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Claremont has been settled for a long time; by the 1830s the area was a destination for immigrants who homesteaded farms, with the village established in 1840. Claremont is semi-famous as the birthplace of Tom Thomson, although his family left when he was three months old.
Claremont is one of many rural villages in the Greater Toronto Area where cookie-cutter suburban housing mixes with older historic buildings. Just below the Oak Ridges Morraine, in the Greenbelt, it lies in the Mixedwood Plains ecozone. Typical of the moraine countryside, around 50 to 70% of the land area around Claremont is forested. The remaining land around the village is wooded farmland and streams.
The Mixedwood Plains Ecozone, is bounded by three Great Lakes in southern Ontario and extends along the St. Lawrence shoreline to Quebec City. With its relatively mild climate and rich, fertile soils it is the most populous and prosperous ecozone in Canada.
Native communities, including the Mohawk, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Cree, inhabited the favoured Mixedwood Plains long before European settlement. The earliest French arrivals, also recognizing the St. Lawrence River's many advantages, established themselves along the shoreline at Quebec City in 1608, Trois-Rivières in 1634, and Montreal in 1642. British settlers founded the towns of Niagara, Hamilton, and Toronto in Upper Canada during the mid-18th century.
Interlaced with national and international transportation routes, the Mixedwood Plains have become the industrial and commercial heartland of Canada. Urban centres encroach on remaining prime agricultural land as the population continues to grow. Settlement and resource extraction dramatically alter the land. Striking a balance between economic development and ecological sustainability has become a challenge for today’s residents and for future generations.
The capital of Canada is Ottawa, in the province of Ontario. There are offically ten provinces and three territories in Canada, which is the second largest country in the world in terms of land area.While politically and legally an independant nation, the titular head of state for Canada is still Queen Elizabeth.On the east end of Canada, you have Montreal as the bastion of activity. Montreal is famous for two things, VICE magazine and the Montreal Jazz Festival. One is the bible of hipster life (disposable, of course) and the other is a world-famous event that draws more than two million people every summer. Quebec is a French speaking province that has almost seceded from Canada on several occasions, by the way..When you think of Canada, you think of . . . snow, right?But not on the West Coast. In Vancouver, it rains. And you'll find more of the population speaking Mandarin than French (but also Punjabi, Tagalog, Korean, Farsi, German, and much more).Like the other big cities in Canada, Vancouver is vividly multicultural and Vancouverites are very, very serious about their coffee.Your standard Vancouverite can be found attired head-to-toe in Lululemon gear, mainlining Cafe Artigiano Americanos (spot the irony for ten points).But here's a Vancouver secret only the coolest kids know: the best sandwiches in the city aren't found downtown. Actually, they're hidden in Edgemont Village at the foot of Grouse Mountain on the North Shore."It's actually worth coming to Canada for these sandwiches alone." -- Michelle Superle, VancouverText by Steve Smith.
