Canada's coastline

Canada borders three oceans and has a coastline of over 202,000 km, far longer than any other country. If you could walk it, the trip would circle the Earth several times.

Statistics Canada reports up to 243,042 km when it counts islands and inlets in more detail.

Context

Coastline length is not a fixed quantity. The coastline paradox, first described for the British coast, shows that measured length grows as the measuring scale shrinks, because finer scales capture more bays, inlets and islands. Canada's coast is especially affected because of the thousands of islands in the Arctic Archipelago and a heavily indented shoreline along Newfoundland, British Columbia and Hudson Bay.

The widely quoted 202,080 km figure comes from compilations such as the CIA World Factbook, while Statistics Canada has published larger totals when detailed shoreline data are used, with the note giving 243,042 km. Differences between sources therefore reflect methods, not disagreement about whether Canada leads.

Canada borders the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans. Other countries with long coastlines by the same kinds of tallies include Norway, Indonesia and Russia, but none approaches Canada under any of the commonly used methods. Because of the measurement dependence, rankings of coastline length should be treated as indicative rather than exact.

Much of the total lies along the Arctic, where the Arctic Archipelago contributes a very large number of islands and deeply cut channels.