Who We Are

The three founding peoples, the two official languages, and a country of immigrants.

Identity

Canada has the oldest continuous constitutional tradition in the world and is the only constitutional monarchy in North America.
"Peace, Order, and Good Government" is a key phrase from the British North America Act of 1867.
The three founding peoples are Aboriginal, French and British.

The accepted account has their ancestors crossing from Asia thousands of years before contact.
Territorial rights were first guaranteed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 by King George III, the basis for treaty negotiation.
From the 1800s until the 1980s many Aboriginal children were placed in residential schools; Ottawa formally apologized to former students in 2008.
Three distinct groups: First Nations (the term replaced "Indian" in the 1970s), Inuit, and Métis.
Roughly half live on reserve, spread over some 600 communities; the rest live elsewhere, mostly in cities.
"Inuit" means "the people" in Inuktitut. The Inuit live in small scattered communities across the Arctic.
A people in their own right, of mixed Aboriginal and European descent, concentrated across the Prairies and speaking Michif.
Roughly 65% of Aboriginal people are First Nations, 30% Métis and 4% Inuit.

18 million Anglophones and 7 million Francophones.
Most Francophones live in Quebec; one million live in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba.
New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province.
The Acadians are descendants of French colonists who began settling the Maritimes in 1604. Between 1755 and 1763 more than two-thirds were deported — the "Great Upheaval".
Most Quebecers descend from 8,500 French settlers of the 1600s and 1700s. In 2006 the House of Commons recognized that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.
One million Anglo-Quebecers have a heritage of 250 years in the province.

The majority of Canadians were born in Canada, and that has been true since the 1800s.
Largest ethnic groups: English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian and Scandinavian.
Since the 1970s most immigrants have come from Asian countries.
Chinese languages are the second most-spoken at home in Vancouver (13%) and Toronto (7%).
The great majority of Canadians identify as Christians; Catholic is the largest affiliation.
The law protects gay and lesbian Canadians equally, civil marriage included.