Canada's history

Canada is a country with a centuries-old history full of

important events. A nation that has customs and culture
that come from several countries, and that go back many
years in time. A territory that has gone through various
historical periods and stages over the centuries that must
be known. At Curio Sfera -Historia.com , we explain the
history of Canada and its origin .

Origin of Canada
To know the history and origin of Canada , you must
first know what it is like and its geographical location.
After Russia, Canada (Canada) is the largest state on Earth.
Located in North America, it occupies the northern part of
the continent, except Alaska, which belongs to the USA .
Its extension, however, has not allowed the population to
be distributed exhaustively; 90% of Canadians live along
the country's southern border.
Far from representing an impediment to its development,
this relationship between demographics and the physical
environment has shaped a socioeconomic reality that is
distinguished by the full availability of enormous natural
resources and the possibility of distributing them in a
comfortable manner.
Perhaps few countries present such a stark contrast as
Canada. If on the one hand it is a very modern nation, a
leading economic power that is part of the main
international forums, on the other it is still a country to be
discovered. A border between the wild world and
civilization, an immense territory in which there are large
unexplored areas, in short, a still living banner of the epic
of the pioneers.

 Continent : America.
 Surface : 9,959,400 km2.
 Capital : Ottawa.
 Population : 33,124,512 inhabitants.
 Canadian dollar currency .
  Official languages : English and French.

Discovery, exploration and colonization of Canada

The Icelanders arrived on the coasts of Canada

around the 9th century , but John Cabot, a sailor in the
service of England, was the first official explorer .
Jacques Cartier began exploring the country by traveling up
the St. Lawrence River to present-day Montreal (1534-35).
In the 17th century, the organization of the colony began:
Quebec was founded in 1608 and Montreal was
founded in 1642 . The colony was granted to the
Company of New France , created for this purpose in
1627, until its conversion into a royal domain (1663).
The colonial population , established in the San Lorenzo
Valley, grew in a few years under the protection of
agriculture. But French rule lacked solid foundations: a
small number of colonists to meet the expansion ambitions
of English establishments, poor organization, a feudal
property regime, excessive power of the clergy, lack of
political and commercial autonomy.
English pressure began with the founding of the Hudson's
Bay Company (1670), dedicated to the fur trade. Then,
the Anglo-French rivalry in Europe had repercussions in
America.
Thus, the Treaty of Utrecht forced France to cede Nova
Scotia, and the Seven Years' War was used by Great
Britain to defeat the French army (Plain of Abraham, 1759)
and take control of Canada.
This occupation was sanctioned by the Treaty of Paris
(1763).

Canada's human history began about 15,000 years

ago, when the area's Aboriginal people forged
thriving communities in the lush wilderness. But
everything changed when at the end of the s. In the
15th century the Europeans arrived and began to
claim rights; This generated conflicts and ended up
creating a new and extensive nation. Today much of
this picturesque heritage can be seen at more than
950 national historic sites ranging from forts to
battlefields to famous homes.

The first people

The early settlers of Canada were probably nomadic
Asian hunters who, out of necessity, pursued
caribou, elk and bison, crossing the land bridge that
linked Siberia and Alaska. When the Earth warmed
and the glaciers retreated, those migrant people
progressively expanded throughout the continent.

About 4,500 years ago, a second wave of migration

from Siberia took the ancestors of the Inuit people to
Canada. The newcomers, seeing that refrigerator full
of delicious fish and seals, decided to stay. The early
Inuit were part of the Dorset culture, so named
because their first remains were excavated at Cape
Dorset, on Baffin Island. Around 1000 AD There was
a different Inuit culture, that of the Thule hunters
and whalers from northern Alaska, who began
moving eastward through the Canadian Arctic. The
Thule are the direct ancestors of the current Inuit.

At the end of the s. In the 15th century, when the

first Europeans arrived, Aboriginal peoples were
distributed in four main settlements throughout
Canada: the Pacific, the Plains, the southern
Ontario/St. Lawrence River area, and the
northeastern forests.

Vikings and European explorers

The famous Viking Leif Eriksson and his tribe of
Scandinavian sailors were the first Europeans not
only to reach the shores of Canada, but to set foot in
North America. Around 1000 AD They surrounded the
eastern coast of Canada, founding winter camps and
stations to repair ships and supply supplies, such as
L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. The native
tribes did not welcome them with open arms, and the
Vikings, tired of so much hostility, returned to their
land. For the next 300 or 400 years there were no
more foreign incursions into the territory.

But things changed at the end of the 20th century.

XV. In 1492, with the backing of the Spanish Crown,
Christopher Columbus set out in search of a western
sea route to Asia and came across some small
islands in the Bahamas. Other European kings,
shocked by such a “discovery,” soon sponsored their
own expeditions. In 1497, Giovanni Cabot (John
Cabot), sailing under the British flag, reached further
west, as far as Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

Cabot did not find the way to China, but he did find
cod, a highly coveted product in Europe. Soon,
hundreds of ships were plying the waters between
Europe and those new and fertile fishing grounds. It
didn't take long for Basque whalers to arrive from
northern Spain and several of them settled in Red
Bay (Labrador), which became the main world
whaling port during the 19th century. XVI.

King Francis I of France looked at his neighbors,

stroked his beard, snapped his fingers, and ordered
Jacques Cartier to appear before him. At that time,
they were not only looking for the Northwest
Passage but also for gold, given the discoveries of
the Spanish conquistadors in Aztec and Inca
territories. The king counted on finding similar riches
in the frozen north.

Upon arriving in Labrador, Cartier found only “stones

and some horrible, steep rocks,” as he noted in his
1534 diary. But he continued exploring and soon
landed on the Gaspé Peninsula (Quebec), whose
lands he claimed for France. The native Iroquois
accepted Cartier until he kidnapped two of the
chief's sons and took them with him to Europe. He
returned them a year later, when he was going up
the Saint Lawrence River towards Stadacona
(present-day Quebec City) and Hochelaga (present-
day Montreal). There he heard news of a land full of
gold and silver called Saguenay, which in 1541
motivated his third trip, but the mythical riches
eluded him again.

The rise of fur

Francis I was beginning to get fed up with the fact

that his distant colony was not producing the desired
goods. But his interest was renewed a few decades
later when fur hats became fashionable. Important
people wore one and, as fashion experts knew, there
was no hat more refined than the beaver one. Since
beavers were scarce in the Old World, demand for
the product from overseas was high.

When the French Crown granted the first commercial

monopoly in Canada in 1588, other merchants were
quick to question this right. Thus began the struggle
for control of the fur trade. The economic importance
of this company and its role in the development of
Canadian history should not be underestimated, as it
was the main reason for European colonization, the
origin of the struggle for hegemony between the
French and the British, and the source of conflicts
and discord between aboriginal groups.

To gain control of those distant lands, European

personnel first had to be brought in. In the summer of
1604, a group of French pioneers founded a
temporary settlement on Île Ste-Croix (an islet in the
river, on the current US border in Maine) and the
following spring they moved to Port Royal (present-
day Annapolis Royal ) in Nova Scotia. These
locations, difficult to defend, were not good for
controlling the fur trade with the interior. Going up
the Saint Lawrence River, the future settlers finally
found a site that their leader, Samuel de Champlain,
considered ideal terrain: the place where Quebec
City sits today. In 1608 “New France” became a
reality.

French against English

The French enjoyed their luxurious fur monopoly for

several decades, but in 1670 the British gave them a
run for their money when two disillusioned French
explorers, Radisson and Des Groseilliers, told them
that the best area for furs was to the north and west
of the lake. Superior, and that its access was easy
through Hudson Bay. King Charles II immediately
created the Hudson's Bay Company and gave it a
commercial monopoly over all lands whose rivers
and streams flowed into the bay. This immense
territory, called Rupert's Land, comprised about 40%
of modern-day Canada, including Labrador, western
Quebec, northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, much of
Saskatchewan and Alberta, as well as an area of the
Northwest Territories.

The English angered the French with such moves,

and they continued to respond by settling further
inland. Both countries claimed rights over the land,
but each aspired to dominate the entire region. They
engaged in hostilities that were a reflection of the
situation in Europe, where wars in the first half of
the 20th century. XVIII were devastating.

The critical point came with the Treaty of Utrecht,

which ended Queen Anne's War (1701-1713)
overseas. Under its provisions, the French had to
recognize British rights to Hudson Bay and
Newfoundland, and cede all of Nova Scotia (then
called Acadia), except Cape Breton Island.

The conflict remained dormant for several decades

until it was revived with unusual force in 1754, when
both countries faced each other in the Seven Years'
War. But the balance soon tipped in favor of the
British when they conquered the fortress of
Ludwigsburg, which allowed them to control the
strategic entrance to the St. Lawrence River.
In 1759, the British besieged Quebec and scaled the
cliffs to launch a surprise attack that defeated the
stunned French. It was one of the most famous and
bloody battles in Canada, in which the generals in
command of both armies died. France ceded Canada
to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris (1763).

The problems grow

Managing the newly acquired territory posed a great

challenge to the British. To begin with, they had to
quell uprisings by Aboriginal tribes, such as Ottawa
Chief Pontiac's attack on Detroit. The British
Government issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763,
which prevented settlers from settling west of the
Appalachians and regulated purchases of Aboriginal
land. Although full of good intentions, the
proclamation was hardly followed.

The French Canadians were the next headache.

Tensions arose when the new rulers imposed British
law that severely limited the rights of Roman
(French) Catholics, including the right to vote and
hold office. The British hoped that their
discriminatory policy would cause a mass exodus of
settlers, which would facilitate the work of
Anglicization. But the plan did not work: the French,
impassive, stuck to their guns.

As if the tribes and the French were not enough of a

problem, the southern American colonies began to
rebel. British Governor Guy Carleton wisely
concluded that gaining the political loyalty of French
settlers was better than accustoming them to
drinking tea, and hence came the Quebec Act of
1774, which validated the right of French Canadians
to their religion, It allowed them to hold political
office and restored the use of French civil law. Thus,
during the American Revolution (1775-1783) the
majority of French Canadians refused to take up
arms for the American cause, although there were
not many who willingly defended the British either.

After the revolution, Canada's English-speaking

population increased exponentially thanks to 50,000
emigrants from the newly independent United States.
Many of these colonists, called United Empire
Loyalists for their supposed loyalty to Great Britain,
were motivated more by cheap land than by love of
the king and the Crown. Most ended up in Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick, while a smaller group
settled on the north shore of Lake Ontario and in the
Ottawa River Valley, where they formed the nucleus
of the future Ontario. And some 8,000 moved to
Quebec to create the first major anglophone
community in the francophone stronghold.

A Nation Divided: Upper and Lower Canada

Partly to satisfy the interests of the loyalist

colonists, the British Government passed the
Constitution Act of 1791 which divided the colony
into Upper Canada (present-day southern Ontario)
and Lower Canada (present-day southern Quebec).
Lower Canada retained French civil laws, but both
provinces were governed by the British penal code.

The British Crown placed a governor in charge of

each colony, who appointed the members of his
“cabinet” or Executive Council. The legislative
branch consisted of an appointed Legislative Council
and an elected Assembly that theoretically
represented the interests of the colonists. In reality,
the Assembly had little power, since the governor
held the right of veto. It is not surprising that all this
was a cause of friction and antipathy, especially in
Lower Canada, where an English governor and an
English-dominated Council controlled an Assembly
with a French majority.
Nepotism made the situation worse. Members of the
British conservative mercantile elite who dominated
the Executive and Legislative councils showed little
interest in French-Canadian problems. Known as
Family Compact in Upper Canada and Château Clique
in Lower Canada, their ranks included John Molson
and university founder James McGill. The group's
influence grew especially after the War of 1812, an
unsuccessful attempt by the United States to invade
its northern neighbor.

In 1837, the frustration generated by these

entrenched elites reached a critical point. The leader
of the Canadian Party, Louis-Joseph Papineau, and
his Upper Canadian counterpart and leader of the
Reform Party, William Lyon Mackenzie, each
promoted open rebellions against the Government.
Although both were soon put down, the incident
demonstrated to the British that the status quo could
no longer be maintained.

Union with reservations

The British sent John Lambton, Earl of Durham, to

investigate the causes of the rebellions. Lambton
observed that ethnic tensions were at the heart of
the problem and described the French and British as
“two nations fighting within a single state.” He
earned the nickname “Jack the Radical” by claiming
that French culture and society were inferior and an
obstacle to expansion and greatness; He believed
that only by assimilating British laws, language, and
institutions would French nationalism be ended and
lasting peace achieved for the colonies. These ideas
were reflected in the Union Act of 1840.

Upper and Lower Canada soon merged into the

province of Canada, governed by a single legislative
body: the new Parliament of Canada. Each of the
former colonies had the same number of
representatives, a fact that was not fair to Lower
Canada (i.e. Quebec), whose population was much
higher. The positive was that the new system of
responsible government limited the powers of the
governor and eradicated nepotism.

Although most Anglo-Canadians accepted the new

system, the French were not convinced. Quite the
contrary, the union's underlying goal of destroying
French culture, language, and identity united
francophones even more. The provisions of the law
left deep wounds that have not completely healed
today.
Thus, the province was reunified on a slippery slope.
The following decade was marked by political
instability and by governments that succeeded one
another quite quickly. Meanwhile, the United States
had become an economic power, while British North
America was still a loose mosaic of independent
colonies. The Civil War (1861-1865) and the purchase
of Alaska from Russia by the United States in 1867
raised fears of annexation. When it became clear
that only a less unstable political system would
avoid these problems, the movement toward federal
union gained momentum.

Confederacy

In 1864, Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island or PEI)

was the delivery room where modern Canada would
come to light. The “Fathers of Confederation” (a
group of representatives from Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, PEI, Ontario and Quebec) met at the
city's Province House to draw up the framework for a
new nation. After two more meetings, Parliament
passed the British North America Act of 1867,
beginning the modern, autonomous state of Canada,
initially called the Dominion of Canada. The day the
law became official, July 1, is the Canadian national
holiday; It was called Dominion Day until 1982, when
it was renamed Canada Day.

The conquest of the west

The Dominion's first task was to incorporate the

remaining lands and colonies of the Confederacy.
Under Prime Minister John A. MacDonald, the
Government purchased the extensive territory of
Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in
1869 for the paltry amount of £300,000 (about $11.5
million today). These lands that are today called the
Northwest Territories (NWT) were very sparsely
populated, there were mainly plains aborigines and
several thousand Métis, a racial mixture of Cree,
Ojibwe or Saulteaux and French-Canadian or Scottish
fur traders, whose main language It was the French.
Their largest settlement was the Red River Colony of
Fort Garry (present-day Winnipeg).

The Canadian government soon confronted the Métis

over land use rights; hence the Métis formed a
provisional government led by the charismatic Louis
Riel. In November 1869, Riel seized Upper Fort Garry
and forced Ottawa to negotiate. But when his
delegation was already on its way, in a fit of rage
Riel executed a Canadian prisoner held in the fort.
Although the murder sparked outrage in Canada, the
government was so interested in absorbing the West
that it agreed to almost all of Riel's demands,
including those to protect the Métis language and
religion. Thus, in July 1870, the then small province
of Manitoba left the Northwest Territories to join the
Dominion. Macdonald sent troops in search of Riel,
but he managed to flee to the United States and in
1875 a five-year exile was imposed on him.

British Columbia (BC), created in 1866 by the merger

of the colonies of New Caledonia and Vancouver
Island, was the next frontier. The discovery of gold
on the Fraser River in 1858 and in the Cariboo region
in 1862 led to a large influx of settlers to mining rush
towns such as Williams Lake and Barkerville. But
when the gold mines dried up, British Columbia sank
into poverty. In 1871 it joined the Dominion in
exchange for the Canadian Government assuming all
of its debt and promising to connect it to the east by
a transcontinental railway within 10 years.

The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway

was one of the most extraordinary chapters in
Canadian history. Macdonald believed that the
railroad would be crucial in unifying the country and
would stimulate immigration, business and
manufacturing. It was an expensive undertaking,
made even more difficult by the steep terrain. To
attract investors, the government offered them
important benefits, such as extensive land grants in
western Canada.

To bring law and order to the “Wild West”, the

Government created the North West Mounted Police
(NWMP) in 1873, later converted into the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The so-called
mounties are still the Canadian national police.
Despite its effectiveness, the NWMP was unable to
prevent problems from arising on the prairies, where
the native peoples of the plains were quick to
question their situation.

Meanwhile, many Métis had moved to Saskatchewan

to settle in Batoche. As in Manitoba, they soon
clashed with government inspectors over land
issues. In 1884, after their repeated appeals to
Ottawa were ignored, they convinced Louis Riel to
return from exile to defend their cause. Rejected,
Riel responded the only way he knew how: by
forming a provisional government and leading the
Métis to revolt. Riel had Cree backing, but times had
changed: with the railroad nearly completed, the
government army arrived within days. Riel
surrendered in May and that same year he was
hanged for treason.

Letting go of the moorings

Canada entered the 20th century with optimism. XX.

Industrialization was in full swing, gold had been
found in the Yukon and Canadian resources, from
wheat to timber, were increasingly in demand.
Furthermore, the new railroad had opened the
floodgates to a torrent of immigration.

Between 1885 and 1914, some 4.5 million people

arrived in Canada. Among them were numerous
foreign groups who came to work on the prairies.
There was a climate of optimism and Prime Minister
Wilfrid Laurier declared: “The 19th century was the
century of the United States. I think we can affirm
that Canada will be the protagonist of the xx.” This
new confidence put the country on the path to
independence, especially at the outbreak of World
War I.

As a member of the British Empire, Canada was

automatically drawn into the conflict. In the early
years of the war, more than 300,000 volunteers
marched to European battlefields, but as the war
dragged on enlistment stalled. With the intention of
replenishing the depleted military personnel, in 1917
the Government presented a mandatory recruitment
project. It was a very unpopular measure, especially
among French Canadians. Thousands of Quebecers
took to the streets in protest: the problem left
Canada divided and Canadians full of distrust of the
Government.

When the guns finally fell silent in 1918, most

Canadians were tired of fighting for Britain in distant
wars. Under the Government of William Lyon
Mackenzie King, an eccentric man who
communicated with spirits and worshiped his dead
mother, Canada began to claim its independence.
Mackenzie made it clear that Britain could no longer
automatically call on Canada's military, began
signing agreements without British consent, and
sent a Canadian ambassador to Washington. Such
forcefulness led to the Statute of Westminster,
approved by the British Parliament in 1931, which
formalized the independence of Canada and other
Commonwealth countries, although Great Britain
retained the right to approve amendments to its
constitutions.
This right continued for a century and was not
eliminated until the Canada Act 1982, ratified by
Queen Elizabeth II on April 17 on Parliament Hill in
Ottawa. Today, Canada is a constitutional monarchy
with a Parliament made up of an appointed upper
house, or Senate, and an elected lower house, or
Commons. The British monarch remains the head of
state, although his role is testimonial and does not
undermine Canadian sovereignty. In Canada, the
representative of the monarchy is an appointed
governor general.

Canada today

The period after World War II brought another wave

of economic expansion and immigration from Europe.

Newfoundland eventually joined Canada in 1949.

Joey Smallwood, the politician who convinced the
island to join, maintained that this would lead to
economic prosperity and when he became prime
minister of Newfoundland he promoted a program of
relocation of citizens. People living in small isolated
fishing villages were encouraged to move inland with
schools, healthcare and other services more
economically. Another method was to eliminate ferry
services; Thus the villages were cut off as there
were no roads.

The only province that fell behind during the boom of

the 1950s was Quebec. It had remained for a quarter
of a century in the hands of the ultra-conservative
Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale party,
with the support of the Catholic Church and several
businessmen. It did not begin to catch up until the
“Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, when the public
sector expanded, investment was made in public
education, and hydroelectric plants were
nationalized. Still, progress was not fast enough for
radical nationalists, for whom the only way to
guarantee the rights of francophones was
independence. Quebec has spent subsequent years
flirting with separatism.

In 1960, Canada's Aboriginal people gained Canadian

nationality, and in the decades that followed, issues
related to land rights and discrimination emerged. In
1990, native frustration came to a head with the Oka
crisis that pitted the government and a group of
Mohawk activists near Montreal. The conflict was
triggered by a land allocation, when the population
of Oka planned to expand a golf course on land
considered sacred to the Mohawk. This led to a
confrontation that lasted 78 days and in which a
police officer died. The case shocked the country.

After Oka, a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

issued a report that recommended a comprehensive
review of relations between the Government and
indigenous peoples. In 1998, the Ministry of
Indigenous and Northern Affairs issued a Declaration
of Reconciliation accepting responsibility for the
injustices committed to Aboriginal people. In 1999,
the government resolved the largest land claim by
creating the new territory of Nunavut, which it
handed over to the Inuit who had long lived in the
northern region. Other more recent disputes have
focused on the name change of emblematic places
such as Mount Douglas, near Victoria (BC).

In 1985, Canada became the first country in the

world to pass a nationwide multicultural law. Today,
more than 20% of the Canadian population is foreign-
born. British Columbia has a long history of
welcoming Japanese, Chinese and South Asian
immigrants. The Prairie Provinces have traditionally
been the destination for large numbers of Ukrainians,
and Ontario has a large Caribbean and Russian
population, as well as being home to 60% of Muslims.

The new millennium has been good to Canada. The

loonie took off in 2003 thanks to oil, diamonds and
other natural resources, and tolerance is going from
strength to strength with the legalization of
therapeutic marijuana and gay marriage. The country
showed the world its exuberant wealth by
successfully hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics in
Vancouver.