Canada
The Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) was founded in 1912 and affiliated to FIFA later that same year. Predating both the USA and Mexico, it was quite an early football flag planting by New World standards. Though the country is known more for a sporting devotion to ice hockey, the world's game has come on in leaps and bounds over the course of the 20th century culminating in a FIFA World Cup appearance in 1986 and a CONCACAF champions medal in 2000.

Though there is evidence of a kind of organised 'soccer' in Canada as early as the 1850's, the first match played under the banner of the established 'London Association Rules' was contested in Toronto between the Lacrosse Club and the Carlton Cricket Club in 1876. And in the remaining years of the 19th century, there was a proliferation of loosely organised football leagues - of predictably varying life spans - throughout the provinces. Teams from Ontario's Western Football Association, formed in 1880 and surviving until the outbreak of World War Two as one of the earliest football associations formed outside of the U.K., and even sent a team to tour Britain in 1888.

In 1904 the WFA's flagship Galt Football Club of Ontario won gold at an abridged Olympic Football Tournament in St Louis, USA - a title no less impressive for the fact that only three teams participated.

Through the trials and tribulations of the 20th century, two World Wars and a painful Depression that nearly crippled the CSA, the game continued to develop. Organised amateur leagues dotted the length and breadth of the world's second largest country.

In the late 60's, 70's and early 80's Canadian teams like the Toronto Blizzard, Montreal Manic, Edmonton Drillers, Calgary Boomers and Vancouver Whitecaps competed professionally with US clubs in the now-defunct North American Soccer League.

As the game grew up in a regional patchwork at club level, the red-clad national team began to throw their hat into the FIFA World Cup qualifying ring as early as 1958, with moderate results. The high water mark came in 1985 when an enthralling win over Honduras, (finalists in Spain in 1982) saw them earn a place at the finals in Mexico in 1986. At a time when only two CONCACAF teams qualified for the finals (as opposed to the current 3 ½) it was a monumental achievement for Team Canada, which at the time boasted some of their best all-time players the likes of Bruce Wilson (voted to CONCACAF's Team of the Century), Bob Lenarduzzi, Randy Samuel, U-19 women's coach Ian Bridge, Carl Valentine and current U-20 national team boss Dale Mitchell.

Three consecutive losses in Mexico did not dampen 'Canuck' pride, and they even stretched European Champions France to the bitter end in their first game.

The next year Canada's meteoric rise in the international scene continued as they hosted their first FIFA finals and their first major international tournament since the 1976 Olympics, putting on the 1987 FIFA U-17 World Championship. In 2000, led by German -born coach Holger Osieck, the Canadian senior men's national team pulled off quite a shock by edging past both Mexico and Colombia to win the CONCACAF Gold Cup and become champions of the region for the first time in their history.

Since then the country - whose women's football system is regarded among world's best and boasts a huge and ever-increasing number of registered amateur players - hosted the inaugural FIFA U-19 Women's World Championship in 2002. Their team went to the final, massive crowds came out to the stadia and there was an unprecedented amount of public interest in the event.

The FIFA U-20 World Cup, the second-largest global footballing competition behind the World Cup, will be the culmination of a Canadian Soccer emergence nearly a century-and-a-half in the making. And now with Canadian teams participating in the USA's professional second-tier A-League, a Toronto-based Major League Soccer franchise set to be born in '07 and players like Paul Stalteri, Jonathan and Julian De Guzman, Jason DeVos, Iain Hume and Tomasz Radzinski travelling abroad and playing in some of Europe's high-power leagues, the future is looking bright indeed up in the 'Great White North.'

History
Canada officially became a country in 1867, but the story of the land and people that would eventually become Canada is much older. The name 'Canada' is believed to be a native Huron-Iroquois term meaning 'village' and began to be used to refer to the vast expanses of northern North America at around the middle of the 16th century. Although archaeological studies have dated human presence in the Yukon region back over 25,000 years, European incursions only began around 1000 AD with brief Viking raids. Some 500 years later, in an era of heavy European exploration, Canada's coastline and interior were of special interest to Continental adventurers. At the start of the 17th century, fur traders and trappers from overseas arrived in greater numbers carrying disease and eventually precipitating the decimation of the aboriginal population. As competition for the fur trade increased in the 17th and 18th centuries, wars raged between the remaining natives, French and English. Still a loose confederation of regions in 1837, the 'Canadas' began the process of federation and by 1866 the British North America act created a confederation of four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.

Many of the British colonies, some of which were formerly French holdings, eventually gave way and a protracted process of peaceful independence started in 1867 and finally culminated officially in 1982 by proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The image of the maple leaf has been associated with Canada since 1868. It was first seen on the Canadian coats of arms granted to Ontario and Quebec, it appeared soon after on regimental badges in both World Wars. Since 1965 when the Canadian flag was introduced, the maple leaf has become Canada's most important and enduring national symbol.

Economy
Canada is a modern industrial country and one of the world's wealthiest nations. A free-market economy with marginally more government interference than southern neighbours USA, Canada currently enjoys a 30-year record low unemployment rate of just over 6 percent. A major 20th century economic boom was based on massive growth in manufacturing, mining, and the service sector transforming the country from a largely rural economic base to one considerably more diversified. Though the service sector continues to be the main growth sector, logging and oil production continue to form an important part of the country's impressive economy. Canada boasts the world's second largest reserve of oil and is one of the planet's most important suppliers of agricultural products. Economic progress has remained more or less stable in the country since the second World War.

Geography
The second largest country in the world in terms of area behind Russia, Canada occupies most of northern North America from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts. The northernmost settlement in Canada (and the entire world) is Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island just 834 kilometres from the North Pole. From east to west, Canada encompasses six time zones and in addition to its coastlines on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Canada's third seacoast, on the Arctic Ocean, is the longest coastline of any county. To the south, Canada shares a 5,525-mile boundary with the United States. The Canadian population density of 3.5 per square kilometre is among one of the lowest in the world, with the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor the most densely populated area. Stretching over 3000 miles all the way to the Pacific Northwest territories, the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver Island and up to the frigid northern territories, the climactic and geographical vagaries of the country run an astonishingly varied gamut.

Facts and Figures
A federal constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy Canada is comprised of ten provinces - Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. The three territories are the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon with Ottawa, Ontario the nation's capital city. Canada has a population of 32.5 million, with about three-quarters of the country's population - growing steadily as a result of increased immigration - living within 160 kilometres of the US border. Ethnically diverse and officially bilingual, Canada has over 34 separate ethnic groups The largest ethnic group is Canadian, followed by English, French, Scottish , Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Ukrainian and North American Indian. Canada has two official languages: English and French. With 59 percent of the population's first language being English, 23 percent native language is French, leaving the 18 percent have with more then one mother tongue or a mother tongue other than English or French, such as Arabic, Chinese, Cree, Dutch, Inuktitut, Italian, German, Greek, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Tagalog, Ukrainian or Vietnamese.