%
5%
12%
25%

FROM THE LENS OF CANADIAN ASTRONAUT DAVID SAINT-JACQUES

16. What’s the 200-kilometre-wide body of water bordering Eeyou Istchee?

Photo: David Saint-Jacques/CSA

Hudson Bay
Georgian Bay
Gulf of St. Lawrence
James Bay

17. What country is home to this boreal body of water, which contains twice as much fresh water as Lake Superior?

Photo: David Saint-Jacques/CSA

Russia
Canada
United States (Alaska)
Kazakhstan

18. A coastal U.S. state with swamps and Appalachians, named for two kings of England.

Photo: David Saint-Jacques/CSA

Virginia
North Carolina
Florida
California

19. The island sometimes called the “eighth continent” for its unique ecology.

Photo: David Saint-Jacques/CSA

Borneo
Galápagos Islands
New Zealand
Madagascar

20. Not quite as long as the Nile, but stretch this muddy river out and it could reach from Toronto to Berlin.

Photo: David Saint-Jacques/CSA

Mississippi River, United States
Mackenzie River, Canada
Yangtze River, China
Amazon River, South America

SISTER CITIES

21. This Winnipeg sister city, about 600 kilometres south of the Manitoba capital, is the larger of the Twin Cities.

Photo: Gian Lorenzo Ferretti Photography/istock

Chicago, Ill.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Detroit, Mich.
Milwaukee, Wis.

22. Toronto is a “partnership city” with this place, Italy’s creative and economic centre.

Photo: ansonmiao/istock

Rome
Florence
Milan
Venice

23. Montreal has more than a dozen sister cities, including Paris and this coastal city in Asia, its country’s largest.

Photo: georgeclerk/istock

Shanghai, China
Taipei, Taiwan
Seoul, South Korea
Tokyo, Japan

24. A Vancouver sister city of about 500,000 in the United Kingdom; birthplace of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Photo: Federico Rostagno/istock

Belfast, Northern Ireland
Glasgow, Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland
Liverpool, England

25. One of Ottawa’s sister cities, a capital of almost 20 million just south of an enormous delta.

Photo: oversnap/istock

Tehran, Iran
Cairo, Egypt
Tunis, Tunisia
Rabat, Morocco

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