Canada Provinces Quiz

This Canada provinces quiz puts a blank map of the country in front of you and asks you to find all 10 provinces and 3 territories, one at a time. Once you have the map down, scroll to the second quiz and match each capital city to its province or territory.

How to play

• Find it: a name appears above the map. Click or tap that province or territory. A first-try answer turns green, a second or third try turns yellow, and after three wrong picks the answer is shown in red.
• Type it: one province or territory is highlighted in blue and you type its name. Capitals, accents and small spelling slips are forgiven, and short forms like PEI, NWT and BC count.
• The timer starts on your first answer. When the round ends you see your score, your time and a list of the ones you missed, and your best result is saved in your browser.
• Prince Edward Island has a small circle on top of it so it is easy to tap on a phone. You can also use the zoom buttons and drag the map.

Provincial and territorial capitals quiz

Same map, harder question. In Find it mode you get a capital city and click the province or territory it belongs to. In Type it mode you get the province or territory name and type its capital.

Tips for remembering the map

Learn it in three bands

Canada is easier to learn as three strips than as 13 separate shapes.

• The North: three territories side by side, west to east: Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut. They get bigger as you move east. Nunavut takes in most of the Arctic islands and is the largest of all 13 by area.
• The West and centre: six provinces in a row along the US border: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec. A made-up line to hold the order: Bears And Skunks Make Our Quilts.
• Atlantic Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. The first three are also called the Maritimes. Newfoundland and Labrador is Atlantic but not Maritime.

Use the shapes

• Saskatchewan is the neat one: a plain four-sided block that narrows a little toward the north. If a province looks like a tidy box on the Prairies, start there.
• Alberta sits just west of it. Its western edge is jagged in the south, where it follows the Rocky Mountains, then runs straight north.
• Manitoba and Ontario both reach up to the shore of Hudson Bay. Manitoba is the narrower one to the west.
• Prince Edward Island is the small crescent tucked into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, above Nova Scotia. It is the smallest province.
• Newfoundland and Labrador comes in two pieces: the island of Newfoundland and the mainland piece, Labrador, on Quebec's eastern side.

Watch the capital traps

Most mistakes come from guessing the biggest city instead of the capital.

• Alberta's capital is Edmonton, not Calgary.
• Saskatchewan's is Regina, not Saskatoon.
• British Columbia's is Victoria, on Vancouver Island, not the city of Vancouver.
• Quebec's is Quebec City, not Montreal.
• Saint John is a city in New Brunswick, but New Brunswick's capital is Fredericton. St. John's, with the apostrophe, is the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The three territorial capitals are worth learning as a set from west to east: Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Iqaluit. Iqaluit sits on Baffin Island, the big island in the east of Nunavut.

Provinces, territories, capitals and when they joined

A good way to use the table: play the map quiz once, note the ones you missed, then read only those rows before the next round. That keeps each round short and focused on what you actually got wrong.

More quizzes and games

Try the US states map quiz next door, or test yourself on the flags of the world. For something wordier, today's Canuckle is a five letter puzzle with a Canadian twist, and Canuckle Unlimited lets you keep playing after the daily word is done.