Physical map of Canada
Physical map of Canada shows the shape of the land with shaded relief and colors for elevation. Rivers and lakes are drawn in blue, and dashed lines show country borders. Download the labeled map or use the version without names as a worksheet.
How to read this map
Named features on this map include Coast Mountains, Mackenzie Mountains, Yukon Plateau, Columbia Kootenay Mountain, Torngat Mountains, Laurentides, Fraser Plateau, Birch Mountains, Caribou Mountains, Horn Plateau, Gros Morne, Mont Yapeitso, Mont Tremblant, Baldy Mountain, Mount Robson. The terrain colors help locate these features within the surrounding lowlands, plateaus and mountain belts.
The mapped river network includes La Grande, Saskatchewan, North Saskatchewan, Stikine, Thelon, Athabasca, Fraser, R. des Outaouais. Only selected rivers are labeled at this scale; a missing label does not mean that a river is absent.
Greens show lower elevations; tan and brown show higher land, with pale tones toward the highest terrain. Shadows emphasize the slopes. Vertical relief is exaggerated to make landforms easier to read, so the map is not a slope survey. Blue tones distinguish seas from land; the legend is a guide to land elevation, not a chart of water depth.
The relief uses Terrain Tiles, a composite of SRTM, GMTED2010 and ETOPO1 elevation data distributed through the AWS Open Data program. Boundaries, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. These are small-scale educational maps rather than navigation or engineering surveys.
Blank physical map
The blank version keeps the mapped features and removes the place labels. Download it for a geography worksheet or practice identifying the features.
Features and names
| Reference | Name or description |
|---|---|
| Named physical feature | Coast Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Mackenzie Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Yukon Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Columbia Kootenay Mountain |
| Named physical feature | Torngat Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Laurentides |
| Named physical feature | Fraser Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Birch Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Caribou Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Horn Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Gros Morne |
| Named physical feature | Mont Yapeitso |
| Named physical feature | Mont Tremblant |
| Named physical feature | Baldy Mountain |
| Named physical feature | Mount Robson |
Data sources and license
- Natural Earth (public-domain geography): Public domain.
- Terrain Tiles / Mapzen (SRTM, GMTED2010, ETOPO1): Open elevation data; source attribution retained.
Map design and rendered images: Atlas of Maps, CC BY 4.0. Source databases retain their own licenses; the map license does not replace them.
Also see the political map of Canada, with cities, internal divisions, a location map and printable outline maps.
Frequently asked questions
What does a physical map show?
A physical map shows landforms and water: mountains, plateaus, lowlands, rivers, lakes and seas. This map uses elevation colors and hill shading instead of coloring each country separately.
Can I download physical map of canada without labels?
Yes. The blank relief map retains the terrain, rivers and outlines but removes place names. Both versions are available as PNG and PDF; the PDF uses A4 paper and can be scaled to US Letter.
Use this map
You can download, print and share this map for free, in class, in school projects, in presentations and on websites, as long as you credit the source: Physical map of Canada · Atlas of Maps (atlasofmaps.com), license CC BY 4.0.