Comprises 39% of Canada's land mass in the three territories: Nunavut, Northwest Territories (NWT), and Yukon Territory (YT)

Contains 0.3% of Canada's population

Accounts for 0.3% of Canada's GDP

Land dominated by the infertile Canadian Shield and/or Cordillera (major exception: Mackenzie River valley and delta, where there are trees but where the growing season is too short to permit agriculture)

Region perceived as Homeland for Native peoples but also as resource frontier for all of Canada

Low levels of education in smaller communities inhibits development

Export-based economy dominated by Mining, Hunting and Trapping, and Public sector (especially government positions)

Labour force is highly mobile and can be socially disruptive for small communities; as well labour tends to redirect economic benefits back to regions from which labourers come

Region benefits from other regions' use of northern wilderness for recreation during summer holidays

Some economic potential in off-shore oil and gas exploration and in Northwest Passage as a shipping lane if global warming continues

Land Claims agreements with Native people aim to produce a more organized and regular development of resource-based economic activity

Annual unemployment rate of about 16%

Sense of identity dominated by

• harsh climate
• Native peoples as a majority of the population
• land claims of Native people
• remoteness from the parts of the country where the overwhelming majority of Canadians live
• scattered population (more people live in the tiny province of Prince Edward Island than in the entire North).

One positive stereotype of Native northerners: people who are more comfortable living outside the hectic pace of southern Canadian society

One positive stereotype of non-Native northerners: hardy, independent men battling the climate to test his character and to make his fortune.

One negative stereotype of northerners: both the itinerant nature of life in frontier communities based on resource extraction, and the historic problem that alcohol consumption has posed for Native Canadians leads to a stereotype that the quality of life led by northerners is precarious and rough.

The error of the non-Native stereotype: because of resource-extraction industries and a strong federal government presence, the population of the north fluctuates. Many people do not spend their entire lives in northern communities

Wherever Canadians live, the North lies north of them, above them. This geographical fact gives Canada an identity that, at least in the imagination of many Canadians if not in their daily lived experience, transcends regional identities. This "nordicity" gives identity even to those Canadians who live in the large cities near the USA border and who never travel north. Canadians are very aware of a relatively unpopulated wilderness dominating much of the country.