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Canada’s History

From the first peoples and New France to Confederation and the two world wars.

Practise these 80 questionsRead the official chapter

First contact

  • Vikings from Iceland reached Labrador and Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago; l’Anse aux Meadows is a World Heritage site.
  • An Italian who had settled in England, Cabot produced the first map of the Atlantic coast in 1497.
  • Jacques Cartier made three voyages between 1534 and 1542, claiming the land for King Francis I of France.
  • The name Canada comes from the Iroquoian word "kanata", meaning "village".

Royal New France

  • In 1604 Pierre de Monts and Samuel de Champlain founded the first European settlement north of Florida, at St. Croix Island then Port-Royal in Acadia.
  • Champlain fortified the site of today’s Québec City in 1608.
  • The French allied with the Algonquin, Montagnais and Huron against the Iroquois; peace came in 1701.
  • The fur trade was driven by European demand for beaver pelts. Leaders included Jean Talon, Bishop Laval and Count Frontenac.
  • Charles II handed the Hudson’s Bay Company a trading monopoly in 1670 over everything draining into that bay.
  • Those who worked the rivers by canoe went by two names: voyageurs and coureurs des bois.

Struggle for a continent

  • The French lost at the Plains of Abraham outside Québec City in 1759, and with it France lost its American empire. Wolfe and Montcalm, commanding the two armies, both died there.
  • The Quebec Act of 1774 allowed religious freedom for Catholics, let them hold public office, and restored French civil law while keeping British criminal law.
  • In 1776 the 13 colonies declared independence. More than 40,000 Loyalists fled north to Nova Scotia and Quebec. Joseph Brant led thousands of Mohawk Loyalists into Canada. About 3,000 black Loyalists came north.

Democracy and abolition

  • Halifax voted in the first one in 1758; Prince Edward Island followed in 1773 and New Brunswick in 1785.
  • The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided Quebec into Upper Canada (later Ontario) and Lower Canada (later Quebec) and granted elected legislative assemblies. The name "Canada" became official.
  • Under Simcoe, Upper Canada took the Empire’s first legislative step against slavery in 1793. Britain ended it Empire-wide forty years later, in 1833.
  • Thousands of slaves escaped the United States via the Underground Railroad.
  • The Montreal Stock Exchange opened in 1832.

The War of 1812

  • The United States invaded in June 1812, believing Canada would be easy to conquer.
  • Major-General Sir Isaac Brock captured Detroit and was killed at Queenston Heights; Shawnee Chief Tecumseh fought alongside the British.
  • In 1813 Lieutenant-Colonel Charles de Salaberry and 460 mostly French Canadien soldiers turned back 4,000 Americans at Châteauguay.
  • In 1813 the Americans burned York (Toronto); in 1814 Major-General Robert Ross burned the White House in retaliation.
  • Laura Secord walked 30 km in 1813 to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon, contributing to victory at Beaver Dams.
  • The war ensured Canada would remain independent of the United States.

Responsible government

  • Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada in 1837–38 were defeated.
  • Lord Durham recommended merging the Canadas and granting responsible government — ministers must have the support of a majority of elected representatives.
  • No colony in British North America got there before Nova Scotia, which did so over 1847 and 1848.
  • La Fontaine, who fought for both democracy and the French language, led the first responsible government in the Canadas. Robert Baldwin worked alongside him; Joseph Howe carried the same cause in Nova Scotia.

Confederation

  • From 1864 to 1867 the Fathers of Confederation created two levels of government, federal and provincial.
  • The British Parliament passed the British North America Act; the Dominion of Canada was born on July 1, 1867 with Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
  • Until 1982 July 1 was called Dominion Day; today it is Canada Day.
  • Sir Leonard Tilley suggested "Dominion of Canada", inspired by Psalm 72: "dominion from sea to sea".
  • Sir John Alexander Macdonald became the first Prime Minister. January 11 is Sir John A. Macdonald Day. His portrait is on the $10 bill.
  • On the Quebec side, Cartier did more than anyone to design Confederation.

Expansion of the Dominion

  • 1867 — Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick
  • 1870 — Manitoba, Northwest Territories
  • 1871 — British Columbia
  • 1873 — Prince Edward Island
  • 1880 — transfer of the Arctic Islands to the N.W.T.
  • 1898 — Yukon Territory
  • 1905 — Alberta, Saskatchewan
  • 1949 — Newfoundland and Labrador
  • 1999 — Nunavut

The West and the railway

  • Louis Riel led the Métis of the Red River in an armed uprising in 1869–70; Manitoba was created in 1870. A second rebellion in 1885 led to Riel’s trial and execution for high treason.
  • Many regard Riel as a hero — the man who stood up for Métis rights and gave Manitoba its start.
  • Macdonald raised the force in 1873 and based it at Regina. Its successor, the RCMP, polices the country today and is among its most recognisable emblems.
  • British Columbia joined in 1871 after Ottawa promised a railway to the West Coast.
  • On November 7, 1885 Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona) drove the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was built by European and Chinese labour; the government apologized in 2006 for the Chinese Head Tax.
  • Sir Wilfrid Laurier became the first French-Canadian prime minister since Confederation. His portrait is on the $5 bill.

The First World War

  • Over 7,000 Canadians volunteered in the South African (Boer) War, 1899–1902; over 260 died.
  • More than 600,000 Canadians served in the First World War out of a population of eight million.
  • The Canadian Corps captured Vimy Ridge in April 1917 with 10,000 killed or wounded — "the birth of a nation". April 9 is Vimy Day.
  • General Sir Arthur Currie, Canada’s greatest soldier, commanded in 1918 through the Battle of Amiens (August 8, 1918), "the black day of the German Army".
  • Fighting stopped with the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Canadian losses came to 60,000 dead and 170,000 wounded.
  • Between 1914 and 1920 more than 8,000 former subjects of Austria-Hungary, most of them Ukrainian men, were held in camps as so-called enemy aliens.

Women get the vote

  • At Confederation the vote was limited to property-owning adult white males.
  • Emily Stowe, who was the first woman to practise medicine in this country, started the suffrage movement in it.
  • Manitoba was the first province to grant women the vote, in 1916.
  • In 1917 Sir Robert Borden’s government gave the federal vote to nurses at the front and to women related to men in active service; in 1918 most female citizens 21 and over could vote federally.
  • Agnes Macphail became the first woman MP in 1921. Quebec granted women the provincial vote in 1940, thanks to Thérèse Casgrain and others.

Remembrance

  • The day falls on 11 November. A red poppy is worn and a silence kept at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
  • The poppy is for everyone who has served or died in war, up to and including today: more than a million served, 110,000 did not come home.
  • Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian medical officer, wrote "In Flanders Fields" in 1915.

Between the wars and the Second World War

  • The stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression; unemployment reached 27% in 1933.
  • The Bank of Canada was created in 1934.
  • More than one million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in the Second World War out of a population of 11.5 million; 44,000 were killed.
  • Canadians fought at Hong Kong (1941) and Dieppe (1942).
  • On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 15,000 Canadians stormed and captured Juno Beach. About one in ten Allied soldiers on D-Day was Canadian.
  • The Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands in 1944–45; Germany surrendered May 8, 1945; Japan surrendered August 14, 1945.
  • More than 130,000 Allied aircrew learned to fly here under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
  • The Royal Canadian Navy’s finest hour was the Battle of the Atlantic. By the end of the war Canada had the third-largest navy in the world.
  • Canadians of Japanese origin were forcibly relocated and their property sold without compensation; the government apologized and compensated victims in 1988.