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This paper examines the broad movements of Canadian period and cohort fertility over the last hundred years or so, and compares them with corresponding trends in the United States and other industrialized countries. The main movement in Canada was a decline in fertility extending from the nineteenth century to the present time, interrupted in the 1940s and 1950s by a ‘baby boom’. The long decline in cohort fertility is largely explained by the decrease in the proportions of families of six or more children. This decrease continued during the baby boom, but in these years was more than offset, though not for Catholics, by the effects of increases in the proportions of families with three, four, and five children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]