Canadians can own firearms, rifles and handguns. They can even open carry rifles & shotguns (to and from home/the range). You do need to take a small short class to be able to own a handgun though, and after that you can keep as many guns as you want, in a safe (unloaded) with the ammunition in another locked area around your house.
You can defend yourself no problem, as long as the gun wasnt loaded before the incident. A man in Quebec shot 2 cops in self defense when they illegally executed a no-knock warrant on his home at 3am, with his 2 kids and wife in the house. He shot the one cop in the head, and the heart, with a 357 at point blank range, and was found innocent of murder charges.
The gun laws here are not THAT bad, and people can even own, and buy machine guns (If they owned one before the 80's and the machine guns were made before then)
Occasionally, you may get a conceal carry permit, if you can prove your life is in danger, they will give you a temporary one until you have reason enough to believe you're safe.
All in all, the gun laws are not horrible, and years ago you could carry anything and own anything no problem, it's just recently that Canada passed some stupid laws about guns, but recently many people have been working hard to get these laws gone, so Canadians can start carrying and keeping loaded guns in the house.
Plus, with a HUGE amount of our country mostly Forrest and other things, there is a very high amount of hunters here, and many people own rifles, handguns, crossbows, etc.
People often think we have no guns, because, Canada actually has an extremely low rate of guns used in crimes. (Except Toronto, which is like the Canadian Detroit)