This is one of my favourite images (thanks NASA). It’s a satellite picture of the earth at night. It gives me a real sense of how few people there are in Australia and Canada compared to some of the other countries in the world. I know the lights don’t equate exactly to population. I mean, I’m sure houses in most US cities are ablaze with dozens of lights, where as a remote village in the middle of Kazakhstan might only have a couple, if any, but you get the general idea.

It’s hard to see exactly where Canada starts and the US ends as the vast majority of Canadians live within 150km of the US border.  What is easy to see is the sheer size of both countries. Canada is the second largest country in the world with an area of over 9.9 million km². It’s so wide that it has six different time zones! Russia is the largest with 17 million km² and the US is third at 9.6 million km². Australia is sixth in the size rankings with an area of 7.7 million km².

As for population, we are both mere snowflakes in a storm.  According to Stats Canada’s population clock, there are now 34,682,046 Canucks. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’s population clock puts the number of Aussies at 22,807,045.

To put this in perspective, have a look at the top five most populous countries:

• China 1.3 billion
• India 1.2 billion
• USA 309.9 million
• Indonesia 234.2 million
• Brazil 193.4 million

That’s the end of my school lesson today. Hope I didn’t sound to teacherly!

Nic