Canada's History

Aboriginal peoples had lived in Canada for thousands of years before Europeans arrived, with diverse ways of life: the Huron-Wendat and Iroquois were farmers and hunters, the Cree and Dene of the Northwest were hunter-gatherers, the Sioux were nomadic following the bison herd, and the Inuit lived off Arctic wildlife. The first Europeans were Vikings from Iceland who reached Labrador and the island of Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago; remains of their settlement can be seen at l'Anse aux Meadows.

European exploration began in earnest in 1497 when John Cabot, an Italian immigrant to England, was the first to draw a map of Canada's East Coast. Between 1534 and 1542, Jacques Cartier made three voyages across the Atlantic, claiming the land for King Francis I of France. Cartier heard two captured guides speak the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" — and by the 1550s the name Canada began appearing on maps.

In 1608, Samuel de Champlain built a fortress at what is now Québec City — the beginning of a permanent French settlement. The French colonists and settlers allied with the Algonquin, Montagnais and Huron, historic enemies of the Iroquois, in the fur trade wars that followed.

New France was built on the fur trade. Outstanding leaders like Jean Talon, Bishop Laval and Count Frontenac built a French Empire in North America, and the coureurs des bois and voyageurs — French and Aboriginal traders travelling by canoe — formed strong alliances with First Nations. In England, the Hudson's Bay Company was granted exclusive trading rights over the watershed draining into Hudson Bay in 1670 by King Charles II.

In 1759, the British defeated the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at Québec City, ending France's empire in America. Both commanders — the British Brigadier James Wolfe and the French Marquis de Montcalm — were killed in the battle. To govern their new French-speaking Catholic subjects, the British passed the Quebec Act of 1774, which allowed religious freedom for Catholics, permitted them to hold public office, and restored French civil law while maintaining British criminal law. After the American colonies declared independence in 1776, more than 40,000 Loyalists — the United Empire Loyalists — fled to Nova Scotia and Quebec.

When the United States invaded Canada in the War of 1812, Major-General Sir Isaac Brock captured Detroit but was killed defending Queenston Heights; Laura Secord made a dangerous 30-km journey on foot in 1813 to warn of a planned American attack. The war ensured that Canada would remain independent of the United States. Meanwhile, the movement to abolish slavery grew: in 1793 Upper Canada, led by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, became the first province in the Empire to move toward abolition, and in 1833 the British Parliament abolished slavery throughout the Empire. Thousands of American slaves escaped to freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad.

After the rebellions of 1837–38, reformers worked toward responsible government — a government that must resign if it loses a confidence vote in the assembly. Nova Scotia achieved it first in 1847–48, and in 1848–49 the united Province of Canada followed under reformers Sir Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine and Robert Baldwin; La Fontaine became the first head of a responsible government in Canada. Between 1864 and 1867, the Fathers of Confederation met at conferences in Charlottetown and Quebec City and worked out the plan for a new country.

The British Parliament passed the British North America Act in 1867, and the Dominion of Canada was born on July 1, 1867 — with four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. July 1 is celebrated as Canada Day. Sir John A. Macdonald, a Father of Confederation, became Canada's first Prime Minister. Other provinces and territories joined later: Manitoba and the Northwest Territories (1870), British Columbia (1871), Prince Edward Island (1873), Yukon (1898), Alberta and Saskatchewan (1905), Newfoundland and Labrador (1949), and Nunavut (1999).

British Columbia joined on the promise of a railway to the Pacific, and on November 7, 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed with a last spike driven at Craigellachie, B.C. Thousands of Chinese labourers helped build it in harsh conditions; after it was finished, they were subject to discrimination including the Head Tax — for which the Government of Canada apologized in 2006. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who became the first French-Canadian Prime Minister in 1896, encouraged massive immigration to settle the West. To keep order in the West, the government founded the North West Mounted Police in 1873 — the origin of today's Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, more than 600,000 Canadians served in the First World War, most of them volunteers, out of a population of eight million. More than 60,000 were killed and 170,000 wounded. The Canadian Corps captured Vimy Ridge in April 1917, a victory that secured Canadians' reputation for valour as the "shock troops of the British Empire" — April 9 is remembered as Vimy Day. Sir Arthur Currie, Canada's greatest soldier, commanded the Canadian Corps in the last two years of the war.

The war years also brought change at home. Thanks to the suffrage movement founded by Dr. Emily Stowe, Manitoba became the first province to grant women the right to vote in 1916. In 1917, the federal government gave the vote to nurses at the front and to women related to men in active service; in 1918, most Canadian women aged 21 and over could vote in federal elections. In 1921, Agnes Macphail became the first woman Member of Parliament. Each year on November 11 — Remembrance Day — Canadians wear the red poppy and honour the fallen, remembering the poem "In Flanders Fields" written by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae in 1915.

In the Second World War, more than one million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served, out of a population of 11.5 million; 44,000 gave their lives. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 15,000 Canadian troops stormed and captured Juno Beach in Normandy. The Royal Canadian Navy played a vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic, protecting convoys of merchant ships against German submarines, and by war's end Canada had the third-largest navy in the world.