“Canada is north of the United States” sounds like a basic fact that even elementary school children know to be true. But is it really? It turns out, the actual geographic reality isn’t quite that simple.
In fact, the Canadian-American border is all kinds of weird when you start examining it closely. The long part that looks like a straight line on the map is actually 900 zigzagging lines. Sometimes that “straight” line along the 49th parallel varies by hundreds of feet. There’s a disputed island along the border that both countries claim as their own.
But perhaps the most surprising factoid about the border is how much of it (and the Canadian population that lives above it) is actually south of the northernmost U.S. states.
If someone told you half of Canadians live south of North Dakota and Washington, it sounds wrong, right? But it’s right.
As a geomap.bytes TikTok video explains, about 70% of Canadians have historically lived south of the 49th parallel. But even more surprising is that around half of all Canadians live south of the southern borders of North Dakota and Washington. An even wilder fact is that the southernmost point in Canada sits south of some part of 27 U.S. states. It’s even slightly south of a small part of Northern California.
According to the video, more Americans than Canadians live north of Canada’s southernmost point, Middle Island in Lake Erie. How is that true? Let’s look at the math.
The population of Canada as of 2026 is approximately 40 million people, so 50% would be around 20 million. The U.S. population is a little over 342 million, so only about 6% of the U.S. population needs to live north of Middle Island for that math to work out. It does, as RealLifeLore explains:
Commenters (especially those who don’t live near that part of either country) are bewildered by these counterintuitive facts:
“Wow this is crazy: if you go south from Detroit you end up in Canada 🤯🤯🤯”
“Journey: ‘born and raised in South Detroit’ …so Canada.”
“I mean it’s like I knew this because I know where the border is yet I’ve never really thought about it or really registered it in my brain.”
“Geography can be really weird at times.”
Though it may sound strange at first, the way the populations pan out actually does make sense geographically. Canada may be enormous land-wise, but the most easily habitable parts, climate-wise, are in the southern part of the country. The major population centers of Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa are all in that triangular area between Michigan and New York. And the vast majority (90%, according to the CBC) of Canadians live within 100 miles (160 km) of the U.S. border.
More surprising facts about Canadian-American geography (from Across the Globe):
- The U.S.-Canada border is delineated by the longest clear-cut strip of land in the world.
- Point Roberts, Washington, is only accessible by car if you drive through part of Canada.
- The northernmost point in the contiguous U.S. is a bit of Minnesota jutting up into Canada. It was the result of a mapmaking mistake.
- The disputed island mentioned at the beginning of this article is home to nearly 10,000 puffins.
- The international border runs along the yellow centerline of a street that separates Derby Line, Vermont from Stanstead, Quebec.
- At the border crossing in Blaine, Washington, a 67-foot concrete arch straddles the border between the two countries. The words “Children of a common mother” mark the American side. “Brethren dwelling together in unity” is written on the Canadian side.
- The Great Lakes that sit between the two countries hold 21% of the world’s fresh water.
- Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that lies entirely within the U.S.
Canada and the U.S. have been on friendly terms for the vast majority of their mutual history, which is quite remarkable considering the history of the world. There’s a lot to love about our northern neighbors and a lot to know about the crooked line that delineates the two nations.
