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While Aboriginal tradition holds that the First Peoples have inhabited parts of Canada since the dawn of time, archaeological studies date human presence in northern Yukon to 26,000 years ago, and in southern Ontario to 9,500 years ago. Europeans first arrived when the Vikings settled briefly at L'Anse aux Meadows circa AD 1000. The next Europeans to explore Canada's Atlantic coast included John Cabot in 1497 and Martin Frobisher in 1576 for England, and Jacques Cartier in 1534 and Samuel de Champlain in 1603 for France. The first permanent European settlements were established by the French at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608, and by the English in Newfoundland, around 1610. European explorers and trappers brought European diseases, which spread rapidly through native trade routes and decimated the Aboriginal population. As competition for territory, naval bases, furs and fish escalated, several wars broke out involving the French, English and Native tribes. The French and Iroquois Wars erupted between the Iroquois Confederation and the Algonquin, with their French allies, over control of the fur trade. The series of four French and Indian Wars, between 1689 and 1763, saw the French and their Native allies successively lose land to the English. After the British victory in the Seven Years' War, Britain seized the remainder of New France at the Treaty of Paris in 1763. As a result of the American Revolution, approximately 50,000 United Empire Loyalists moved to Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. As they were unwelcome in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick was carved out of that colony for them in 1784. Further, to accommodate the English-speaking Loyalists in Quebec, the province was divided into Francophone Lower Canada and Anglophone Upper Canada under the Constitutional Act in 1791. Soon after, Canada was a major front in the War of 1812 between the United States and British Empire and its successful defense had important long-term effects on Canada, including the building of a sense of unity and nationalism among the population of British North America. Large-scale immigration to Canada began in 1815 from Britain and Ireland. A series of agreements led to long-term peace between Canada and the United States, interrupted only briefly by raids made by political insurgents such as the Hunters' Lodges and the Fenian Brotherhood. Following the failed Rebellions of 1837, which demanded responsible government, colonial officials studied the political situation and issued the Durham Report in 1839. One goal—which proved unacceptable for the alliance of anglophone and francophone reformers that had rebelled in 1837-was to assimilate the French Canadians into British culture. The Canada's were merged into a single, quasi-federal colony, the United Province of Canada, with the Act of Union (1840). The signing of the Oregon Treaty by Britain and the U.S. in 1846 ended the Oregon boundary dispute, extending the border westward along the 49th parallel and ending joint occupation of the Oregon Country/Columbia District. This led to the creation of the colony of Vancouver's Island in 1849 and, with the outbreak of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, the colony of British Columbia in 1858, but both were entirely separate from the United Province of Canada. By the late 1850s, leaders in Canada launched a series of western exploratory expeditions, with the intention of assuming control of Rupert's Land and the Arctic region. The Canadian population grew rapidly due to high birth rates; large immigration rates from Europe were offset by migration to the United States, especially by French Canadians moving to New England. Following the Great Coalition, the Charlottetown Conference and the Quebec Conference of 1864, and the London Conference of 1866, the three colonies—Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—undertook the process of Confederation. The British North America Act created "one dominion under the name of Canada", with four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. After Canada assumed control of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory, which together formed the Northwest Territories in 1870, a lack of attention to the Métis led to the Red River Rebellion, which eventually led to the creation of the province of Manitoba and its entry into Confederation in July 1870. British Columbia and Vancouver Island (which had united in 1866) and the colony of Prince Edward Island joined Confederation in 1871 and 1873, respectively. To connect the union and assert authority over the western provinces, Canada constructed three trans-continental railways, most notably the Canadian Pacific Railway, encouraged immigrants to develop the prairies with the Dominion Lands Act, and established the North West Mounted Police. As more settlers came to the prairies on the railway and the population grew, regions of the Northwest Territories were given provincial status forming Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905. Canada automatically entered the First World War in 1914 with Britain's declaration of war, and sent formed divisions, composed almost entirely of volunteers, to the Western Front to fight as a national contingent. Casualties were so high that Prime Minister Robert Borden was forced to bring in conscription in 1917; this move was extremely unpopular in Quebec, resulting in his Conservative party losing support in that province. Although the Liberals were deeply divided over conscription, they pulled together and became the dominant political party. In 1919, Canada joined the League of Nations in its own right, and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster confirmed that no act of the British parliament would extend to Canada without its consent. At the same time, the worldwide Great Depression of 1929 affected Canadians of every class; the rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Alberta and Saskatchewan presaged a welfare state as pioneered by Tommy Douglas in the 1940s and 1950s. After supporting appeasement of Germany in the late 1930s, Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King secured Parliament’s approval for entry into the Second World War in 1939, mobilizing the military before Germany invaded Poland. The economy boomed during the war due in large part to the enormous amounts of military materiel being produced for Canada, Britain, China and the Soviet Union. Canada finished the war with one of the largest militaries in the world. In 1949, the formerly independent Dominion of Newfoundland joined Confederation as Canada's tenth province. By Canada's centennial in 1967, mass post-war immigration from various war-ravaged European countries had changed the country's demographics. In addition, throughout the Vietnam War, thousands of US American draft dodgers fled to and settled in various parts of Canada. Increased immigration, combined with the baby boom, an economic strength paralleling that of the 1960s United States, and reaction to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, led to the beginnings of a new type of Canadian nationalism. At a meeting of First Ministers in November 1981, the federal and provincial governments agreed to the partition of the constitution, with procedures for amending it. Despite the fact that the Quebec government did not agree to the changes, on 17 April 1982, Canada, by Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II, partiotined its Constitution from Britain, thereby making Canada wholly sovereign, though the two countries continue to share the same monarch. After Quebec underwent profound social and economic changes during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, some Québécois began pressing for more provincial autonomy, or even partial or complete independence from Canada. Alienation between English-speaking Canadians and the Québécois over the language, cultural and social divide had been exacerbated by many events, including the Conscription Crisis of 1944. Referendums in Quebec in 1980 and 1995 saw 59.6% and 50.6% of voters reject proposals for sovereignty-association. The Supreme Court, in 1997, ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional. Economic integration with the United States increased after 1940. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 was a defining moment in integrating the two countries. From the 1980s onward, Canadians worried about their cultural autonomy as American TV shows, movies and corporations became omnipresent. However, Canadians take special pride in their system of universal health care and their commitment to multiculturalism. |
Canada Information: Inside
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