Christine Lalonde, age 13, of Dorion Gardens, Quebec, Canada, for her question:

What does the name Canada mean?

Historians suspect that the original meaning of Canada was a group of huts. This seems absurd when you behold the stately buildings in Canada's many lovely cities and consider that its vast expanse of territory make it the third largest country in the world. Nevertheless, even such a big beauteous country had to begin simply. Long before the intrepid French explorers arrived, parts of the wide land were occupied by tribes of American Indians.

They lived in a simple way. Some were wandering hunters. Some erected temporary villages in favored valleys. In Montreal, you are well situated to view the magnificent valley of the St. Lawrence River. Here and there in this region, there were Indian vil¬lages of more or less permanent huts. The explorers learned that they had a name for such settlements. Later, this word was borrowed by the settlers from the Old World, somewhat modified and chosen to name the entire country. Perhaps no one at the time realized that a word that originally meant a group of  huts might be rather inadequate for the vast Dominion of Canada