Canada’s National Parks: All 48, by Province (Checklist)

Canada has 48 national parks: 37 national parks and 11 national park reserves, by Parks Canada’s count. It also has one national urban park, Rouge, in the Toronto area. British Columbia has the most, with seven. Every province and territory has at least two.

This is the same list the Canada map uses. Open a province there, tick the parks you have been to, and the map works out how much of that province you have covered.

How many national parks are in each province?

Each park is counted once, in the province or territory where most of it lies. Wood Buffalo is counted under Alberta and reaches into the Northwest Territories.

The checklist

Newfoundland and Labrador (4)

Prince Edward Island (2)

Nova Scotia (3)

New Brunswick (2)

Quebec (3)

Ontario (5)

Manitoba (2)

Saskatchewan (2)

Alberta (5)

British Columbia (7)

Yukon (3)

Northwest Territories (5)

Nunavut (5)

National urban park (1)

What is a national park reserve?

Parks Canada describes a national park reserve as an area “managed like a national park” that is subject to one or more Indigenous land claims. For a visitor it works like any other national park: the same agency runs it, and it is on the same list.

Kluane, in Yukon, is both a national park and a national park reserve. It is one entry here. The official totals of 37 and 11 only add up to 48 when Kluane is counted with the reserves, so that is where the table above puts it.

The largest, the first and the newest

• Largest: Wood Buffalo, which Parks Canada calls “the largest national park in Canada”. It lies across the border of Alberta and the Northwest Territories, and UNESCO gives its area as 4,480,000 hectares, or 44,800 km².
• First: Banff, in Alberta. Parks Canada calls it “Canada’s first national park”; it dates from 1885.
• Newest: Pituamkek National Park Reserve, in the north-west of Prince Edward Island. The agreement to establish it was signed on 4 July 2024, and Parks Canada calls it the 48th.
• Smallest: Georgian Bay Islands, in Ontario, at about 14 km² by the figures collected in Wikipedia’s list.

Which national parks are World Heritage Sites?

Nine of the 48 are on the UNESCO World Heritage List, alone or as part of a larger site:

• Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho, which with three provincial parks form the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks
• Gros Morne
• Kluane, part of a site shared with the United States
• Nahanni
• Waterton Lakes, part of Waterton Glacier International Peace Park
• Wood Buffalo

They are marked in the checklist. All 22 of the country’s sites are in our guide to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Canada.

Are more national parks coming?

Parks Canada lists proposals for new ones, among them national park reserves in the South Okanagan-Similkameen in British Columbia and the Seal River Watershed in Manitoba. A proposed park is added to this list when it is established, not before.

Rouge is the only national urban park so far. Parks Canada counts it apart from the 48, so the checklist does too.

Using this with a travel map

Marking a province says you have been there. It does not say how much of it you have seen. On the Canada map, the national parks sit beside the largest cities, World Heritage Sites and well-known places in each province, and the share you have ticked becomes that province’s percentage. The method is on the data and methods page, and the provinces themselves are described in Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories.