Canada is a country of 32 million inhabitants that occupies the northern portion of the North American continent, and is the world's second largest country in area.[1] Inhabited for millennia by First Nations (aboriginal), Canada has evolved from a group of European colonies into an officially bilingual (English and French), multicultural federation, having peacefully obtained sovereignty from its last colonial possessor, Great Britain. France sent the first large group of settlers in the 17th century, but Canada came to be dominated by the British until the country attained full independence in the 20th century. Its history has been affected by its inhabitants, its geography, and its relations with the outside world.
There are a number of reports of contact made before Columbus between the first peoples and those from other continents. The case of Viking contact is supported by the remains of a Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. This may well have been the place Icelandic Norseman Leifur Eiríksson referred to as Vinland around the year 1000.
The presence of Basque cod fishermen and whalers, just a few years after Columbus, has also been cited, with at least nine fishing outposts having been established on Labrador and Newfoundland. The largest of these settlements was the Red Bay station, with an estimated 900 people. Basque whalers may have begun fishing the Grand Banks as early as the 15th century.
The next European explorer acknowledged as landing in what is now Canada was John Cabot, who landed somewhere on the coast of North America (probably Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island) in 1497 and claimed it for King Henry VII of England. Portuguese and Spanish explorers also visited Canada, but it was the French who first began to explore further inland and set up colonies, beginning with Jacques Cartier in 1534. An attempt at settlement was made in 1600 at Tadoussac; the settlement failed but Tadoussac remained a trading post.[2] Under Samuel de Champlain, the first French settlement was made in 1605 at Port-Royal (today's Annapolis Royal), and in 1608 the heart of New-France, which later grew to be Quebec City, was established. The French claimed Canada as their own and 6,000 settlers arrived, settling along the St. Lawrence and in the Maritimes. Britain also had a presence in Newfoundland and with the advent of settlements, claimed the south of Nova Scotia as well as the areas around the Hudson Bay.
The first contact with the Europeans was disastrous for the first peoples. Explorers and traders brought European diseases, such as smallpox, which killed off entire villages. Relations varied between the settlers and the Natives. The French befriended several Algonquin nations, including the Huron peoples and nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy, and entered into a mutually beneficial trading relationship with them. The Iroquois, however, became dedicated opponents of the French and warfare between the two was unrelenting, especially as the British armed the Iroquois in an effort to weaken the French.
The first agricultural settlements in what was to become Canada were located around the French settlement of Port Royal in what is now Nova Scotia. The population of Acadians, as this group became known, reached 5,000 by 1713.
After Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608 it became the capital of New France. The coastal communities were based upon the cod fishery, the economy along the St Lawrence River was based on farming. French voyageurs traveled deep into the hinterlands (of what is today Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba) trading guns, gunpowder, cloth, knives, and kettles for beaver furs. The fur trade only encouraged a small population, however, as minimal labour was required. Encouraging settlement was always difficult, and while some immigration did occur, by 1759 New France only had a population of some 60,000.
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.
While the French were well established in Canada, Britain had control over the Thirteen Colonies to the south as well as control over Hudson Bay. The British, however, with greater financial power and a larger navy, were consistently in a better position to defend and expand their colonies than the French.[citation needed] The French government gave very little support to their colonists in New France and the colonists, for the most part, had to fend for themselves.[citation needed] 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. This gave Britain control over thousands of French-speaking Acadians. Not trusting these new subjects, who repeatedly proclaimed their neutrality, the British first tried to dilute their numbers by bringing in Protestants settlers from Europe. Finally the British ordered the Great Upheaval of 1755, deporting about 12,000 Acadians to destinations throughout their North American holdings. Many 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 Yankees from New England who transformed Nova Scotia.
During King George's War, British colonial forces captured the French stronghold of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, but this gain was returned to France under the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
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.
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 North America. The new British rulers left alone much of the religious, political and social culture of the French-speaking habitants. Violent conflict continued during the next century, leading Canada into the War of 1812 and a pair of Rebellions in 1837.
The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and Great Britain with the British North American colonies being used as pawns.[3] Although the causes of the war are still being debated by historians, one the most common assumptions is that the tensions in the maritime region between the United States and Britain reached a boiling point.[4] Although not as important as the tensions between the two powers in the maritimes, another speculation is that the United States went to war with plans of invading Canada and annexing them to the United States.[5] Another possible reason for the war was the tensions that were rising on the western front, which was becoming increasingly more difficult to navigate.[6] The US Congress declared war on Britain in June 1812, with the majority of the votes coming from delegates of the south and the west, who believed that the only way to expand westward would be to defeat Canada, as well as the Indians, and that would open the west.[7]
The War of 1812 ended with the Treaty of Ghent and the Rush-Bagot agreement of 1817. [8] Neither side saw any land gains or losses, the only people who really lost were the Indians who fought for the British and were important in turning the Americans away from Canada, and they got nothing except to choose between two evils, the United States who would be brutal after the war or the British who may be more charitable.[9] One thing that the War of 1812 did accomplish was the shifting of American migration from north to Upper Canada to the west into Ohio and Michigan.[10] The war was another example of Canada rejecting the Americans and their idea of republicanism.[11]
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, with some American backing, 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. Les Patriotes, however, were 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, however, was the amalgamation of Upper and Lower Canada in order to forcibly assimilate the French speaking population; The Canadas were merged into a single, quasi-federal colony, the United Province of Canada, with the Act of Union (1840).
Once the United States agreed to the 49th parallel north as the border separating it from western British North America, the British government created the Pacific coast colonies of British Columbia in 1848 and Vancouver Island in 1849, They were eventually united in 1866.
A set of proposals called the Seventy-Two Resolutions were drafted at the 1864 Quebec Conference. They laid out the framework for an independent Canada. They were adopted by the majority of the provinces of Canada, and became the basis for the London Conference of 1866.
On July 1, 1867, with the passing of the British North America Act by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia became a federation, regarded as a kingdom in her own right.[12] John A. Macdonald had spoken of "founding a great British monarchy" and wanted the newly created country to be called the "Kingdom of Canada."[13] Although it had its monarch in London, the Colonial Office opposed as "premature" and "pretentious" the term "kingdom." It might antagonize the United States. 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 construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the new country expanded East, West and North, to assert its authority over a greater territory. A major means to achieve this was the foundation of the Northwest Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) which patrolled the territories. Manitoba joined the Dominion in 1870, and British Columbia in 1871. Westward expansion encountered serious resistance from the region's Métis inhabitants, in the form of the Red River Rebellion and the North-West Rebellion. In 1905, Saskatchewan and Alberta were admitted as provinces.
Canada's participation in the First World War helped to foster a sense of Canadian nationhood. The highpoint of Canadian military achievement came at the Battle of Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917, in which the Canadian Corps captured a fortified German hill that had resisted British and French attacks earlier in the war. Battles such as Vimy, as well as the success of Canadian flying aces including William Barker and Billy Bishop, helped to give Canada 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.
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.
Canada's involvement in the Second World War began when Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939, one week after Britain. 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 marine. 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. However, 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 Borden's government enfranchised women who had close male relatives serving overseas, in the hopes of securing their support in the 1917 federal election.
Prosperity returned to Canada during Second World War. With continued Liberal governments, national policies increasingly turned to social welfare, including hospital insurance, 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 American military arrived in 1941 with over 10,000 soldiers and huge investments in air and naval bases. Popular sentiment grew favourable toward the Americans, alarming the Canadian government, which now wanted Newfoundland to enter into confederation instead of falling into the American orbit. 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.[14]
Canada's foreign policy during in the Cold War was closely tied to that of the U.S., demonstrated by membership in NATO, sending combat troops into the Korean War, and establishing a joint air defence system (NORAD) with the U.S.
In the 1960s, a Quiet Revolution took place in Quebec, overthrowing the old establishment which centered 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. During his long tenure in the office (1968–79, 1980–84), Prime Minister Trudeau made social change his political goal for Canada.
As the highlight of his nearly 16 years as prime minister, Trudeau negotiated the Patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982, which included the introduction to Canada of a Charter of Rights and final independence from Britain (though Canada had been effectively independent for many decades). The Patriation negotiations led to renewed antagonism between Quebec and the rest of Canada, which later Prime Minister Mulroney's Meech Lake Accord failed to smooth over. During the same decade, Canada engaged in violent conflict both abroad in the First Gulf War and at home, during the Oka Crisis. Also this period saw the Mount Cashel Boys Home Scandal.
In the past decade and a half, Canada experienced the tenure of another one of the longest continuously serving prime ministers (Jean Chrétien), a second Quebec referendum on sovereignty, and the creation of a new territory, Nunavut. While long standing issues like immigration continued to demand attention, new debates over same-sex marriage and international peacekeeping would increasingly take the forefront.
As of 2007, Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada, leading the Conservative Party in a minority government.
