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The St. Lawrence River is a grand river and estuary, which together with the Great Lakes forms a hydrographic system that penetrates 3,058 km into North America. The river proper, about 1,197 km long, issues from Lake Ontario, flows northeast past Montreal and Quebec City to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The route of early explorers and the main axis of New France, the St. Lawrence River figured prominently in Canada's early history, and it remains the focus of settlement for much of the province of Quebec. It is still the most important commercial waterway in Canada, as well as a source of electric power and natural beauty. (See also St Lawrence Lowland.)

The North Saskatchewan River (1,287 km long, the first 48.5 km of which is designated as a Canadian Heritage River) is a major tributary to the Saskatchewan River, which ultimately flows into Hudson Bay. The mean annual flow is 241 m3/s; however, flow varies between the peak in July and minimum in February. It served as a major transportation route from the end of the last Ice Age through the mid-20th century.

Hans Island, Nunavut, is a tiny (1.2 km²), unpopulated island south of the 81st parallel in the Kennedy Channel (the northern part of Nares Strait), almost equidistant between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The Greenlandic word for the island is Tartupaluk. (Greenlandic is a language spoken by Greenland Inuit.) For decades, both Canada and Denmark claimed ownership of the island. On 14 June 2022, however, the two countries settled the dispute, dividing the island roughly equally between them. (See also Canadian Arctic Sovereignty.)

Lying north of mainland Canada, the Arctic Archipelago consists of 94 major islands (greater than 130 km²) and 36,469 minor islands covering a total of 1.4 million km². Apart from Greenland, which is almost entirely ice covered, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago forms the world's largest High Arctic land area.

Port Refuge is a small bay on the south coast of Grinnell Peninsula, Devon I, in the high Arctic.

Canada may be divided into seven physiographic regions. The Canadian Shield is the largest and oldest of these regions. The other six physiographic regions are younger and form two concentric rings around the Canadian Shield. The outer, older ring contains the Western Cordillera, Canadian Arctic and Appalachian Region. The second, younger ring contains the Interior Plains, Hudson Bay Lowlands and the St. Lawrence Lowlands. These regions may be further sub-divided based on their structure, relief and the presence or absence of permafrost and forest cover (see Natural Regions).

Areas quoted for these regions are the land areas and do not include adjacent continental shelves or bodies of ocean water within Canada's territorial limits. Readers should also note that the abbreviation “masl” stands for “metres above sea level.”

Canada has seven primary vegetation regions, in addition to the marine flora found along the country’s coasts. Each region is characterized by distinct plant communities. The plants in each region are mostly determined by climate. Other factors that determine which plants grow in which region include geology, soil composition and erosion, water drainage patterns and human interference.

This article is a plain-language summary of Vegetation Regions. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Vegetation Regions.

Canada has seven primary vegetation regions, in addition to the marine flora found along the country’s coasts. Vegetation regions are geographical areas characterized by distinct plant communities. Community composition, determined primarily by climate (e.g., temperature, precipitation and sunlight), may be affected by factors such as geology, soil composition and erosion, water drainage patterns and human interference. Each vegetation region supports a characteristic animal community that may also affect its composition.

This is a full-length entry about Vegetation Regions. For a plain-language summary, please see Vegetation Regions (Plain-Language Summary).

At 3,185 km (1,149 km of which lie in Canada), the Yukon River is among the longest rivers in the country (see also Longest Rivers in Canada). Its headwaters are in the northwest corner of British Columbia, at the province’s border with the Yukon. It flows north and northwest across the Yukon into Alaska, then west to Norton Sound on the Bering Sea. Within the large central plateau of the Yukon, ringed by the Mackenzie Mountains to the east and the St. Elias range to the southwest, the Yukon River and its tributaries form the region’s dominant drainage basin.

The Mackenzie River’s main stem is 1,738 km long, making it one of the longest rivers in Canada. The Mackenzie River system, which includes tributaries such as the Liard River, is 4,241 km. The Mackenzie River runs northwest through the Northwest Territories, from Great Slave Lake to the Beaufort Sea. Its total drainage basin — 1.8 million km² — is the largest of any river in Canada and its mean discharge of 9,700 m³/s is second only to that of the St. Lawrence. The river's peak discharge occurs in June, but its flow is generally uniform because of the flat topography east of the river and the many large lakes in the system. The break-up of ice begins at the Liard River in late April, early May. The river is free of ice by early June and stays open until November.