History of Canada

History of Canada
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The history of Canada begins with the arrival of human beings thousands of years ago. Inhabited for millennia by aboriginal peoples, Canada has evolved from a group of French and British colonies into a bilingual, multicultural federation. France sent the first large group of settlers in the 17th century, but ceded its territories in present-day Canada to Great Britain in 1763. The present constitution of Canada took effect in 1867, with three British colonies uniting as a single nation of four provinces. Canada gradually attained full independence from Britain during the 20th century, and it presently consists of ten provinces and three territories.

Prehistory

According to archeological and genetic evidence, North and South America were the last continents in the world to be inhabited by human beings. The most widely accepted theory is that during the last ice age, the Wisconsin glaciation, falling sea levels allowed people to move across the Bering land bridge which joined Siberia to Alaska. At that point, they were blocked by the massive glaciers that covered most of Canada, which confined them to Alaska for thousands of years. Alaska is believed to have been generally ice-free due to low snowfall, allowing a small population to exist. Sometime around 16,500 years ago, the glaciers began melting, allowing people to move south and east into Canada. Although the exact migration route is uncertain, two main possibilities have been proposed. One is that people walked south via an ice-free corridor on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, and then fanned out across North America before continuing on to South America. The other is that they migrated, either on foot or using primitive boats, down the Pacific Coast to the tip of South America, and then crossed the Rockies and Andes to populate the rest of the lands. Either or both are possible, but evidence of the latter would have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of metres since the last ice age. Regardless of their entry route or method, the descendants of the original paleoindians lived in Canada for 10,000 to 17,000 years before Europeans arrived.

Tyara Maskette, ivory, 35mm high, Dorset Culture, CMC

The Pacific coastline is the site of the longest human occupation in North and South America because it contains the greatest proliferation of languages.^[1] The earliest evidence of human settlement in Canada is found on the Haida Gwaii in British Columbia.^[2][3] The site at Nanu is dated beginning from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. Ice age hunters and gatherers left fluted stone tools and the remains of large butchered mammals. Nanu is unique because it is considered the site of the longest continuous human occupation in Canada.^[4] The Woodland Cultural period dates from 1000 B.C.E. to 1000 C.E. (Common Era) and is associated with Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime regions. Archaeologists classify the peoples of the Woodland cultures into five distinct groups: Meadowwood, Point Peninsula, Saugeen, Princess Point and Laurel. The introduction of pottery distinguishes the Woodland culture from the Archaic. The oldest pottery excavated in Canada was manufactured by the Laurentian people of southern Ontario.^[4] They created pointed-bottom beakers that were decorated by a cord marking technique that involved impressing tooth implements into wet clay. Woodland technology includes items such as beaver incisor knives, bangles, and chisels. Sedentary agricultural lifeways were practised and the population continued to increase due to a diet of squash, corn, and bean crops.^[4] Three archaeological sites in Alberta support the theory of a migration route through an Alberta corridor. Stone scrapers and choppers have been discovered at sites in Grimshaw, Bow River, and in Lethbridge.^[5] These stone tools were found under glacial sand and gravel are believed to be pre-glacial and therefore indicate humans occupied the area 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.^[5]

In the Arctic Islands, the distinctive palaeoeskimo Dorset people whose culture in the Arctic has been traced back to around 500 AD/CE^[6] were replaced by the ancestors of today's Inuit by 1500, an archaeological record supported by Inuit legends speak of having driven off the Tuniit or 'first inhabitants'.^[7] The Dorset people may have been the skraelings encountered by the Vikings around 1000.

Algonquin couple, 18th-century

The eastern woodland areas of what became Canada were home to speakers of two language groups: Algonquian and Iroquoian. The Algonquian language is believed to have originated in the western plateau region of Idaho or the plains of Montana and moved eastward,^[8] eventually extending all the way from Hudson Bay to what is today Nova Scotia in the east and as far south as the tidewater area of Virginia. Speakers of Eastern Algonquian languages included the Mi'kmaq and Abenaki of the Maritime region of Canada, and likely also the Beothuk of Newfoundland.^[9] The Ojibwa and other Anishinaabe or Anishinaabeg peoples, speakers of a Central Algonquian language, retain oral traditions of having moved to their lands around the western and central Great Lakes from the sea, likely the east coast. The Ojibwa formed the Council of Three Fires with the Ottawa and the Potowatomi.^[10] The Anishinaabe hold that the alliance dates back to 796, and the allied peoples of the Council, fought together against the Iroquois, the Sioux, the British during the Seven Years' War and the United States during the War of 1812 and the Northwest Indian War.

The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee were centered from at least 1000 in northern New York, but their influence extended into what is now southern Ontario and the Montreal area of modern Quebec.^[11] The Iroquois Confederacy is, from oral tradition, supposed to have been formed in 1142 .^[12] Adept at the agricultural corn/beans/squash complex, the Iroquois were able to spread at the expense of the Algonquians until they too adopted agricultural practices enabling larger populations to be sustained. In the early 1600s the Iroquois came into conflict with another Iroquoian people, the Wendat, (known also as the 'Hurons') of what is today southwestern Ontario, as the two groups clashed over the trade in beaver pelts introduced by the early traders of New France. While the Wendat became allies of the French, the Iroquois entered into trade with the Dutch of New Amsterdam and then formed an historic alliance with the English which endured through the Seven Years' War.^[13]

On the central plains the plains Cree or Nēhilawē (who spoke closely-related Central Algonquian languages) depended on the vast herds of bison to supply food and many of their other needs.^[14] To the north, the Na-Dene speaking peoples extended through the Mackenzie River valley to the Pacific Coast, where the Tlingit lived on the islands of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. The Na-Dene language is believed to be linked to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia, and the Dene of the western Arctic and related Athabaskan people may represent a distinct wave of migration from Asia to North America, possibly arriving by boat initially and settling in northern British Columbia.[7].

Central British Columbia was home to interior Salish such as the Okanagan and southern Athabaskan such as the Tsilqot'in. The inlets and valleys of the Pacific Coast sheltered large populations of indigenous peoples such as the Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and Salish, sustained in large numbers by the region's abundant salmon and shellfish. These peoples developed complex cultures dependant on the western red cedar that included wooden houses, sea-going whaling and war canoes and elaborately-carved totem poles.^[15] Defensive Salish trenchwork^[16] or stonework^[17] defences from the 1500s suggest a need for the southern Salish to take measures to protect themselves against their northern neighbours, who were known to mount raids into the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound in historic times.^[18]

European contact

Main artical: First Nations and European contact

Non-Native American nations' claims over North America, 1750–2008.

Despite an ancient history of their own, Canadian Aboriginal peoples cultures have sometimes been written about as if their history began with the encroachment of Europeans onto the continent.^[19] This is because the First Nations, Inuit and Métis written history began with European accounts, as in documentation by trappers, traders, explorers, and missionaries (cf. the Codex canadiensis^[20]).

There are several reports of contact made before Christopher Columbus between the first peoples and those from other continents. The earliest known European explorations in Canada are described in the Icelandic Sagas, which document the attempted Norse colonization of the Americas. According to the sagas, the first European to see Canada was Bjarni Herjólfsson, who was blown off course en route from Iceland to Greenland in the summer of 985 or 986. He found himself off a heavily forested coast to his west, and followed the coast north to the latitude of the Greenland settlement before turning east and sailing to Greenland. Leif Erikson sailed with a crew of 35 to investigate Bjarni's discovery around the year 1000. Leif landed in three places, the first two being Helluland or "land of the flat stones" (possibly Baffin Island), and Markland or "land of forests" (possibly Labrador). Leif's third landing was at a place he called Vinland, where he reportedly found grapes growing wild. Following Leif's voyage, several Norse groups attempted to colonize the new land, but they were driven out by the native people.^[21] Erikson is credited as being the first European to set foot on North America. Archaeological evidence of a Viking settlement was found in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, which generally matches the description of Leif's landing place in Vinland, except that grapes do not grow there today.

Another European explorer also acknowledged as having landed in what is now Canada was John Cabot, an Italian who was under the patronage of Henry VII of England. He sailed west from Bristol, England in an attempt to find a trade route for King Henry VII to the Orient. He ended up landing somewhere on the coast of North America (probably Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island) in 1497 and claimed it for King Henry VII of England. Cabot was confident he had found a new seaway to Asia and on a second voyage the following year he explored and charted the east coast of North America from Baffin Island to Maryland. His voyages gave England a claim by right of discovery to an indefinite amount of area of eastern North America; in fact, its later claims to Newfoundland, Cape Breton and neighbouring regions were based partly on Cabot's exploits. Of great significance were Cabot's reports of immensely rich fishing waters. The Portuguese Crown claimed it had territorial rights in the area visited by Cabot. In 1493, the Pope assuming international jurisdiction over the area and had it divided between Spain and Portugal.^[22] Portuguese explorer João Fernandes Lavrador, together with Pêro de Barcelos, were the second party of European explorers to sight the lands of Canada naming Labrador in 1498, one of the oldest names of European origin in Canada.^[22] The Roman Catholic countries of Western Europe furnished the fishing market, and every year after 1497 an international mixture of fishing vessels staked grounds off the southeast shore of Newfoundland and east of Nova Scotia. Sometimes these ships would traverse into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, encountering native peoples on the shore who would trade their valuable furs for trinkets and other items brought by the fishers.

Arrival of Radisson in a First Nations camp in 1660.

Throughout the 16th century the European fleets continued to make almost annual visits to the eastern shores of Canada to cultivate the fishing opportunities there. A sideline industry emerged as well though in the unorganized traffic of furs. In Europe methods of processing the furs developed and Beavers pelt hats became particularly fashionable. European countries encouraged the development of this infant trade and thus a new emphasis was put on settlement in Canada. On August 5, 1583 Humphrey Gilbert, armed with letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I, formally took possession of Newfoundland in St. John's harbour on behalf of England. In 1598, Troilus de Mesgouez, marquis de la Roche, set out for Canada armed with a new kind of authority—a royal monopoly which gave him the exclusive right to trade in furs. La Roche established a small colony on Sable Island, southeast of Nova Scotia. The settlement, which was a dismal failure, was the first of many French sponsored colonization attempts in Canada with the promise of a monopoly on the fur trade. An attempt at settlement was made in 1600 at Tadoussac by Pierre Chauvin; the settlement failed, but Tadoussac remained a trading post.^[23] The French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1605 and established the first permanent Canadian settlements at Port Royal and Quebec City in 1608.

New France 1604–1763

Acadia

In 1604 the fur trade monopoly was granted to Pierre Dugua Sieur de Monts. Dugua led his first colonization expedition to an island located near to the mouth of the St. Croix River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer named Samuel de Champlain, who promptly carried out a major exploration of the northeastern coastline of what is now the United States. Under Samuel de Champlain, the St. Croix settlement was moved to Port Royal (today's Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), a new site across the Bay of Fundy, on the shore of the Annapolis Basin, an inlet in western Nova Scotia. It was France's most successful colony to date and the settlement came to be known as Acadia. The cancellation of de Guast's fur monopoly in 1607 brought the Port Royal settlement to a temporary end. Champlain was able to persuade de Guast though to allow him to take some colonists and settle on the St. Lawrence, where in 1608 he would found France's first permanent colony in Canada at Quebec. The colony of Acadia grew slowly, reaching a population of about 5,000 by 1713.

Canada, New France

Map of New France made by Samuel de Champlain in 1612

After Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608, it became the capital of New France. The early days of the French colony were hard and the population grew slowly. Champlain took personal administration over the city and its affairs and sent out expeditions to explore the interior land. Champlain himself discovered Lake Champlain in 1609; and by 1615 he had traveled by canoe up the Ottawa River, through Lake Nipissing and through Georgian Bay to the center of Huron country, near Lake Simcoe. During these voyages Champlain aided the Huron's in their battles against the Iroquois Confederacy. As a result, the Iroquois would become mortal enemies of the French. In 1629 Champlain suffered the humiliation of having to surrender his almost starving garrison to an English fleet, and he himself was taken prisoner back to England. Peace had been declared by England and France before the surrender, and the settlement was restored to French rule. Champlain would return from Europe to spend his remaining years in the colony. He became governor of New France in 1633.

The coastal communities of New France were based upon the cod fishery, and the economy along the St. Lawrence River was based on farming. French voyageurs travelled deep into the hinterlands (of what is today Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba, as well as what is now the American Midwest and the Mississippi Valley) trading guns, gunpowder, cloth, knives, and kettles for beaver furs. The fur trade kept the interest in Frances overseas colonies alive, yet only encouraged a small population as minimal labour was required, and also discouraged the development of agriculture, the surest foundation of a colony in the New World. Encouraging settlement was difficult, and while some immigration did occur, by 1759 New France only had a population of some 65,000. New France had other problems besides low immigration. The French government had little interest or ability in supporting their colony, and it was mostly left to its own devices. The economy was primitive, and much of the population was involved in little more than subsistence agriculture. The colonists also engaged in a long running series of wars with the Iroquois.

Lower Ontario in 1718, Guillaume de L'Isle map, approximate province area highlighted.

Despite its problems, New France continued to grow at a slow pace. Settlers founded Trois-Rivières, farther up the St. Lawrence, in 1634. The farthest outpost of New France for many years was Montreal, founded by Paul de Chomedy on May 18, 1642. First known as Ville-Marie, this settlement, one day to become Canada's largest city, was begun as a mission post. One of the most famous of the leaders who accompanied de Chomedy was Jeanne Mance, founder of the Hotel-Dieu, the first hospital at Ville-Marie. The establishing of Montreal was part of a large Missionary movement based in France. Over the next 40 years after Quebec's founding, dozens of missionary posts would be built in Huron territory. The Huron's were under threat of attack from Iroquois tribes dwelling south and east of Lake Ontario. In 1648 the Iroquois invaded Huronia and wiped out most of the Huron's and French missionaries living in the territory. The Iroquois threat became a great obstacle against New France expansion. The French settlers and Iroquois would fight many battles around the outskirts of New France.

The feudal system of landholding, which had long been established in France, was adopted in the colony. The nobles, in this case the seigneurs, were granted lands and titles by the king in return for their oath of loyalty and promise to support him in time of war. The seigneur in turn granted rights to work farm plots on his land to his vassals, or habitants. In exchange, the habitants were required to pay certain feudal dues each year, to work for the seigneur for a given number of days annually, and to have their grain ground in the seigneurial mill. In underpopulated New France the habitants welcomed the fact that the seigneur was obligated to build a mill. They had no military duties to perform except their common defense against the Indians. There was little money and not much use for it; and so the taxes took the form of payments in chickens, geese, or other farm products. These obligations were hardly burdensome. The seigneurs were anxious that their habitants should wish to stay farmers, and there was as much land as anyone could till.

As in France, there was nothing resembling a democratic system of government in the colony. The senior official was the governor, appointed by the king. In the exercise of his almost absolute power he felt more responsible to the king in France than to the people he governed. Another post of French officialdom was established in Canada in 1665 with the appointment of an intendant, whose chief duties concerned finance and the administration of justice. There was sufficient overlapping of authority between governor and intendant to breed more jealousy than cooperation between the two offices. Jean Talon, who arrived in the colony in 1665, brought about rapid expansion of New France as its first intendant. He encouraged agriculture, immigration businesses and exploration of the region. In 1672 Count Louis de Frontenac arrived in the colony as governor. He built a fort at Cataraqui, near present-day Kingston, and brought the Iroquois into an enforced peace. He directed a series of major exploratory voyages to the interior. Among the greatest explorations were those made by Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and Rene Cavelier, sieur de La Salle. By 1682, the troubles between Frontenac and the intendant, Jacques Duchesneau, had become so serious that the king recalled both governor and intendant.

Wars during the colonial era

While the French were well established in large parts of Eastern Canada, Britain had control over the Thirteen Colonies to the south; and laid claim (from 1670, via the Hudson's Bay Company) to Hudson Bay, and its drainage basin (known as Rupert's Land), as well as settlements in Newfoundland. The British colonies were rapidly expanding, while the French fur traders and explorers were extended long by thinly. La Salle's exploration of the Mississippi to its mouth in 1682 gave France a claim to a vast area bordering the American Colonies from the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley southward to the Gulf of Mexico. England had feared the fact that France threatened to control almost half the continent which would give them indisputable control of the fur trade, an industry that England was just realizing could be more profitable than gold. Thus, England was quick to follow up on its claim to the back-door route towards fur country by establishing the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670. French expansion soon began to threaten its claim though, and, in 1686, Pierre Troyes led an overland expedition from Montreal to the shore of the bay where they managed to capture many of the company's forts by surprise. New France would wage several naval raids into the bay the following years and almost succeeded in driving the English from this part of the continent altogether.

The Death of General Wolfe at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, part of the Seven Years' War.

Britain and France repeatedly went to war in the 17th and 18th centuries and made their colonial empires into battlefields. Numerous naval battles were fought in the West Indies; the main land battles were fought in and around Canada. The first areas won by the British were the Maritime provinces. After Queen Anne's War, Nova Scotia, other than Cape Breton, was ceded to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht as well as the Hudson Bay territory conquered by France in the late 17th century. As an immediate result of this setback, France founded the powerful Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, which was then the French colony of Île Royale. Louisbourg was intended to serve as a year-round military and naval base for France's remaining North American empire and also to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River. The fortress developed into the most heavily fortified bastion in North America during the next 25 years. During King George's War, an army of New Englanders led by Sir William Pepperell mounted an expedition of 90 vessels and 4,000 men against Louisbourg in 1745. The fortress had become a hornet's nest of raiders who preyed on the merchant ships of the American Colonies. Within three months the New Englanders succeeded in forcing Louisbourg to surrender. The fortress was returned to France by the Treaty of Aix-la Chapelle signed in 1748. The alarm and anger of the New Englanders at the return of Louisbourg to French control prompted the founding of Halifax in 1749 by the British under Edward Cornwallis as a bulwark against the great French outpost.^[24]

The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave Britain authority over as many as 5000 French-speaking Acadians. Not trusting these new subjects, who repeatedly proclaimed their neutrality, the British first tried to dilute their numbers by bringing in Protestant settlers from Europe. Finally the British ordered the Acadians expelled from their lands in 1755, an event called the Great Upheaval or le Grand Dérangement, causing some 12,000 Acadians to be shipped to destinations throughout Britain's North American holdings and later even to France, Quebec and the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue. Many of the Acadians settled in southern Louisiana, creating the Cajun culture there. Some Acadians managed to hide and others eventually returned to Nova Scotia, but they were far outnumbered by a new migration of planters from New England who were settled on the former lands of the Acadians and transformed Nova Scotia from a colony of occupation to a settled colony with strong ties to New England.

During this time the French colony along the shores of the St. Lawrence continued to flourish, although French explorations and territorial claims to the Ohio Valley brought increasing conflict with the interests of Britain's American colonies. Inevitably the interests of the British and French in North America ran towards conflict resulting in the outbreak of war in both in Europe and North America. Canada was also an important battlefield in the Seven Years' War, during which Great Britain gained control of Quebec City after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, and Montreal in 1760.

Creation of British North America 1764–1837

Map of Canada, 1762

Canada under British control

With the end of the Seven Years' War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, France ceded almost all of its territory in mainland North America. The new British rulers left alone much of the religious, political, and social culture of the French-speaking habitants, guaranteeing the right of the Canadiens to practice the Catholic faith and to the use of French civil law through the Quebec Act of 1774.

American Revolution and Loyalists, 1775–1790

During the American Revolution which erupted shortly afterwards, while there was some sympathy for the American cause among the Canadiens^[25] and the New Englanders^[26] in Nova Scotia, neither colony joined the rebels, although several hundred individuals joined the revolutionary cause. An attempt by the Continental Army in late 1775 to take Quebec from British control was defeated by Guy Carleton, with the assistance of local militias.

The defeat of the British army at Yorktown in Virginia in October, 1781 signalled the end of Britain's struggle to suppress the American Revolution. During the war, thousands of American 'Tories' who had joined regiments to fight for Britain or worked actively on behalf of the king fled patriot areas, usually heading to New York City. At war's end 80% or more of all Loyalists remained in the U.S. but about 48,000 moved to Canada, where they received lands and reimbursements for lost property from the British government. When the British evacuated New York City they took the refugees to Nova Scotia. Other Loyalists made their way to southwestern Quebec. So many Loyalists arrived on the shores of the St. John River that a separate colony—New Brunswick—was created in 1784; followed in 1791 by the division of Quebec into the largely French-speaking Lower Canada along the St. Lawrence River and Gaspé Peninsula and an anglophone Loyalist Upper Canada, with its capital settled by 1796 in York, in present-day Toronto. The Loyalists included several thousand slaves and 'free Blacks' and a large part of the Iroquois nation.

The signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783, formally ended the war. Britain made several concessions at the expense of the North American colonies. Notably, the borders between Canada and the United States were officially declared. Land South of the Great Lakes, which was formerly a part of the Province of Quebec and included large parts of modern day Michigan, Illinois and Ohio, was ceded to the Americans. Fishing rights were also granted to the United States in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence and on the coast of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks.

War of 1812

Henri Julien's artistic rendition of the Battle of Chateauguay, part of the War of 1812

The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and the British with the British North American colonies being used as pawns.^[27] Heavily outgunned by the Royal Navy, the American war plans focused on an invasion of Canada (especially what is today western Ontario), hoping to use it as a negotiating pawn. The American frontier states voted for war in order to suppress the Indian raids that frustrated settlement frontier.^[27]

The War of 1812 ended with the Treaty of Ghent of 1814, and the Rush-Bagot agreement of 1817.^[27] Neither side saw any land gains or losses; the only people who really lost were the Natives who fought for the British and lost their lands in the United States. A demographic result was the shifting of American migration from Upper Canada to Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.^[27] After the war supporters of Britain tried to repress the republicanism that was common among American immigrants to Canada.^[27] The troubling memory of the war and the American invasions etched itself into the consciousness of Canadians as distrust of the intentions of the United States towards the British presence in North America.^[28]

British North America 1837–1867

Patriots, reformers and the fight for responsible government

In 1837, rebellions against the British colonial government took place in both Upper and Lower Canada. In Upper Canada, a band of Reformers under the leadership of William Lyon Mackenzie took up arms in a disorganized and ultimately unsuccessful series of small-scale skirmishes around Toronto, London, and Hamilton.

In Lower Canada, a more substantial rebellion occurred against British rule. Both English- and French-Canadian rebels, sometimes using bases in the neutral United States, fought several skirmishes against the authorities. The towns of Chambly and Sorel were taken by the rebels, and Quebec City was isolated from the rest of the colony. Montreal rebel leader Robert Nelson read a declaration of independence to a crowd at Napierville in 1838. The rebellion of Les Patriotes was defeated after battles across Quebec. Hundreds were arrested, and several villages were burnt in reprisal.

A new Whig government sent Lord Durham to examine the situation, and his Durham Report strongly recommended responsible government. A less well received recommendation was the amalgamation of Upper and Lower Canada for the deliberate assimilation of the French speaking population. The Canadas were merged into a single colony, United Province of Canada, by the Act of Union (1840), with responsible government achieved in 1848, a few months after it was granted to Nova Scotia.

Between the Napoleonic Wars and 1850 some 800,000 immigrants came to the colonies of British North America, mainly from the British Isles as part of the Great Migration of Canada. These included Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots displaced by the Clearances to Nova Scotia and Scottish and English settlers to the Canadas, particularly Upper Canada. The Irish Famine of the 1840s significantly increased the pace of Irish Catholic immigration to British North America, with over 35,000 distressed Irish landing in Toronto alone in 1847 and 1848.^[29]

British Columbia

Inscription at the end of the Alexander Mackenzie's Canada crossing located at 52°22′43″N 127°28′14″W / 52.37861°N 127.47056°W / 52.37861; -127.47056^[30]

Spain had taken the lead in the exploration of the northwest Pacific Coast, with the voyages of Juan José Pérez Hernández in 1774 and 1775, which were a response to intelligence that the Russians had begun to explore the Pacific Coast of North America, which Spain considered its own. The time the Spanish determined to build a fort on Vancouver Island, the British navigator James Cook had himself visited Nootka Sound and charted the coast as far as Alaska, while British and American traders had begun exploiting the coast to satisfy the brisk market for sea otter pelts in China. In 1793 Alexander Mackenzie a Scottish born Canadian working for the North West Company crossed the continent and with his aboriginal guides, French-Canadian voyageurs and another Scot, reached the mouth of the Bella Coola River, completing the first continental crossing north of Mexico.^[31], missing George Vancouver's charting expedition to the region by only a few weeks.^[32] The competing imperial claims between Russia, Spain and Britain were compounded by treaties between the former two powers and the United States, which pressed for annexation of most of what is now British Columbia. Although the boundary between Rupert's Land and Louisiana Territory was resolved at the 49th Parallel in 1818 (with Britain losing most of the rich arable lands of the Red River Valley), west of the Rockies the two powers agreed "not to decide" and established a form of "joint occupancy" over the lands known to the Hudson's Bay Company as the Columbia District, and to the Americans as the Oregon Country. This arrangement was ended, under the prospect of potential war over the issue, by the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which extended the 49th Parallel west of the Rockies to the Strait of Georgia, with Britain giving up claims to lands north of the Columbia River which were the focus of the Oregon boundary dispute.

The Colony of Vancouver Island was chartered from some of the remaining territories of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1849, with the outpost at Fort Victoria as the capital. This was followed by the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1853,^[33] and by the creation of the Colony of British Columbia in 1858^[34] and the Stikine Territory in 1861, with the latter three being founded expressly to keep those regions from being overrun and annexed by American gold miners. The Queen Charlotte colony and the Stikine Territory were merged into the Colony of British Columbia in 1863, though the northern limit of the Stikine Territory was reduced to the 60th Parallel from the 62nd. By 1866, the three Pacific colonies had been shepherded into union because of mounting debts and economic inviability as the mounting infrastructure debts were not supported by revenues from the Cariboo gold rush and other gold rushes in that decade.

Confederation

The Seventy-Two Resolutions from the 1864 Quebec Conference laid out the framework for uniting British colonies in North America into a federation. They were adopted by the majority of the provinces of Canada and became the basis for the London Conference of 1866, which led to the formation of the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867. Federation emerged from multiple impulses: the British wanted Canada to defend itself; the Maritimes needed railroad connections, which were promised in 1867; British-Canadian nationalism sought to unite the lands into one country, dominated by the English language and British culture; many French-Canadians saw an opportunity to exert political control within a new largely French-speaking Quebec^[35] and fears of possible U.S. expansion northward. On a political level, there was a desire for the expansion of responsible government and elimination of the legislative deadlock between Upper and Lower Canada, and their replacement with provincial legislatures in a federation. This was especially pushed by the liberal Reform movement of Upper Canada and the French-Canadian rouges in Lower Canada who favoured a decentralized union in comparison to the Upper Canadian Conservative party and to some degree the French-Canadian bleus which favoured a centralized union.^[36]

John A. Macdonald became the first prime minister of Canada.

Democracy: Post-Confederation Canada 1867–1914

On July 1, 1867, with the coming into force of the British North America Act (enacted by the British Parliament), the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia became a federated kingdom in its own right.^[37][38] The term dominion was chosen to indicate Canada's status as a self-governing colony of the British Empire, the first time it was used in reference to a country.

With the transfer of Rupert's Land to the Dominion of Canada in 1869, the new country expanded west and north, to assert its authority over a much greater territory. The Red River Colony became the Province of Manitoba in 1870, following the quelling of a Métis rebellion. British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, on the promise of a transcontinental railway to the Pacific, and Prince Edward Island in 1873. British Columbia, upset that the promises of the original agreement were not being met, threatened to withdraw from Confederation but was finally mollified by the project's resurrection; the railway to BC was not completed until 1885, ten years after it was supposed to have been finished. A legacy of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a significant Chinese population in British Columbia, as many Chinese, some of whom had come for the gold rush in the 1850s, were employed in the difficult work. In 1881 one in five non-Native people in British Columbia was of Chinese origin but by 1885 the Dominion government had disenfranchised this population and imposed a head tax of $50 (increased to $500 by 1903) on each Chinese immigrant to restrict their coming.^[39]

German immigrants disembark at Quebec City in 1911

Law and order was handled in the west by the North-West Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), which was founded as a "paramilitary organization" to "subdue the West" as laid out in its charter's opening words. The NWMP's first mission was to suppress the stated desire for independence by the region's Métis inhabitants, which erupted in the form of the Red River Rebellion in 1869 and the later North-West Rebellion in 1885 led by Louis Riel. In 1905 when Saskatchewan and Alberta were admitted as provinces, they were growing rapidly thanks to abundant wheat crops that attracted immigration to the plains by Ukrainians and Central Europeans in addition to settlers from the United States, Britain and eastern Canada.^[40]

The Alaska Boundary Dispute became important when gold was discovered in the Yukon in 1898 but miners had to cross American Alaska to get there. Canada argued its historic boundary with Russian Alaska included the Lynn Canal and the port of Skagway, both occupied by the U.S. The dispute went to arbitration in 1903 but, to the anger of Canadians, the British delegate sided with the Americans. It was a matter of ensuring good relations between London and Washington, at the expense of Canada. The resentment helped defeat Wilfrid Laurier and his Liberal Party in the 1911 election as they proposed a reciprocal trade treaty with the U.S. that would lower tariff barriers. The government was now headed by Conservative Robert Borden, who favoured close ties with Britain.

World wars

Strikers from unemployment relief camps climbing on boxcars as part of the On to Ottawa Trek

Canada's participation in the First World War helped to foster a sense of British-Canadian nationhood. The highpoints of Canadian military achievement came at the Battle of Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917, and later, what became known as Canada's 100 Days. At Vimy the Canadian Corps captured a fortified German hill that had resisted British and French attacks earlier in the war. In the Autumn of 1918, the last 100 days of the war have been labeled Canada's 100 Days in that the Canadian Corps repeatedly spearheaded Allied attacks, with the 4 Canadian Divisions defeating well over 40 German Divisions during this period. The result was that the Canadian Corps became one of the most respected battle tested groups on the Allied side, and one of the most feared by the Germans who referred to them as shock troops. The reputation Canadian troops earned, along with the success of Canadian flying aces including William George Barker and Billy Bishop, helped to give the nation a new sense of identity. As a result of the war, the Canadian government became more assertive and less deferential to British authority, because many Canadians were dismayed by what they saw as British command failures. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster, gave each of the dominions (which included Canada and Newfoundland) the opportunity for almost complete legislative independence from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. While Newfoundland never adopted the statute, for Canada the Statute of Westminster has been called her Declaration of Independence.^[41]

Canada is sometimes considered to be the country hardest hit by the interwar Great Depression. The economy fell further than that of any nation other than the United States. It hit especially hard in Western Canada, where a full recovery did not occur until the Second World War began in 1939. Hard times led to the creation of new political parties such as the Social Credit movement and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, as well as popular protest in the form of the On to Ottawa Trek.

Amphibious vehicles taking Canadian troops across the Scheldt in Holland, during World War II

Canada's involvement in the Second World War began when Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939, one week after Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic began immediately, and from 1943–1945 was led by Leonard W. Murray, the only Canadian to command a theatre of war in World War II. Canadian forces were involved in the failed defence of Hong Kong, the Dieppe Raid in August 1942, the Allied invasion of Italy, and the Battle of Normandy. Of a population of approximately 11.5 million, 1.1 million Canadians served in the armed forces in the Second World War. Many thousands more served in the merchant marines. In all, more than 45,000 gave their lives, and another 55,000 were wounded. Countless others shared the suffering and hardship of war. By the end of the war, Canada had, temporarily at least, become a significant military power. The Big Three paid little attention to Canada.

Conscription legislation was enacted during both wars (though on the initial promise of home-front service only in World War II), leading to increased tension between French and English Canadians. During the First World War, Prime Minister Robert Borden's government enfranchised women who had close male relatives serving overseas, in the hopes of securing their support in the 1917 federal election.

Post War Canada 1945–1960

A view of the construction of housing for war workers and veterans in 1945 in North York, Ontario

Prosperity returned to Canada during Second World War. With continued Liberal governments, national policies increasingly turned to social welfare, including universal health care, old-age pensions, and veterans' pensions.

The financial crisis of the Great Depression, soured by rampant corruption, had led Newfoundlanders to relinquish responsible government in 1934 and become a crown colony ruled by a British governor. Prosperity returned when the U.S. military arrived in 1941 with over 10,000 soldiers and huge investments in air and naval bases. Popular sentiment grew favourable toward the United States, alarming the Canadian government, which now wanted Newfoundland to enter into confederation instead of joining with the U.S. In 1948, the British government gave voters three Referendum choices: remaining a crown colony, returning to Dominion status (that is, independence), or joining Canada. Joining the U.S. was not made an option. After bitter debate Newfoundlanders voted to join Canada in 1949 as a province.^[42]

Canada's foreign policy during the Cold War was closely tied to that of the U.S., which was demonstrated by membership in NATO (which Canada wanted to be a transatlantic economic and political union as well^[43]), sending combat troops into the Korean War, and establishing a joint air defence system (NORAD) with the U.S. The federal government's desire to assert sovereignty in the High Arctic was one of the reasons for the High Arctic relocation, in which scores of Inuit were moved from Northern Quebec to barren Cornwallis Island,^[44] which decades later was the subject of a long investigation by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.^[45]

Quiet Revolution and the Trudeau Era 1960–1981

In the 1960s, a Quiet Revolution took place in Quebec, overthrowing the old establishment which centred on the Catholic Church and modernizing the economy and society. Québécois nationalists demanded independence, and tensions rose until violence erupted during the 1970 October Crisis. In 1976 the Parti québécois was elected to power in Quebec, with a nationalist vision that included securing French linguistic rights in the province and the pursuit of some form of sovereignty for Quebec, leading to a referendum in 1980 in Quebec on the question of sovereignty-association, which was turned down by 59% of the voters.

In 1965 Canada adopted the maple leaf flag, although not without considerable debate and misgivings on the part of large number of English Canadians. Two years later the country celebrated the centennial of Confederation, with an international exposition in Montreal.

Legislative restrictions on immigration that had favoured British and other European immigrants were finally removed in the 1960s opening the doors to immigrants from all parts of the world. While the 1950s had seen high levels of immigration from Britain, Ireland, Italy, and northern continental Europe, by the 1970s immigrants increasingly came from India, Hong Kong, the Caribbean and Vietnam. Post-war immigrants of all backgrounds tended to settle in the major urban centres, particularly Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

During his long tenure in the office (1968–79, 1980–84), Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made social and cultural change his political goal for Canada, including the pursuit of an official policy on bilingualism and plans for significant constitutional change. The west, particularly the oil and gas-producing province of Alberta, opposed many of the policies emanating from central Canada, with the National Energy Program creating considerable antagonism and growing western alienation.

Decade of Disaccord 1982–1992

Signing of the initialization of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992 by representatives of the Canadian, Mexican, and United States governments.

In 1982, the Canada Act was passed by the British parliament and granted Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II on March 29, while the Constitution Act was passed by the Canadian parliament and granted Royal Assent by the Queen on April 17, thus patriating the Constitution of Canada. Previously, the constitution has existed only as an act passed of the British parliament, and was not even physically located in Canada. At the same time, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was added in place of the previous Bill of Rights. The patriation of the constitution was Trudeau's last major act as Prime Minister; he resigned in 1984.

The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney began efforts to bring Quebec into the constitution and end western alienation. The National Energy Program was scrapped and in 1987, talks began with Quebec to officially have Quebec sign the Canadian Constitution. The constitutional reform process under Prime Minister Mulroney culminated in the failure of the Charlottetown Accord which would have recognized Quebec as a "distinct society" but was overwhelmingly rejected in 1992 by the populations of the western provinces and Quebec. Under Mulroney, relations with the United States improved and both Canada and the U.S. began to grow more closely integrated. In 1986, Canada and the U.S. signed the Acid Rain Treaty to reduce acid rain. In 1989, the federal government adopted the Free Trade Agreement with the United States despite significant animosity from the Canadian public who were concerned about the economic and cultural impacts of close integration with the United States.

During the Oka crisis in 1990, the Canadian armed forces was sent in to stop a protest by aboriginals who refused to allow the building of a golf club on land claimed by aboriginals.

A Nation of Nations 1992–present

In the 1990s, anger in predominantly French-speaking Quebec with the failure of constitutional reform talks, and the rising sense of alienation in Canada's western provinces due to the government's preoccupation with attempting to convince Quebec's government to officially endorse the Constitution. After Mulroney resigned as Prime Minister in 1993, Kim Campbell took over and became Canada's first woman Prime Minister. Campbell only remained in office for a few months and the 1993 election saw the collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party from government to only 2 seats, while two new regional political parties: the Quebec-based sovereigntist Bloc Québécois became the official opposition and the largely Western Canada-supported Reform Party of Canada took most of Canada's western ridings. In 1995, the government of Quebec held a second referendum on sovereignty that was rejected by a slimmer margin of just 50.6% to 49.4%.^[46] In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional, and Parliament passed the Clarity Act outlining the terms of a negotiated departure.^[46]

The 1990s was a period of economic turmoil in Canada as Canada suffered from high unemployment in the early 1990s and a large debt and deficit that had been accumulating for years. Both Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments in the federal government and Progressive Conservative governments in Alberta and Ontario made major cutbacks in social welfare spending and significant privatization of government-provided services, government-owned corporations (crown corporations), and utilities occurred during this period as a means to end government deficit and reduce government debt.

In 1995, a controversial standoff in Ipperwash, Ontario resulted in an aboriginal protester being shot dead and a subsequent inquiry discovered prevalent racism amongst the police officers involved in the standoff. Despite this a number of high-profile changes occurred to improve aboriginal rights, such as the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Delgamuukw v. The Queen which recognized that aboriginal title of the Gitxsan Nation and the Wet'suwet'en Nation to large areas in northwest British Columbia had not been extinguished and the signing of the Nisga'a Final Agreement, a treaty between the Nisga'a people, the provincial government of British Columbia and the federal government signed in 1999 which resolved land claims issues. The federal government responded to demands by the Arctic Inuit people for self-governance and in 1999 granted the creation of the territory of Nunavut, which allowed the Inuktitut language to be an official language of the new territory.

In the 2000s, significant social and political changes have occurred in Canada. Canada's border control policy and foreign policy were altered as a result of the political impact of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in 2001 resulting in increased pressure from the U.S. and adoption by Canada of initiatives to secure Canada's side of the border to the U.S. and Canada supported U.S.-led military action in Afghanistan. Canada did not support the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003 which led to increased political animosity between the Canadian and U.S. governments at the time.

Environmental issues increased in importance in Canada resulting in the signing of the Kyoto Accord on climate change by Canada's Liberal government in 2002 but recently nullified by the present government which has proposed a "made-in-Canada" solution to climate change. A merger of the Canadian Alliance and PC Party into the Conservative Party of Canada was completed in 2003, ending a ten year division of the conservative vote, and was elected as a minority government under the leadership of Stephen Harper in the 2006 federal election, ending thirteen years of Liberal party dominance in elections.

In 2006, the House of Commons passed a motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation within Canada, and,

in 2008, the Prime Minister officially apologized on behalf of the sitting Cabinet for the endorsement by previous cabinets of the Canadian residential school system, which had promoted forced cultural assimilation of aboriginal peoples, and in which physical and emotional abuse took place. Canada's aboriginal leaders accepted the apology.

See also

An animation of the evolution of Canada's internal borders, from the formation of the dominion to the present.

Power

• Territorial evolution of Canada
• List of Canadian monarchs
• History of monarchy in Canada
• Military history of Canada
• Technological and industrial history of Canada
• Economic history of Canada

Prosperity

• History of cities in Canada
• Health care in Canada

Creativity

• Scientific research in Canada
• Invention in Canada
• Philosophy in Canada

Other

• List of Canadian historians
• History of the United Kingdom
• History of England
• History of France
• History of North America

Film, television and culture

• Canada: A People's History
• Music of Canada
• Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood
• History of Canadian animation
• History of cinema in Canada
• Postage stamps and postal history of Canada

Notes

Further reading

External links

• The Canadian Museum of Civilization—History Section
• "Living History," an NFB educational site
• Canada from The Canadian Encyclopedia
• History Trek: A Canadian History Portal for elementary schools
• British Colonist newspaper in Victoria, BC; complete text Dec. 1858 to June 1910, searchable
• Peel's Prairie Provinces: A full-text, searchable database of digitized prairie Canadiana, including newspapers and other Western Canadian publications

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