Today is Canada Day – our nation’s birthday. Technically speaking it is a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the Constitution Act, 1867 (then called the British North America Act, 1867), which united three colonies into a single country called Canada within the British Empire. Originally called Dominion Day, the holiday was then renamed in 1982, the year the Canada Act was passed.

So, in celebration of our nation’s birthday, I thought it would be patriotic to share 14 (1+4+9) neat facts about Canada that I came across on this Canada Factslides:

1. "Canada" is an Iroquoian language word meaning "Village"

2. Canada is the World's Most Educated Country: over half its residents have college degrees.

3. Canada's lowest recorded temperature was -81.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 C) in 1947

4. Residents of Churchill, Canada, leave their cars unlocked to offer an escape for pedestrians who might encounter Polar Bears

5. In 2010, a Canadian man rescued a newborn baby from a dumpster, only to find out he was the father

6. Canada has the third largest oil reserves of any country in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela

7. Every Christmas, one million letters are addressed to Santa Claus at his own postal code: H0H 0H0, North Pole, Canada

8. With 1,896 km (1,178 mi), the Yonge Street in Canada, is the longest street in the world

9. Ontario, Canada, has more than 250,000 lakes. They contain about 1/5 of the world's fresh water (in fact, Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world's lakes combined)

10. Canada consumes more macaroni and cheese than any other nation in the world

11. The third country in space, after The U.S. and the USSR, was Canada, which was considered to have the most advanced space program in 1962

12. The Mall of America is owned by Canadians

13. Canada and Denmark have been fighting over an uninhabited island by leaving each other bottles of alcohol and changing their flags since the 1930s

14. Canada's official phone number is 1-800-O-CANADA (I just tried calling and the government answered)

Keeping on the theme of interesting facts, here are 5 things you may not have known about RBC Dominion Securities:

1. We were established in 1901 and have quietly become Canada’s leading full-service wealth management firm with over $250 billion in assets under administration and 400,000 valued clients worldwide.

2. “Wealth Management” means access the expertise of the RBC Wealth Management Services team (which includes highly accredited lawyers, accountants and financial planning specialists) as a complimentary service to you in going beyond investment advice.

3. We are the #1 overall bank-owned investment firm as ranked by advisors - this is important to note because as advisors, we all own our businesses as entrepreneurs within the firm, choosing to grow our business with RBC

4. Being a client of RBC Dominion Securities does not mean that your only investment options are RBC products – your portfolio is built with access to all global and North American equities (including stocks, preferred shares, income trusts, etc), Canada’s largest inventory of fixed-income and money market instruments (including T-bills, GICs, government bonds and corporate bonds) and proprietary and third-party investment products, including mutual funds, ETFs and discretionary institutional money managers. The same also applies to your insurance coverage

5. We are recognized as the world’s fifth largest wealth manager in Scorpio Partnership’s Private Banking Benchmark 2015 annual survey, as part of RBC Royal Bank. Read and learn more here.

With so much going on and information coming at us from every angle, it's sometimes hard to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening. In an effort to keep you in-the-know and provide you with some conversation nuggets for the weekend, I've compiled the following hit list to fill your conversation pipeline.

Now you are in-the-know with Word on the Street.

Happy Canada to all of my fellow Canadians, and happy upcoming 4th of July to those of you reading south of the border!