Amongst notable Métis people are television

actor Tom Jackson,[981 Commissioner of the

Northwest Territories Tony Whitford, and
Louis
Riel who led two resistance movements: the Red
River Rebellion of 1869—1870 and the North-
West Rebellion of 1885, which ended in his trial.

The languages inherently Métis are either Métis

French or a mixed language called Michif.
Michif, Mechif or Métchif is a phonetic spelling
of Métif, a variant of Métis.[1 02] The Métis
today predominantly speak English, with
French a strong second language, as well as
numerous Aboriginal tongues. A 19th-century
community of the Métis people, the Anglo-
Métis, were referred to as Countryborn. They
were children of Rupert's Land fur trade
typically of Orcadian, Scottish, or English
paternal descent and Aboriginal maternal
descent.[103] Their first languages would have
been Aboriginal (Cree, Saulteaux, Assiniboine,
etc.) and English. Their fathers spoke Gaelic,
thus leading to the development of an English
dialect referred to as "Bungee" .[104]

S.35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 mentions

the Métis yet there has long been debate over
legally defining the term Métis,[1 05] but on
September 23, 2003, the Supreme Court of
Canada ruled that Métis are a distinct people
with significant rights (Powley
Métis

Mixed-blood fur trader, c. 1870

The Métis are people descended from
marriages between Europeans (mainly
French) [95] and Cree, Ojibway, Algonquin,
Saulteaux,
Menominee, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and other
First Nations.[14] Their history dates to the
mid-17th century.[3] When Europeans first
arrived to Canada they relied on Aboriginal
peoples for fur trading skills and survival. To
ensure alliances, relationships between
European fur traders and Aboriginal women
were often consolidated through marriage.[96]
The Métis homeland consists of the Canadian
provinces of British Columbia, Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba,
Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and
Ontario, as well as the Northwest Territories
Warfare was common among Inuit groups with
sufficient population density. Inuit, such as the
Nunatamiut (Uummarmiut) who inhabited the
Mackenzie River delta area, often engaged in
common warfare. The Central Arctic Inuit
lacked the population density to engage in
warfare. In the 13th century, the Thule culture
began arriving in Greenland from what is now
Canada. Norse accounts are scant. Norse-made
items from Inuit campsites in Greenland were
obtained by either trade or plunder.[87] One
account, [var Béröarson, speaks of "small
people" with whom the Norsemen fought.[88]
14th-century accounts that a western settlement,
one of the two Norse settlements, was taken
over by the Skræling.[89]
After the disappearance of the Norse colonies in
Greenland, the Inuit had no contact with
Europeans for at least a century. By the mid1
6th century, Basque fishers were already
working the Labrador coast and had established
whaling stations on land, such as been
excavated at Red Bay.[90] The Inuit appear not
to have interfered with their operations, but
they did raid the stations in winter for tools,
and particularly worked iron, which they
adapted to native needs.[91]
Inuit
The Inuit are the descendants of what
anthropologists call the Thule culture, which
emerged from western Alaska around 1,000 CE
and spread eastward across the Arctic,
displacing the Dorset culture (in Inuktitut, the
Tuniit). Inuit historically referred to the Tuniit
as "giants", or "dwarfs", who were taller and
stronger than the Inuit.[85] Researchers
hypothesize that the Dorset culture lacked dogs,
larger weapons and other technologies used by
the expanding Inuit society.[86] By 1300, the
Inuit had settled in west Greenland, and finally
moved into east Greenland over the following
century. The Inuit had trade routes with more
southern cultures. Boundary disputes were
common and led to aggressive actions.[1 5]

Inuk in a kayak, c. 1908—1914

Many Aboriginal civilizations[76] established
characteristics and hallmarks that included
permanent urban settlements or cities,[77]
 agriculture, civic and monumental architecture,
and complex societal hierarchies.[78] These
cultures had evolved and changed by the time of
the first permanent European arrivals (c. late 1
5th—early 1 6th centuries), and have been
brought forward through archaeological
investigations.[79J
There are indications of contact made before
Christopher Columbus between the first peoples
and those from other continents. Aboriginal
people in Canada interacted with Europeans
around 1000 CE, but prolonged contact came
after Europeans established permanent
settlements in the 17th and 18th centuries.[80]
European written accounts generally recorded
friendliness of the First Nations, who profited in
trade with Europeans.[80] Such trade generally
strengthened the more organized political
entities such as the Iroquois Confederation.[81]
Throughout the 16th century, European fleets
made almost annual visits to the eastern shores
of Canada to cultivate the fishing opportunities.
A sideline industry emerged in the un-organized
traffic of furs overseen by the Indian
Department.[82]
The Woodland cultural period dates from about
2,000 BCE—I ,000 CE, and has locales in
Ontario, Quebec, and Maritime regions.[71] The
introduction of pottery distinguishes the
Woodland culture from the earlier Archaic
stage inhabitants. Laurentian people of
southern Ontario manufactured the oldest
pottery excavated to date in Canada.[60] They
created pointed-bottom beakers decorated by a
cord marking technique that involved
impressing tooth implements into wet clay.
Woodland technology included items such as
beaver incisor knives, bangles, and chisels.
The population practising sedentary
agricultural life ways continued to increase on
a diet of squash, corn, and bean crops.[60]
The Hopewell tradition is an Aboriginal
culture that flourished along American rivers
from 300 BCE-500 CE. At its greatest extent,
the
Hopewell Exchange System networked
cultures and societies with the peoples on the
Canadian shores of Lake Ontario. Canadian
expression of the Hopewellian peoples
encompasses the Point Peninsula, Saugeen,
and Laurel complexes.[72][73][74]
First Nations
Chief George from the village of Senakw with his
daughter in traditional regalia, c. 1906
First Nations peoples had settled and
established trade routes across what is now
Canada by 500 BCE-I,OOO CE.
Communities developed each with its own
culture, customs, and character.[75] In the
northwest were the Athapaskan, Slavey,
Dogrib, Tutchone, and
Tlingit. Along the Pacific coast were the
Tsimshian; Haida; Salish; Kwakiutl; Heiltsuk;
Nootka; Nisga'a; Senakw and Gitxsan. In the
plains were the Blackfoot; Kåinawa; Sarcee
and Peigan. In the northern woodlands were
the Cree and Chipewyan. Around the Great
Lakes were the Anishinaabe; Algonquin;
Iroquois and Huron. Along the Atlantic coast
were the
Beothuk, Maliseet, Innu, Abenaki and
Mi'kmaq
 Thule site (Copper Inuit) near the waters of
Cambridge Bay (Victoria Island)
The west coast of Canada by 7,000—5000 BCE
(9,000—7,000 years ago) saw various cultures
who organized themselves around salmon
fishing. [65] The Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver
Island began whaling with advanced long
spears at about this time.[65] The Maritime
Archaic is one group of North America's
Archaic culture of sea-mammal hunters in the
subarctic. They prospered from approximately
7,000 BCE—I ,500 BCE (9,000—3,500 years
ago) along the Atlantic Coast of North America.
[66] Their settlements included longhouses and
boat-topped temporary or seasonal houses.
They engaged in long-distance trade, using as
currency white chert, a rock quarried from
northern Labrador to Maine.[67] The Pre-
Columbian culture, whose members were called
Red Paint People, is indigenous to the New
England and Atlantic Canada regions of North
America. The culture flourished between 3,000
BCE-I ,OOO BCE (5,000—3,000 years ago)
and was named after their burial ceremonies,
which used large quantities of red ochre to
cover bodies and rave oods. 68
Post-Archaic periods

A northerly section focusing on the Saugeen,

Laurel and Point Peninsula complexes of the
map showing south eastern United States and
the Great Lakes area of Canada showing the
Hopewell Interaction Sphere and in different
colours the various local expressions of the
Hopewell cultures, including the Laurel
Complex,
Saugeen Complex, Point Peninsula Complex,
Marksville culture, Copena culture, Kansas
City
Hopewell, Swift Creek Culture, Goodall
Focus, Crab Orchard culture and Havana
Hopewell culture,
The Old Copper Complex societies dating from
3,000 BCE-500 BCE years ago) are
a manifestation of the Woodland Culture, and are
pre-pottery in nature.[70] Evidence found in the
northern Great Lakes regions indicates that they
extracted copper from local glacial deposits and
used it in its natural form manufacture tools
and implements.[70]
The Arctic small tool tradition is a broad
cultural entity that developed along the Alaska
Peninsula, around Bristol Bay, and on the
eastern shores of the Bering Strait around
2,500 BCE (4,500 years These Paleo-Arctic
peoples had a highly distinctive toolkit of small
blades (microblades) that were pointed at both
ends and used as side- or end-barbs on arrows
or spears made of other materials, such as bone
or antler. Scrapers, engraving tools and adze
blades were also included in their toolkits.[69]
The Arctic small tool tradition branches off
into two cultural variants, including the Pre-
Dorset, and the Independence traditions. These
two groups, ancestors of Thule people, were
displaced by the Inuit by 1 000 Common Era
The placement of artifacts and materials
within an Archaic burial site indicated social
differentiation based upon status. [58] There is
a continuous record of occupation of S'ölh
Téméxw by Aboriginal people dating from the
early Holocene period, years
ago. [62] Archaeological sites at Stave Lake,
Coquitlam Lake, Fort Langley and region
uncovered early period artifacts. These early
inhabitants were highly mobile hunter-
gatherers, consisting of about 20 to 50
members of an extended family.
needed] The Na-Dene people occupied much
of the land area of northwest and central North
America starting around 8,000 BCE. [631
They were the earliest ancestors of the
Athabaskan-speaking peoples, including the
Navajo and Apache. They had villages with
large multi-family dwellings, used seasonally
during the summer, from which they hunted,
fished and gathered food supplies for the
winter.[64] The Wendat peoples settled into
Southern Ontario along the Eramosa River
around BCE (10,OOO-9,OOO
years ago).[65] They were concentrated
between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay.
Wendat hunted caribou to survive on the
glacier-covered land. [65] Many different First
Nations cultures relied upon the buffalo
starting by 6,000-5,000 BCE years
ago). [65] They hunted buffalo by herding
migrating buffalo off cliffs. Head-Smashed-ln
Buffalo Jump, near Lethbridge, Alberta, is a
 hunting grounds that was in use for about
5,000 years.[65]
The Plano cultures was a group of
huntergatherer communities that occupied the
Great Plains area of North America between
12,0001 0,000 years ago.[56] The Paleo-Indians
moved into new territory as it emerged from
under the glaciers. Big game flourished in this
new environment.[57] The Plano culture are
characterized by a range of projectile point tools
collectively called Plano points, which were
used to hunt bison. Their diets also included
pronghorn, elk, deer, raccoon and coyote.[56] At
the beginning of the Archaic Era, they began to
adopt a sedentary approach to subsistence.[56]
Sites in and around Belmont, Nova Scotia have
evidence of Plano-Indians, indicating small
seasonal hunting camps, perhaps re-visited over
generations from around 1 1 years
ago-[56] Seasonal large and smaller game fish
and fowl were food and raw material sources.
Adaptation to the harsh environment included
tailored clothing and skin-covered tents on
wooden frames.[56]
Archaic period
The North American climate stabilized by
8000 BCE (10,000 years ago); climatic
conditions were very similar to today's.[58]
This led to widespread migration, cultivation
and later a dramatic rise in population all
over the
Americas.[58] Over the course of thousands
of years, American indigenous peoples
domesticated, bred and cultivated a large
array of plant species. These species now
constitute 50 — 60% of all crops in
cultivation worldwide. [59]

Distribution of Na-Dene languages shown in red

A Clovis point created using bi-facial
percussion flaking (that is, each face is
flaked on both edges alternatively with a
percussor)
Clovis sites dated at 1 3,500 years ago were
discovered in western North America during
the 1 930s. Clovis peoples were regarded as the
first widespread Paleo-Indian inhabitants of the
New World and ancestors to all indigenous
peoples in the Americas. [49] Archaeological
discoveries in the past thirty years have
brought forward other distinctive knapping
cultures who occupied the Americas from the
lower Great Plains to the shores of Chile.[50]
Localized regional cultures developed from
the time of the Younger Dryas cold climate
period from 12,900 to 1 1 ,500 years ago.
[511 The Folsom tradition are characterized
by their use of Folsom points as projectile
tips at archaeological sites. These tools
assisted activities at kill sites that marked the
slaughter and butchering of bison.[52]
The land bridge existed until 13,000—1 1,000
years ago, long after the oldest proven human
settlements in the New World began.[53]
Lower sea levels in the Queen Charlotte
sound and Hecate Strait produced great grass
lands called archipelago of Haida Gwaii.[54]
Huntergatherers of the area left distinctive
lithic technology tools and the remains of
large butchered mammals, occupying the area
from years ago-[54] In July 1 992, the
Federal Government officially designated
Xä:ytem (near Mission, British Columbia) as a
National Historic Site, one of the first
Indigenous spiritual sites in Canada to be
formally recognized in this manner.[55]
The first inhabitants of North America arrived
in Canada at least 1 5,000 years ago, though
increasing evidence suggests an even earlier
arrival. [40] It is believed the inhabitants
entered the Americas pursuing Pleistocene
mammals such as the giant beaver, steppe
wisent, musk ox, mastodons, woolly
mammoths and ancient reindeer (early
caribou).[41] One route hypothesized is that
people walked south by way of an ice-free
corridor on the east side of the Rocky
Mountains, and then fanned out across North
America before continuing on to South
America.[42] The other conjectured route is
that they migrated, either on foot or using
primitive boats, down the Pacific Coast to the
tip of South America, and then crossed the
Rockies and Andes-[43] Evidence of the latter
has been covered by a sea level rise of
hundreds of metres following the last ice

The Old Crow Flats and basin was one of the

areas in Canada untouched by glaciations
during the Pleistocene Ice ages, thus it served
as a pathway and refuge for ice age plants and
animals.[46] The area holds evidence of early
human habitation in Canada dating from about
Fossils from the area include some
never accounted for in North America, such
as hyenas and large camels.[48] Bluefish
Caves is an archaeological site in Yukon,
Canada from which a specimen of apparently
human-worked mammoth bone has been
radiocarbon dated to 12,000 years ago.[47]
Maps depicting each phase of a three-step early
human migrations for the peopling of the
Americas
According to archaeological and genetic
evidence, North and South America were the
last continents in the world with human
habitation.[27] During the Wisconsin
glaciation, 50,000—17,000 years ago, falling
sea levels allowed people to move across the
Bering land bridge that joined Siberia to north
west North
America Alaska was ice-free
because of low snowfall, allowing a small
population to exist. The Laurentide ice sheet
covered most of Canada, blocking nomadic
inhabitants and confining them to Alaska
(East Beringia) for thousands of
Aboriginal genetic studies suggest that the first
inhabitants of the Americas share a single
ancestral population, one that developed in
isolation, conjectured to be Beringia.[31][32]
[33] The isolation of these peoples in Beringia
might have lasted
 Around 16,500 years ago, the glaciers began
melting, allowing people to move south and
east into Canada and beyond.[37][38][39]

An Aboriginal community in Northern Ontario

The term Eskimo has pejorative connotations
in Canada and Greenland. Indigenous peoples
in those areas have replaced the term Eskimo
with The Yupik of Alaska and Siberia
do not consider themselves Inuit, and
ethnographers agree they are a distinct people.
[8][24] They prefer the terminology Yupik,
Yupiit, or Eskimo. The Yupik languages are
linguistically distinct from the Inuit languages.
[8] Linguistic groups of Arctic people have no
universal replacement term for Eskimo,
inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik people across
the geographical area inhabited by the Inuit
and Yupik peoples.[8]
Besides these ethnic descriptors, Aboriginal
peoples are often divided into legal categories
based on their relationship with the Crown
(i.e. the state). Section 91 (clause 24) of the
Constitution Act, 1867 gives the federal
government (as opposed to the provinces) the
sole responsibility for "Indians, and Lands
reserved for the Indians". The government
inherited treaty obligations from the British
colonial authorities in Eastern Canada and
signed treaties itself with First Nations in
Western Canada (the Numbered Treaties). It
also passed the Indian Act in 1876 which
governed its interactions with all treaty and
nontreaty peoples. Members of First Nations
bands that are subject to the Indian Act with
the Crown are compiled on a list called the
Indian Register, and such people are called
Status Indians. Many non-treaty First Nations
and all Inuit and Métis peoples are not subject
to the Indian Act. However, two court cases
have clarified that Inuit, Métis, and non-status
First Nations people, all are covered by the
term "Indians" in the Constitution Act, 1867.
The first was Re Eskimos in 1939 covering
the Inuit, the second being Daniels v. Canada
in 2013 which applies to Métis and non-Status
First Nations.[251
Notwithstanding Canada's location within the
Americas, the term "Native American" is not
 used in Canada as it is typically used solely to
describe the indigenous peoples within the
boundaries of the present-day United States.
[261
The characteristics of Canadian Aboriginal
culture included permanent settlements,[l O]
agriculture,[1 1] civic and ceremonial
architecture,[1 2] complex societal hierarchies
and trading networks.[13] The Métis culture
of mixed blood originated in the mid-17th
century when First Nation and Inuit people
married Europeans.[1 41 The Inuit had more
limited interaction with European settlers
during that early period.[15] Various laws,
treaties, and legislation have been enacted
between
European immigrants and First Nations across
Canada. Aboriginal Right to Self-Government
provides opportunity to manage historical,
cultural, political, health care and economic
control aspects within first people's
communities.

As of the 2011 census, Aboriginal peoples in

Canada totaled 1 ,400,685 people, or 4.3% of
the national population, spread over 600
recognized First Nations governments or bands
with distinctive cultures, languages, art, and
music.
6] National Aboriginal Day recognizes the
cultures and contributions of Aboriginal
peoples to the history of Canada.[17] First
 Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples of all
backgrounds have become prominent figures
and have served as role models in the
Aboriginal community and help to shape the
Canadian cultural identity.[1 8]
The terms First Peoples and First Nations are
both used to refer to indigenous peoples of
Canada.[19] The terms First Peoples or
Aboriginal peoples in Canada are normally
broader terms than First Nations, as they
include Inuit, Métis and First Nations. First
Nations (most often used in the plural) has
come into general use for the indigenous
peoples of North America in Canada, and their
descendants, who are neither Inuit nor Métis.
On reserves, First Nations is being supplanted
by members of various nations referring to
themselves by their group or ethnical identity.
In conversation this would be "l am Haida", or
"we are Kwantlens", in recognition of their First
Nations ethnicities.[20] In this Act, "Aboriginal
peoples of Canada" includes the Indian, Inuit
and Métis peoples of Canada.[21]
Indian remains in place as the legal term used in
the Canadian Constitution. Its usage outside
such situations can be considered offensive.[71
Aboriginal peoples is more commonly used to
describe all indigenous peoples of Canada.[22]
The term Aboriginal people is beginning to be
considered outdated and slowly being replaced
by the term Indigenous people. [2]
Indigenous peoples in Canada
Indigenous peoples in Canada,[2] also known
as Indigenous Canadians or Aboriginal
Canadians, are the indigenous peoples within
the boundaries of present-day Canada. They
comprise the First Nations,[3] Inuit[4] and
Métis. [5] Although "Indian" is a term still
commonly used in legal documents, the
descriptors
Indian" and "Eskimo" have somewhat fallen
into disuse in Canada and some consider them
to be pejorative.[6][7][8] Similarly,
"Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific
term of art used in some legal documents,
including the
Constitution Act 1982, though in some circles
that word is also falling into disfavour.[9]
Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are some of
the earliest known sites of human habitation in
Canada. The Paleo-Indian Clovis, Plano and
PreDorset cultures pre-date current indigenous
peoples of the Americas. Projectile point tools,
spears, pottery, bangles, chisels and scrapers
mark archaeological sites, thus distinguishing
cultural periods, traditions and lithic reduction
styles.
Under letters patent from King Henry Vll of
England, the Italian John Cabot became the first
European known to have landed in Canada after
the time of the Vikings.[33] Records indicate
that on 24 June 1497 he sighted land at a
northern location believed to be somewhere in
the Atlantic provinces.[34] Official tradition
deemed the first landing site to be at Cape
Bonavista, Newfoundland, although other
locations are possible.[351 After 1497 Cabot
and his son Sebastian Cabot continued to make
other voyages to find the Northwest Passage,
and other explorers continued to sail out of
England to the New World, although the details
Of these voyages are not well recorded.[36]
Based on the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish
Crown claimed it had territorial rights in the
area visited by John Cabot in 1497 and 1498
CE.[37] However, Portuguese explorers like
Joäo Fernandes Lavrador would continue to
visited the north Atlantic coast, which accounts
for the appearance of "Labrador" on
topographical maps of the period.[38] In 1501
and 1 502 the Corte-Real brothers explored
Newfoundland (Terra Nova) and Labrador
claiming these lands as part of the Portuguese
Empire.[38][39] In 1506, King Manuel I of
Portugal created taxes for the cod fisheries in
 Newfoundland waters. [40] Joäo Ålvares
Fagundes and Péro de
Barcelos established fishing outposts in
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia around 1 521
CE; however, these were later abandoned,
with the Portuguese colonizers focusing their
efforts

LAnse aux Meadows on the island of

Newfoundland, site of a Norsemen colony about
year 1000.
There are reports of contact made before the
1492 voyages of Christopher Columbus and the
age of discovery between First Nations, Inuit
and those from other continents. The Norse,
who had settled Greenland and Iceland, arrived
around the year 1000 and built a small
settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows at the
northernmost tip of Newfoundland (carbon
dating estimate 990 — 1050 CE)[31] I-Anse
aux Meadows is also notable for its connection
with the attempted colony of Vinland
established by Leif Erikson around the same
period or, more broadly, with Norse exploration
of the Americas. [31
Pre-Columbian distribution of Na-Dene
languages in North America
The Interior of British Columbia was home to the
Salishan language groups such as the Shuswap
(Secwepemc), Okanagan and southern
Athabaskan language groups, primarily the
Dakelh (Carrier) and the Tsilhqot'in.[27] The
inlets and valleys of the British Columbia
Coast sheltered large, distinctive populations,
such as the Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-
chah-nulth, sustained by the region's abundant
salmon and shellfish.[27] These peoples
developed complex cultures dependent on the
western red cedar that included wooden
houses, seagoing whaling and war canoes and
elaborately carved potlatch items and totem
poles.[27]
In the Arctic archipelago, the distinctive
PaleoEskimos known as Dorset peoples, whose
culture has been traced back to around 500 BCE,
were replaced by the ancestors of today's Inuit by
1 500 CE.[28] This transition is supported by
archaeological records and Inuit mythology that
tells of having driven off the Tuniit or 'first
inhabitants'.[29] Inuit traditional laws are
anthropologically different from Western law.
Customary law was non-existent in Inuit society
before the introduction of the Canadian legal
system. [30]
languages in North America.
Speakers of eastern Algonquian languages
included the Mi'kmaq and Abenaki of the
Maritime region of Canada and likely the
extinct Beothuk of Newfoundland.[18][19] The
Ojibwa and other Anishinaabe speakers of the
central Algonquian languages retain an oral
tradition of having moved to their lands around
the western and central Great Lakes from the
sea, likely the east coast.[20] According to oral
tradition, the Ojibwa formed the Council of
Three Fires in 796 CE with the Odawa and the
Potawatomi.[21]
The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) were centred
from at least 1000 CE in northern New York,
but their influence extended into what is now
southern Ontario and the Montreal area of
modern Quebec.[22] The Iroquois
Confederacy, according to oral tradition, was
formed in 1142 CE.[23][24] On the Great
Plains the Cree or
Néhilawé (who spoke a closely related Central
Algonquian language, the plains Cree
language) depended on the vast herds of bison
to supply food and many of their other needs.
[25] To the northwest were the peoples of the
 Na-Dene languages, which include the
Athapaskanspeaking peoples and the Tlingit,
who lived on the islands of southern Alaska
and northern British Columbia, The Na-Dene
language group is believed to be linked to the
Yeniseian languages of Siberia.[26] The Dene
of the western Arctic may represent a distinct
wave of r-nirlrafinn frnr•n A Qin Rlnr+h
Arnarir•c•
Great Lakes area of the Hopewell Interaction
Area
The Woodland cultural period dates from about
2000 BCE to 1000 CE and includes the
Ontario, Quebec, and Maritime regions.[1 2]
The introduction of pottery distinguishes the
Woodland culture from the previous
Archaicstage inhabitants. The Laurentian-
related people of Ontario manufactured the
oldest pottery excavated to date in Canada.[13]
The Hopewell tradition is an Aboriginal culture
that flourished along American rivers from 300
BCE to 500 CE. At its greatest extent, the
Hopewell Exchange System connected cultures
and societies to the peoples on the Canadian
shores of Lake Ontario.[14] Canadian
expression of the Hopewellian peoples
encompasses the Point Peninsula, Saugeen, and
Laurel complexes.[1 5]
The eastern woodland areas of what became
Canada were home to the Algonquian and
Iroquoian peoples. The Algonquian language is
believed to have originated in the western
plateau of Idaho or the plains of Montana and
moved eastward,[16] eventually extending all
the way from Hudson Bay to what is today
Nova Scotia in the east and as far south as the
Tidewater region of Virginia. [1 7]
The North American climate stabilized around
8000 BCE (10,OOO years ago). Climatic
conditions were similar to modern patterns;
however, the receding glacial ice sheets still
covered large portions of the land, creating
lakes of meltwater.[10] Most population
groups during the Archaic periods were still
highly mobile hunter-gatherers.[11] However,
individual groups started to focus on resources
available to them locally; thus with the passage
of time, there is a pattern of increasing regional
generalization (i.e.: Paleo-Arctic, Plano and
Maritime Archaic traditions).[l Il
 A northerly section focusing on the Saugeen,
Laurel and Point Peninsula complexes of the
map showing south eastern United States and
the Great Lakes area of Canada showing the
Hopewell Interaction Sphere and in different
colours the various local expressions of the
Hopewell cultures, including the Laurel
Complex,
Saugeen Complex, Point Peninsula Complex,
Marksville culture, Copena culture, Kansas
City
Hopewell, Swift Creek Culture, Goodall
Focus, Crab Orchard culture and Havana
Hopewell culture.

The Great Lakes are estimated to have been

formed at the end of the last glacial period
(about 1 0,000 years ago), when the
Laurentide ice sheet receded.

Archeological and Aboriginal genetic evidence

indicate that North and South America were the
last continents into which humans migrated.[l ]
During the Wisconsin glaciation, 50,000 —
17,000 years ago, falling sea levels allowed
people to move across the Bering land bridge
(Beringia), from Siberia into northwest North
 America.[2] At that point, they were blocked by
the Laurentide ice sheet that covered most of
Canada, confining them to Alaska and the
Yukon for thousands of years-[3] The exact
dates and routes of the peopling of the Americas
are the subject of an ongoing By
16,000 years ago the glacial melt allowed
people to move by land south and east out of
Beringia, and into Canada.[6] The Queen
Charlotte Islands, Old Crow Flats, and Bluefish
Caves contain some of the earliest Paleo-Indian
archaeological sites in Canada.[7][8J[9] Ice Age
hunter-gatherers of this period left lithic flake
fluted stone tools and the remains of large
butchered mammals.
History of Canada
The history of Canada covers the period from
the arrival of Paleo-Indians thousands of years
ago to the present day. Canada has been
inhabited for millennia by distinctive groups of
Aboriginal peoples, with distinct trade
networks, spiritual beliefs, and styles of social
organization. Some of these civilizations had
long faded by the time of the first European
arrivals and have been discovered through
archaeological investigations. Various treaties
and laws have been enacted between European
settlers and the Aboriginal populations.
Beginning in the late 1 5th century, French and
British expeditions explored, and later settled,
along the Atlantic Coast. France ceded nearly
all of its colonies in North America to Britain
in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867,
with the union of three British North American
colonies through Confederation, Canada was
formed as a federal dominion of four
provinces. This began an accretion of
provinces and territories and a process of
increasing autonomy from the British Empire,
which became official with the Statute of
Westminster of 1931 and completed in the
Canada Act of 1982, which severed the
vestiges of legal dependence on the British
parliament.
Great Depression
Canada was hard hit by the worldwide Great
Depression that began in 1929. Between 1929
and 1933, the gross national product dropped
40% (compared to 37% in the US).
Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the
Depression in 1933.[169] Many businesses
closed, as corporate profits of $396 million in
1929 turned into losses of $98 million in 1933.
Canadian exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to
1933. Construction all but stopped (down 82%,
1929—33), and wholesale prices dropped 30%.
Wheat prices plunged from 78c per bushel
(1928 crop) to 29c in 1932.[169]
Urban unemployment nationwide was 19%;
Toronto's rate was 17%, according to the census
 of 1931. Farmers who stayed on their farms
were not considered unemployed.[170] By
1933, 30% of the labour force was out of work,
and one fifth of the population became
dependent on government assistance. Wages fell
as did prices. Worst hit were areas dependent on
primary industries such as farming, mining and
logging, as prices fell and there were few
alternative jobs. Most families had moderate
losses and little hardship, though they too
became pessimistic and their debts become
heavier as prices fell. Some families saw most
or all of their assets disappear, and suffered
severely. [1 71 72]
In 1 930, in the first stage of the long depression,
Prime Minister Mackenzie King believed that
the crisis was a temporary swing of the business
cycle and that the economy would soon recover
without government intervention. He refused to
provide unemployment relief or federal aid to
the provinces, saying that if Conservative
provincial governments demanded federal
dollars, he would not give them "a five cent
piece."[173] His blunt wisecrack was used to
defeat the Liberals in the 1930 election. The
main issue was the rapid deterioration in the
economy and whether the prime minister was
out of touch with the hardships of ordinary
people.[174][175] The winner of the 1930
election was Richard
Bedford Bennett and the Conservatives.
Bennett had promised high tariffs and large-
scale spending, but as deficits increased, he
became wary and cut back severely on Federal
spending. With falling support and the
depression getting only worse, Bennett
attempted to introduce policies based on the
New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
(FDR) in the United States, but he got little
passed. Bennett's government became a focus
of popular discontent. For example, auto
owners saved on gasoline by using horses to
pull their cars, dubbing them Bennett Buggies.
The Conservative failure to restore prosperity
led to the return of Mackenzie King's Liberals
in the 1935 election.[176]
In 1935, the Liberals used the slogan "King or
Chaos" to win a landslide in the 1935 election.
[1 77] Promising a much-desired trade treaty
with the U.S., the Mackenzie King government
passed the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement. It
marked the turning point in Canadian-American
economic relations, reversing the disastrous
trade war of 1930-31, lowering tariffs, and
yielding a dramatic increase in trade.[178]
The worst of the Depression had passed by
1935, as Ottawa launched relief programs such
as the National Housing Act and National
Employment Commission. The Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation became a crown
corporation in 1936. Trans-Canada Airlines
(the precursor to Air Canada) was formed in 1
937, as was the National Film Board of
Canada in 1939. In 1 938, Parliament
transformed the Bank of Canada from a private
entity to a crown corporation.[1 79]
One political response was a highly restrictive
immigration policy and a rise in nativism.[1 80]
Times were especially hard in western Canada,
where a full recovery did not occur until the
Second World War began in 1939. One response
was 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.
[1 81]
Second World War
Canada's involvement in the Second World War
began when Canada declared war on Nazi
Germany on September 10, 1939, delaying it
one week after Britain acted to symbolically
demonstrate independence. The war restored
Canada's economic health and its
selfconfidence, as it played a major role in the
Atlantic and in Europe. During the war, Canada
became more closely linked to the U.S. The
Americans took virtual control of Yukon in
order to build the Alaska Highway, and were a
major presence in the British colony of
Newfoundland with major airbases.[1 82]
Mackenzie King — and Canada — were largely
ignored by Winston Churchill and the British
government despite Canada's major role in
supplying food, raw materials, munitions and
money to the hard-pressed British economy,
training airmen for the Commonwealth,
guarding the western half of the North Atlantic
Ocean against German U-boats, and providing
combat troops for the invasions of Italy, France
and Germany in 1 943—45. The government
successfully mobilized the economy for war,
with impressive results in industrial and
agricultural output. The depression ended,
prosperity returned, and Canada's economy
expanded significantly. On the political side,
Mackenzie King rejected any notion of a
government of national unity.[1 83] The
Canadian federal election, 1940 was held as
normally scheduled, producing another majority
for the Liberals.
Building up the Royal Canadian Air Force was
a high priority; it was kept separate from
Britain's Royal Air Force. The British
Commonwealth Air
Training Plan Agreement, signed in December
1939, bound Canada, Britain, New Zealand,
and Australia to a program that eventually
trained half the airmen from those four nations
in the Second World War.[1 84]
After the start of war with Japan in December
1941, the government, in cooperation with the
U.S., began the Japanese-Canadian internment,
which sent 22,000 British Columbia residents of
Japanese descent to relocation camps far from
the coast. The reason was intense public
demand for removal and fears of espionage or
sabotage.[185] The government ignored reports
from the RCMP and Canadian military that
most of the Japanese were law-abiding and not
a threat.[1 86]
The Battle of the Atlantic began immediately,
and from 1943 to 1945 was led by Leonard W.
Murray, from Nova Scotia. German U-boats
operated in Canadian and Newfoundland
waters throughout the war, sinking many naval
and merchant vessels, as Canada took charge
of the defenses of the western Atlantic.[1 87]
The Canadian army was involved in the failed
defence of Hong Kong, the unsuccessful
Dieppe Raid in August 1 942, the Allied
invasion of Italy, and the highly successful
invasion of France and the Netherlands in
1944—45.[188]
The Conscription Crisis of 1944 greatly affected
unity between French and English-speaking
Canadians, though was not as politically
intrusive as that of the First World War.[1 89] 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 with the Canadian Merchant Navy.[190]
In all, more than 45,000 died, and another
55,000 were wounded.
Post-war Era 1945-1960
Prosperity returned to Canada during the
Second World War and continued in the
proceeding years, with the development of
universal health care, old-age pensions, and
veterans' pensions.[1 93][1 94] The financial
crisis of the Great Depression had led the
Dominion of Newfoundland to relinquish
responsible government in 1934 and become a
crown colony ruled by a British governor.[195]
In 1948, the British government gave voters
three Newfoundland Referendum choices:
remaining a crown colony, returning to
Dominion status (that is, independence), or
joining Canada. Joining the United States was
not made an option. After bitter debate
Newfoundlanders voted to join Canada in 1949
as a province.[196]

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow (Recreation).

The foreign policy of Canada during the Cold
War was closely tied to that of the United
States.
Canada was a founding member of NATO
(which Canada wanted to be a transatlantic
economic and political union as well[1 97]). In
1950, Canada sent combat troops to Korea
during the Korean War as part of the United
Nations forces. The federal government's
desire to assert its territorial claims in the
Arctic during the Cold War manifested with
the High Arctic relocation, in which Inuit were
moved from Nunavik (the northern third of
Quebec) to barren Cornwallis Island;[1 98] this
project was later the subject of a long
investigation by the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples.[1 99]
In 1 956, the United Nations responded to the
Suez Crisis by convening a United Nations
Emergency Force to supervise the withdrawal
of invading forces. The peacekeeping force
was initially conceptualized by Secretary of
External Affairs and future Prime Minister
Lester B.
Pearson.[200] Pearson was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1957 for his work in
establishing the peacekeeping operation.[200]
Throughout the mid-1950s, Louis St, Laurent
(1 2th Prime Minister of Canada) and his
successor John Diefenbaker attempted to
create a new, highly advanced jet fighter, the
Avro Arrow-[201] The controversial aircraft
was cancelled by Diefenbaker in 1959.
Diefenbaker instead purchased the BOMARC
missile defense system and American aircraft.
In 1958 Canada established (with the United
States) the North American Aerospace
Defense Command
In 1 604, a North American fur trade monopoly
was granted to Pierre Du Gua, Sieur de Mons.
[49] The fur trade became one of the main
economic ventures in North America.[50] Du
Gua led his first colonization expedition to an
 island located near the mouth of the St. Croix
River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer
named Samuel de Champlain, who promptly
carried out a major exploration of the
northeastern coastline of what is now the United
States.[49] In the spring of 1 605, under Samuel
de Champlain, the new St. Croix settlement was
moved to Port Royal (today's Annapolis Royal,
Nova Scotia).[51]
The Quebec Settlement : A.—The Warehouse.
B. —Pigeon-loft. C.—Detached Buildings
where we keep our arms and for Lodging our
Workmen. D.
—Another Detached Building for the Workmen.
E.—Sun-dial. E—Another Detached Building
where is the Smithy and where the Workmen are
Lodged. G.—Galleries all around the Lodgings.
H.—The Sieur de Champlain's Lodgings. l.—
The door of the Settlement with a Draw-bridge.
L Promenade around the Settlement ten feet in
width to the edge of the Moat. M.—Moat the
whole way around the Settlement. O.—The
Sieur de Champlain's Garden. P.—The Kitchen.
Q.— Space in front of the Settlement on the
Shore of the River. R.—The great River St.
Lawrence.
Music
The Aboriginal peoples of Canada
encompass diverse ethnic groups with their
individual musical traditions. Music is
usually social (public) or ceremonial
(private). Public, social music may be dance
music accompanied by rattles and drums.
Private, ceremonial music includes vocal
songs with accompaniment on percussion,
used to mark occasions like Midewivin
ceremonies and Sun Dances.
Traditionally, Aboriginal peoples used the
materials at hand to make their instruments for
centuries before Europeans immigrated to
Canada.[1 56] First Nations people made
gourds and animal horns into rattles, which
were elaborately carved and brightly painted.
[1 57] In woodland areas, they made horns of
birch bark and drumsticks of carved antlers
and wood. Traditional percussion instruments
such as drums were generally made of carved
wood and animal hides. These musical
instruments provide the background for songs,
and songs the background for dances.
Traditional First Nations people consider song
and dance to be sacred. For years after
Europeans came to Canada, First Nations
people were forbidden to practice their
ceremonies. [1 55][1 56]
Demographics and classification of Indigenous
peoples
 Cultural areas of North American Indigenous
peoples at the time of European contact
There are three (First Inuit[4J and
Métis[5]) distinctive groups of North America
indigenous peoples recognized in the
Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, sections 25
and 35.[21] Under the Employment Equity
Act, Aboriginal people are a designated group
along with women, visible minorities, and
persons with disabilities. [1 58] They are not a
visible minority under the Employment
Equity Act and in the view of Statistics
Canada.[1 591
The 201 1 Canadian Census enumerated
1,400,685 Aboriginal people in Canada, 4.3%
of the country's total population. [Il This total
comprises 851 ,560 people of First Nations
descent, 451,795 Métis, and 59,445 Inuit.
National representative bodies of Aboriginal
people in Canada include the Assembly of
First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the
Métis
National Council, the Native Women's
Association of Canada, the National
Association of Native Friendship Centres and
the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.ll 60]
Visual art
 Indigenous peoples were producing art for
thousands of years before the arrival of
European settler colonists and the eventual
establishment of Canada as a nation state. Like
the peoples who produced them, indigenous art
traditions spanned territories across North
America. Indigenous art traditions are
organized by art historians according to
cultural, linguistic or regional groups:
Northwest Coast, Plateau, Plains, Eastern
Woodlands, Subarctic, and Arctic.[1 52]

Art traditions vary enormously amongst and

within these diverse groups. Indigenous art
with a focus on portability and the body is
distinguished from European traditions and its
focus on architecture. Indigenous visual art
may be used conjunction with other arts.
Shamans' masks and rattles are used
ceremoniously in dance, storytelling and music.
[1 52] Artworks preserved in museum
collections date from the period after European
contact and show evidence of the creative
adoption and adaptation of European trade
goods such as metal and glass beads.[1 53] The
distinct Métis cultures that have arisen from
inter-cultural relationships with Europeans
contribute culturally hybrid art forms.[1 54]
During the 19th and the first half of the 20th
century the Canadian government pursued an
active policy of forced and cultural assimilation
toward indigenous peoples. The Indian Act
banned manifestations of the Sun Dance, the
Potlatch, and works of art depicting them.[155]
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that
indigenous artists such as Mungo Martin, Bill
Reid and Norval Morrisseau began to publicly
renew and re-invent indigenous art traditions.
Currently there are indigenous artists practising
in all media in Canada and two indigenous
artists, Edward Poitras and Rebecca Belmore,
have represented Canada at the Venice
Biennale in 1995 and 2005 respectively.[1 52]
Approximately 40,1 1 5 individuals of
Aboriginal heritage could not be counted
 during the 2006 This is due
to the fact that certain Aboriginal reserves and
communities in Canada did not participate in
the 2006 census, since enumeration of those
communities were not In
2006, 22 Native communities were not
completely enumerated unlike in the year
2001, when 30 First Nation communities were
not enumerated and during 1996 when 77
Native communities could not be completely
enumerated. [1 61][163] Hence, there were
probably 1 individuals of Aboriginal ancestry
(North American Indian, Metis, and Inuit)
residing in Canada during the time when the
2006 census was conducted in Canada.
Indigenous people assert that their sovereign
rights are valid, and point to the Royal
Proclamation of 1763, which is mentioned in
the
Canadian Constitution Act, 1 982, Section 25,
the
British North America Acts and the 1969
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (to
which
Canada is a signatory) in support of this claim.
[1 65]
Indian
Province/Territory Number (First Nations) Métis Inuit • Multiple Other&

British Columbia 232290 155.015 69,475 1.570 2,480 3,745

Alberta 220.695 6.2% 116.670 96,865 1.985 1,875 3.295
Saskatchewan 157,740 15.6% 103.205 52,450 290 670 1,120
Manitoba 199,940 17.0% 130.075 78.835 580 1205 1,055
Ontario 301430 2.4% 201 ,100 86.015 3,360 2,910 8,045
141.915 1.8% 82.425 40,960 12.570 1.550 4,410
New Brunswick 22,620 16.120 4.850 485 145 1,020
Nova Scotia 33.845 3.7% 21.895 10.050 695
Prince Edward Island 2,230 1,520 65
Newfoundland and Labrador 35,800 7.1% 19,315 7.665 6,260 260 2,300
Yukon 7,710 23.1% 6,585 845 175 30 70
Northwest Territories 21,160 51.9% 13.345 3.245 4,335
Nunavut 27360 86.3% 130 135 27.070
Canada 4.3% 351,560 451,795 59,445 11,415 26,470
 Source 2011 Census:'"
Languages
Aboriginal language No. of speakers Mother tongue Home language
•
Cree 99,950 78,855 47,190
Inuktitut 35,690 32,010 25,290
Ojibway 32,460 1 1, 115 11, 115

Montagnais-Naskapi (Innu) 11,815 10,970 9,720

11,130 9,750 7,490
Oji-Cree (Anishinini) 12,605 8,480 8,480
Ml kmaq 8,750 7,365 3,985
Siouan languages (Dakota/Sioux) 6,495 5,585 3,780
Atikamekw S, 645 5,245 4,745
Blackfoot 4,915 3,085 3,085

There are 13 Aboriginal language groups, 1 1

oral and 2 sign, in Canada, made up of more
than 65 distinct dialects. [148] Of these, only
Cree, Inuktitut and Ojibway have a large
enough population of fluent speakers to be
considered viable to survive in the long term.ll
49] Two of Canada's territories give official
status to native languages. In Nunavut;
Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun are official languages
alongside the national languages of English and
French, and Inuktitut is a common vehicular
language in territorial government. [1 50] In
the NWT, the Official Languages Act declares
that there are eleven different languages:
Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, GWich'in.
Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut,
Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey and
ThchQ.[1511 Besides English and French, these
languages are not vehicular in government;
official status entitles citizens to receive
services in them on request and to deal with
the government in them.[149]
Aboriginal cultural areas depend upon their
ancestors' primary lifeway, or occupation, at the
time of European contact. These culture areas
correspond closely with physical and ecological
regions of Canada.[143] The indigenous
peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were
centred around ocean and river fishing; in the
interior of British Columbia, hunter-gatherer
and river fishing. In both of these areas the
salmon was of chief importance. For the people
of the plains, bison hunting was the primary
activity. In the subarctic forest, other species
such as the moose were more important. For
peoples near the Great Lakes and Saint
Lawrence River, shifting agriculture was
practised, including the raising of maize, beans,
and squash.[1 6][143] While for the Inuit,
hunting was the primary source of food with
seals the primary component of their diet. [1
44] The caribou, fish, other marine mammals
and to a lesser extent plants, berries and
seaweed are part of the Inuit diet. One of the
most noticeable symbols of Inuit culture, the
inukshuk is the emblem of the Vancouver 2010
Winter Olympics. Inuksuit are rock sculptures
made by stacking stones; in the shape of a
human figure, they are called inunnguaq.[145]
Culture of Indigenous peoples
Through storytelling and other interactive
learning styles, countless North American
Indigenous words, inventions and games have
become an everyday part of Canadian
language and use. Thanks to groups such as
the
Aboriginal Language and Culture (ALC)
teachers of British Columbia, these practices
continue to be passed down to each
generation. The canoe, snowshoes, the
toboggan, lacrosse, tug of war, maple syrup
and tobacco are just a few of the products,
inventions and games.[138] Some of the words
include the barbecue, caribou, chipmunk,
woodchuck, hammock, skunk, and moose.
[139] Many places in Canada, both natural
features and human habitations, use
indigenous names. The word "Canada" itself
derives from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word
meaning "village" or "settlement".[140] The
province of Saskatchewan derives its name
from the Saskatchewan River, which in the
Cree language is called "Kisiskatchewani Sipi"
meaning "swift-flowing river."[1 41] Canada's
 capital city Ottawa comes from the Algonquin
language term "adawe" meaning "to
Modern youth groups such as Scouts Canada
and the Girl Guides of Canada include
programs based largely on Indigenous lore,
arts and crafts, character building and outdoor
camp craft and living. [1 42]
Indian reserves, established in Canadian law
by treaties such as Treaty 7, are lands of First
Nations recognized by non-indigenous
governments.[146] Some reserves are within
cities, such as the Opawikoscikan Reserve in
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Wendake in
Quebec City or Stony Plain 135 in the
Edmonton Capital Region. There are more
reserves in Canada than there are First
Nations, which were ceded multiple reserves
by treaty.[147]
Aboriginal people currently work in a variety of
occupations and may live outside their
ancestral homes. The traditional cultures of
their ancestors, shaped by nature, still exert a
strong influence on them, from spirituality to
political attitudes.[1 6][1431 National Aboriginal
Day is a day of recognition of the cultures and
contributions of the First Nations, Inuit and
Métis peoples of Canada. The day was first
celebrated in 1996, after it was proclaimed that
year, by then Governor General of Canada
Roméo LeBlanc, to be celebrated on June 21
annually.[17] Most provincial jurisdictions do
not recognize it as a statutory holiday.[1 7]
Royal Commission
The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
was a Royal Commission undertaken by the
Government of Canada in 1991 to address
issues of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. [1
281 It assessed past government policies
toward Aboriginal people, such as residential
schools, and provided policy recommendations
to the government.[1291 The Commission
issued its final report in November 1996. The
five-volume, 4,000-page report covered a vast
range of issues; its 440 recommendations
called for sweeping changes to the interaction
between Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal people
and the governments in Canada.[1 28] The
report "set out a 20-year agenda for
change."[130]
Political organization
First Nations and Inuit organizations ranged in
size from band societies of a few people to
multi-nation confederacies like the Iroquois.
First Nations leaders from across the country
formed the Assembly of First Nations, which
began as the National Indian Brotherhood in
1968.[136] The Métis and the Inuit are
represented nationally by the Métis National
Council and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
respectively.

Today's political organizations have resulted

from interaction with European-style methods
of government through the Federal Interlocutor
for Métis and Non-Status Indians. Aboriginal
political organizations throughout Canada vary
in political standing, viewpoints, and reasons for
forming.[137] First Nations, Métis and Inuit
negotiate with the Canadian Government
through Indian and Northern Affairs Canada in
all affairs concerning land, entitlement, and
rights.[1 36] The First Nation groups that
operate independently do not belong to these
groups.
[1 36]
Health policy
In 1 995, the federal government announced the
Aboriginal Right to Self-Government Policy.[1
31]
This policy recognizes that First Nations and
Inuit have the constitutional right to shape
their own forms of government to suit their
particular historical, cultural, political and
economic circumstances. The Indian Health
Transfer Policy provided a framework for the
assumption of control of health services by
Aboriginal peoples, and set forth a
developmental approach to transfer centred on
selfdetermination in health.[1 32][1 33]
Through this process, the decision to enter
transfer discussions with Health Canada rests
with each community. Once involved in
transfer, communities can take control of health
programme responsibilities at a pace
determined by their individual circumstances
and health management capabilities-[134] The
National Aboriginal Health Organization
(NAHO) incorporated in 2000, is an Aboriginal-
designed and-controlled not-for-profit body in
Canada that works to influence and advance
the health and well-being of Aboriginal
Peoples.[135]
Those people accepted into band membership
under band rules may not be status Indians.
C31 clarified that various sections of the Indian
Act would apply to band members. The
sections under debate concern community life
and land holdings. Sections pertaining to
Indians (First Nations peoples) as individuals
(in this case, wills and taxation of personal
property) were not included.[1 27]
Indian Act
The Indian Act is federal legislation that dates
from 1876. There have been over 20 major
changes made to the original Act since then,
the last time being in 1951; amended in 1985
with Bill C-31. The Indian Act indicates how
Reserves and Bands can operate and defines
who is recognized as an 261
In 1 985, the Canadian Parliament passed Bill
C31, "An Act to Amend the Indian Act"
Because of a Constitutional requirement, the
Bill took effect on April 17, 1985.[127]

• It ends discriminatory provisions of the

Indian Act, especially those that
discriminated against women.[127]
• It changes the meaning of "status" and
for the first time allows for limited
reinstatement of Indians who were
 denied or lost status and/or Band
membership.
[1 27]
• It allows bands to define their own
membership rules.[1 271
According to the First Nations— Federal Crown
Political Accord "cooperation will be a
cornerstone for partnership between Canada
and First Nations, wherein Canada is the
shortform reference to Her Majesty the Queen
in Right of Canada.[1 22] The Supreme Court
argued that treaties "served to reconcile
preexisting Aboriginal sovereignty with
assumed Crown sovereignty, and to define
Aboriginal rights".[1 22] First Nations people
interpreted agreements covered in treaty 8 to
last "as long as the sun shines, grass grows and
rivers flow." [1 25]
Politics, law and legislation
Treaties
The Canadian Crown and Aboriginal peoples
began interactions during the European
colonialization period. Numbered treaties, the
Indian Act, the Constitution Act of 1982 and
case laws were established. Aboriginal peoples
construe these agreements as being between
them and the Crown of Canada through the
districts Indian Agent, and not the Cabinet of
Canada.[1221 The Mäori interprets the Treaty
of Waitangi in New Zealand similarly.[1 23] A
series of eleven treaties were signed between
First Nations in Canada and the reigning
Monarch of Canada from 1 871 to 1 921. The
Government of
Canada created the policy, commissioned the
Treaty Commissioners and ratified the
agreements. These Treaties are agreements
with the Government of Canada administered
by Canadian Aboriginal law and overseen by
the
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development. [124]
Because of laws and policies that encouraged
or required Indigenous peoples to assimilate
into a Eurocentric society, Canada violated
the United Nations Genocide Convention that
Canada signed in 1949 and passed through
Parliament in 1952.[1 19] The residential school
system that removed Aboriginal children from
their homes has led scholars to believe that
Canada can be tried in international court for
genocide.[1 19] A legal case resulted in
settlement of 2 billion CS in 2006 and the
establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission which confirmed the injurious
effect on children of this system and turmoil
created between Aboriginal Canadians and
Canadian Society.[1 20] In 2008 Prime Minister
Stephen Harper issued an apology on behalf of
the Canadian government and its citizens for
the residential school system.[1 21]
The final government strategy of
assimilation, made possible by the Indian Act
was the Canadian residential school system:
Of all the initiatives that were undertaken in
the first century of Confederation, none was
more ambitious or central to the civilizing
strategy of the Department, to its goal of
assimilation, than the residential school
system... it was the residential school
experience that would lead children most
effectively out of their "savage" communities
into 'higher civilization" and "full
citizenship."[1 1 6]

Beginning in 1847 and lasting until 1996, the

Canadian government, in partnership with the
Catholic Church, ran 130 residential boarding
schools across Canada for Aboriginal children,
who were forcibly taken from their homes.
[117] While the schools were said to educate,
they were plagued by under-funding, disease,
and abuse.[1 1 8]
Forced assimilation
From the late 18th century, European
Canadians (and the Canadian government)
encouraged assimilation of Aboriginal culture
into what was referred to as "Canadian
culture".[1 09][1 10] These attempts reached
a climax in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, with a series of initiatives that
aimed at complete assimilation and
subjugation of the Aboriginal peoples. These
policies, which were made possible by
legislation such as the Gradual Civilization
Act[1 1 1] and the Indian Act,[112] focused on
European ideals of Christianity, sedentary
living, agriculture, and education.
The attempt at Christianization of the Aboriginal
people of Canada had been ongoing since the
first missionaries arrived in the 1 600s, however
it became more systematic with the Indian Act
in 1876, which would bring new sanctions for
those who did not convert to Christianity. For
example, the new laws would prevent
nonChristian Aboriginal people from testifying
or having their cases heard in court and ban
alcohol consumption.[113] When the Indian Act
was amended in 1 884, traditional religious and
social practices, such as the Potlatch, would be
banned, and further amendments in 1920
would prevent "status Indians" (as defined in
the Act) from wearing traditional dress or
performing traditional dances in an attempt to
stop all nonChristian practices.[1 1 3]
Another focus of the Canadian government was
to make the Aboriginal groups of Canada
sedentary, as they thought that this would
make them easier to assimilate. In the 1 9th
century, the government began to support the
creation of model farming villages, which were
meant to encourage non-sedentary Aboriginal
groups to settle in an area and begin to
cultivate agriculture.[1 14] When most of these
model farming villages failed,[1 14] the
government turned instead to the creation of
Indian reserves with the Indian Act of 1876.
[112] With the creation of these reserves came
many restricting laws, such as further bans on
all intoxicants, restrictions on eligibility to vote
in band elections, decreased hunting and
fishing areas, and inability for status Indians to
visit other groups on their reservations.[112]
Through the Gradual Civilization Act in 1857,
the government would encourage Indians (i.e.,
First Nations) to enfranchise — to remove all
legal distinctions between [Indians] and Her
Majesty's other Canadian Subjects.[111] If an
Aboriginal chose to enfranchise, it would strip
them and their family of Aboriginal title, with
the idea that they would become "less savage"
and "more civilized", thus become assimilated
into
Canadian society.[1 1 5] However, they were
often still defined as non-citizens by Europeans,
and those few who did enfranchise were often
met with disappointment.[115]
Canada under British rule (1763—1867)
 Map showing British territorial gains
following the "Seven Years' War". Treaty of
Paris gains in pink, and Spanish territorial
gains after the Treaty of Fontainebleau in
yellow.

With the end of the Seven YearS War and the

signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763), France
ceded almost all of its remaining territory in
mainland North America, except for fishing
rights off Newfoundland and the two small
islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon where
its fishermen could dry their fish. France had
already secretly ceded its vast Louisiana
territory to Spain under the Treaty of
Fontainebleau (1762) in which King Louis XV of
France had given his cousin King Charles I ll of
Spain the entire area of the drainage basin of
the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes t Gulf
of Mexico and from the ADDaIachian o
Canada under British rule (1763—1867)
 Map showing British territorial gains
following the "Seven Years' War". Treaty of
Paris gains in pink, and Spanish territorial
gains after the Treaty of Fontainebleau in
yellow.
The new British rulers of Canada retained and
protected most of the property, religious,
political, and social culture of the
Frenchspeaking habitants, guaranteeing the
right of the Canadiens to practice the Catholic
faith and to the use of French civil law (now
Quebec law) through the Quebec Act of 1774.
[95] The Royal Proclamation of 1763 had been
issued in
October, by King George I l l following Great
Britain's acquisition of French territory. [96]
The proclamation organized Great Britain's
new North American empire and stabilized
relations between the British Crown and
Aboriginal peoples through regulation of
trade, settlement, and land purchases on the
western frontier.[96]
With the end of the Seven Years' War and
the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1 763),
France ceded almost all of its remaining
territory in mainland North America, except
for fishing rights off Newfoundland and the
two small islands of Saint Pierre and
Miquelon where its fishermen could dry
their fish. France had already secretly ceded
its vast Louisiana territory to Spain under
the Treaty of
Fontainebleau (1762) in which King Louis XV
of
France had given his cousin King Charles Ill of
Spain the entire area of the drainage basin of
the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to
the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian
Mountains to the Rocky Mountains. France and
Spain kept the Treaty of Fontainebleau secret
from other countries until 1764.1931 In return
for acquiring Canada, Britain returned to France
its most important sugar-producing colony,
Guadeloupe, which the French at the time
considered more valuable than Canada.
(Guadeloupe produced more sugar than all the
British islands combined, and Voltaire had
notoriously dismissed Canada as "Quelques
arpents de neige", "A few acres of snow"). [94]
When the British evacuated New York City in
1783, they took many Loyalist refugees to
Nova Scotia, while other Loyalists went to
southwestern Quebec. So many Loyalists
arrived on the shores of the St. John River that
a separate colony—New Brunswick—was
created in 1784;[1 00] followed in 1791 by the
division of Quebec into the largely French-
speaking Lower
Canada (French Canada) along the St. Lawrence
River and Gaspé Peninsula and an anglophone
Loyalist Upper Canada, with its capital settled
by
 1796 in York, in present-day Toronto.[1 01]
After 1790 most of the new settlers were
American farmers searching for new lands;
although generally favorable to
republicanism, they were relatively non-
political and stayed neutral in the War of
1812.[1 02]
American Revolution and the Loyalists
During the American Revolution, there was
some sympathy for the American cause among
the Acadians and the New Englanders in Nova
Scotia.[97] Neither party joined the rebels,
although several hundred individuals joined the
revolutionary An invasion of
Quebec by the Continental Army in 1775, with a
goal to take Quebec from British control, was
halted at the Battle of Quebec by Guy Carleton,
with the assistance of local militias. The defeat
of the British army during the Siege of Yorktown
in October 1781 signaled the end of Britain's
struggle to suppress the American Revolution.
[99]
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was fought between the
United
States and the British, with the British North
American colonies being heavily involved.[1
06]
Greatly outgunned by the British Royal Navy,
the
American war plans focused on an invasion of
Canada (especially what is today eastern and
western Ontario). The American frontier
states voted for war to suppress the First
Nations raids that frustrated settlement of the
frontier.[1 06] The war on the border with the
United States was characterized by a series of
multiple failed invasions and fiascos on both
sides. American forces took control of Lake
Erie in 1 81 3, driving the British out of
western Ontario, killing the Native American
leader Tecumseh, and breaking the military
power of his confederacy.[107] The war was
overseen by British army officers like Isaac
Brock and Charles de Salaberry with the
assistance of First Nations and loyalist
informants, most notably Laura Secord.[1 081
Lower emphasizes the positive benefits of the
Revolution for Americans, making them an
energetic people, while for English Canada
the results were negative:

[English Canada] inherited, not the benefits,

but the bitterness of the Revolution. It got no
shining scriptures out of it. It got little release
of energy and no new horizons of the spirit
were opened up. It had been a calamity, pure
and simple.[1 05] To take the place of the
internal fire that was urging Americans
westward across the continent, there was only
melancholy contemplation of things as they
might have been and dingy reflection of that
ineffably glorious world across the stormy
Atlantic. English Canada started its life with as
powerful a nostalgic shove backward into the
past as the Conquest had given to French
Canada: two little peoples officially devoted to
counter-revolution, to lost causes, to the
tawdry ideals of a society of men and masters,
and not to the self-reliant freedom alongside
of them.[1 05]
The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783
formally ended the war. Britain made several
concessions to the Americans at the expense of
the North American colonies.[1 03] Notably, the
borders between Canada and the United States
were officially demarcated;[103] all land south
of the Great Lakes, which was formerly a part of
the Province of Quebec and included modern
day Michigan, Illinois and Ohio, was ceded to
the Americans. Fishing rights were also granted
to the United States in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
and on the coast of Newfoundland and the
Grand Banks.[103] The British ignored part of
the treaty and maintained their military
outposts in the Great Lakes areas it had ceded
to the U.S., and they continued to supply their
native allies with munitions. The British
evacuated the outposts with the Jay Treaty of
1795, but the continued supply of munitions
irritated the Americans in the run-up to the War
of 1 812.[104]
Rebellions and the Durham Report
The rebellions of 1837 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.[1 1 0]

In Lower Canada, a more substantial rebellion

occurred against British rule. Both English- and
French-Canadian rebels, sometimes using bases
in the neutral United States, 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 the "Declaration of Independence of Lower
Canada" to a crowd assembled at the town of
Napierville in 1838.[111] The rebellion of the
Patriote movement was defeated after
battles across Quebec. Hundreds were
arrested, and several villages were burnt in
reprisal.[11 Il
The War ended with no boundary changes
thanks to the Treaty of Ghent of 1 81 4, and
the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1 817.[106] A
demographic result was the shifting of the
destination of American migration from
Upper Canada to Ohio, Indiana and Michigan,
without fear of Indian attacks.[1 06] After the
war, supporters of Britain tried to repress the
republicanism that was common among
American immigrants to Canada.[1 06] The
troubling memory of the war and the
American invasions etched itself into the
consciousness of Canadians as a distrust of
the intentions of the United States towards
the British presence in North 254-255
British Government then sent Lord Durham to
examine the situation; he stayed in Canada
only five months before returning to Britain
and brought with him his Durham Report,
which strongly recommended responsible
government. [1 12] A less well-received
recommendation was the amalgamation of
Upper and Lower Canada for the deliberate
assimilation of the Frenchspeaking population.
The Canadas were merged into a single colony,
the United Province of Canada, by the 1840 Act
of Union, and responsible government was
achieved in 1848, a few months after it was
accomplished in Nova Scotia.[1 12] The
parliament of United Canada in
Montreal was set on fire by a mob of Tories
in 1849 after the passing of an indemnity bill
for the people who suffered losses during
the rebellion in Lower Canada.[113]

Between the Napoleonic Wars and 1 850, some

800,000 immigrants came to the colonies of
British North America, mainly from the British
Isles, as part of the great migration of Canada.
[1 14] These included Gaelic-speaking
Highland
Scots displaced by the Highland Clearances to
Nova Scotia and Scottish and English settlers
to the Canadas, particularly Upper Canada.
 The Irish Famine of the 1840s significantly
increased the pace of Irish Catholic
immigration to British North America, with
over 35,000 distressed Irish landing in
Toronto alone in 1847 and 1848.[1 15]
Spanish explorers had taken the lead in the
Pacific Northwest coast, with the voyages of
Juan José Pérez Hernandez in 1774 and 1775.
[1 1 6] By the time the Spanish determined to
build a fort on Vancouver Island, the British
navigator James Cook had visited Nootka
Sound and charted the coast as far as Alaska,
while British and American maritime fur
traders had begun a busy era of commerce
with the coastal peoples to satisfy the brisk
market for sea otter pelts in China, thereby
launching what became known as the China
Trade.[117] In 1789 war threatened between
Britain and Spain on their respective rights; the
Nootka Crisis was resolved peacefully largely in
favor of Britain, the much stronger naval
power. In 1793 Alexander MacKenzie, a
Canadian working for the North West
Company, crossed the continent and with his
Aboriginal guides and French-Canadian crew,
reached the mouth of the Bella Coola River,
completing the first continental crossing north
of Mexico, missing George Vancouver's
 charting expedition to the region by only a few
weeks. [1 1 8] In 1821, the North West
Company and Hudson's Bay Company merged,
with a combined trading territory that was
extended by a licence to the North-Western
Territory and the Columbia and New Caledonia
fur districts, which reached the Arctic Ocean on
the north and the Pacific Ocean on the west.
[119]
Confederation
The Seventy-Two Resolutions from the 1864
Quebec Conference and Charlottetown
Conference laid out the framework for uniting
British colonies in North America into a
federation.[1 21] They had been adopted by
the majority of the provinces of Canada and
became the basis for the London Conference of
1 866, which led to the formation of the
Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867.[121] 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
about a country.[1 22] With the coming into
force of the British North America Act (enacted
by the
British Parliament), the Province of Canada,
New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia became a
federated kingdom in its own right.[1 23][1
24][1251
The Colony of Vancouver Island was chartered
in 1 849, with the trading post at Fort Victoria
as the capital. This was followed by the
Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands in
1853, and by the creation of the Colony of
British Columbia in 1 858 and the Stikine
Territory in 1 861, with the latter three being
founded expressly to keep those regions from
being overrun and annexed by American gold
miners.[120] The Colony of the Queen
Charlotte Islands and most of the Stikine
Territory were merged into the Colony of
British Columbia in 1 863 (the remainder,
north of the 60th Parallel, became part of the
NorthWestern Territory) .[120]
Post-Confederation Canada 1867—1914

The Battle of Fish Creek, fought April 24, 1885,

at Fish Creek, Saskatchewan, was a major
Métis victory over the Dominion of Canada
forces attempting to quell Louis Riel's North-
West Rebellion.

Expansion
Using the lure of the Canadian Pacific Railway,
a transcontinental line that would unite the
nation, Ottawa attracted support in the
Maritimes and in British Columbia. In 1866,
the Colony of British Columbia and the Colony
of Vancouver
Island merged into a single Colony of British
Columbia; it joined the Canadian
Confederation in 1871. In 1873, Prince
Edward Island joined. Newfoundland—which
had no use for a transcontinental railway—
 voted no in 1869, and did not join Canada
until 1949.[127]
Federation emerged from multiple impulses:
the
British wanted Canada to defend itself; the
Maritimes needed railroad connections, which
were promised in 1867; British-Canadian
nationalism sought to unite the lands into one
country, dominated by the English language
and British culture; many French-Canadians
saw an opportunity to exert political control
within a new largely French-speaking
Quebec[109]pp. 323—324 and fears of
possible U.S. expansion northward.[1 22] On a
political level, there was a desire for the
expansion of responsible government and
elimination of the legislative deadlock between
Upper and Lower Canada, and their
replacement with provincial legislatures in a
federation.ll 22] This was especially pushed by
the liberal Reform movement of Upper Canada
and the FrenchCanadian Parti rouge in Lower
Canada who favored a decentralized union in
comparison to the Upper Canadian
Conservative party and to some degree the
French-Canadian Parti bleu, which favored a
centralized union.[1 26]
In 1905 when Saskatchewan and Alberta were
admitted as provinces, they were growing
rapidly thanks to abundant wheat crops that
attracted immigration to the plains by
Ukrainians and Northern and Central
Europeans and by settlers from the United
States, Britain and eastern Canada.[132][133]

A photochrome postcard showing downtown

Montreal, circa 1910. Canada's population
became urbanized during the 20th century.

The Alaska boundary dispute, simmering since

the Alaska purchase of 1867, became critical
when gold was discovered in the Yukon during
the late 1890s, with the U.S. controlling all the
possible ports of entry. Canada argued its
boundary included the port of Skagway. The
dispute went to arbitration in 1903, but the
British delegate sided with the Americans,
 angering Canadians who felt the British had
betrayed Canadian interests to curry favour
with the U.S.[134]
In the 1 890s, legal experts codified a
framework of criminal law, culminating in the
Criminal Code, 1892.[135] This solidified the
liberal ideal of "equality before the law" in a
way that made an abstract principle into a
tangible reality for every adult Canadian.[136]
Wilfrid Laurier who served 1896-1911 as the
Seventh Prime Minister of Canada felt Canada
was on the verge of becoming a world power,
and declared that the 20th century would
"belong to Canada'
[1371

Laurier signed a reciprocity treaty with the U.S.

that would lower tariffs in both directions.
Conservatives under Robert Borden
denounced it, saying it would integrate
Canada's economy into that of the U.S. and
loosen ties with Britain. The Conservative party
won the Canadian federal election, 191 1 .
[1381
In 1873 John A. Macdonald (First Prime Minister
of Canada) created the North-West Mounted
Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police) to help police the Northwest Territories.
[1 28] Specifically the Mounties were to assert
Canadian sovereignty over possible American
encroachments into the sparsely populated land.
[128]

The Mounties' first large-scale mission was to

suppress the second independence movement
by Manitoba's Métis, a mixed blood people of
joint First Nations and European descent, who
originated in the mid-17th century.[1 29] The
desire for independence erupted in the Red River
Rebellion in 1869 and the later North-West
Rebellion in 1885 led by Louis Riel.[1 30]
Suppressing the Rebellion was Canada's first
independent military action. It cost about $5
million and demonstrated the need to
complete the Canadian Pacific Railway. It
guaranteed Anglophone control of the
Prairies, and demonstrated the national
government was capable of decisive action.
However, it lost the Conservative Party most
of their support in
Quebec and led to permanent distrust of the
Anglophone community on the part of the
Francophones.[131]
Popular culture
In Canada, leisure in the country is related to
the decline in work hours and is shaped by
moral values, and the ethnic-religious and
gender communities. In a cold country with
winter's long nights, and summer's extended
daylight, favorite leisure activities include
horse racing, team sports such as hockey,
singalongs, Rollerskating and board games.
[139][140][141] The churches tried to steer
leisure activities, by preaching against
drinking and scheduling annual revivals and
weekly club activities.[142] By 1930 radio
played a major role in uniting Canadians
behind their local or regional hockey teams.
Play-by-play sports coverage, especially of ice
hockey, absorbed fans far more intensely
than newspaper accounts the next day. Rural
areas were especially influenced by sports
coverage.[143] Canadians in the 19th century
came to believe themselves possessed of a
unique "northern character," due to the long,
harsh winters that only those of hardy body
and mind could survive. This hardiness was
claimed as a Canadian trait, and such sports
as ice hockey and snowshoeing that reflected
this were asserted as characteristically
Canadian. [1 44] Outside the sports arena
Canadians express the national
characteristics of being peaceful, orderly and
polite. Inside they scream their lungs out at
ice hockey games, cheering the speed,
ferocity, and violence, making hockey an
ambiguous symbol of Canada.[145]
Popular culture
In Canada, leisure in the country is related to
the decline in work hours and is shaped by
moral values, and the ethnic-religious and
gender communities. In a cold country with
winter's long nights, and summer's extended
daylight, favorite leisure activities include horse
racing, team sports such as hockey, singalongs,
Rollerskating and board
The churches tried to steer leisure activities, by
preaching against drinking and scheduling
annual revivals and weekly club activities.[142]
By 1930 radio played a major role in uniting
Canadians behind their local or regional hockey
teams. Play-by-play sports coverage, especially
of ice hockey, absorbed fans far more intensely
than newspaper accounts the next day. Rural
areas were especially influenced by sports
coverage.[143] Canadians in the 19th century
came to believe themselves possessed of a
unique "northern character," due to the long,
harsh winters that only those of hardy body and
mind could survive. This hardiness was claimed
as a Canadian trait, and such sports as ice
hockey and snowshoeing that reflected this
were asserted as characteristically Canadian.
[144] Outside the sports arena Canadians
express the national characteristics of being
peaceful, orderly and polite. Inside they scream
their lungs out at ice hockey games, cheering the
speed, ferocity, and violence, making horVA\' an
ambiguous symbol of Canada.[145]

o
Support for Great Britain during the First
World War caused a major political crisis over
conscription, with Francophones, mainly from
Quebec, rejecting national policies.[1491
During the crisis, large numbers of enemy
aliens (especially Ukrainians and Germans)
were put under government controls.[1 50]
The Liberal party was deeply split, with most
of its Anglophone leaders joining the unionist
government headed by Prime Minister Robert
Borden, the leader of the Conservative party.
[1 51] The Liberals regained their influence
after the war under the leadership of William
Lyon Mackenzie King, who served as prime
minister with three separate terms between
1921 and 1949.11 52]
World wars and interwar years 1914—1945
First World War
The Canadian Forces and civilian participation
in the First World War helped to foster a sense
of British-Canadian nationhood. The
highpoints of Canadian military achievement
during the First World War came during the
Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele battles and what
later became known as "Canada's Hundred
The reputation Canadian troops
earned, along with the success of Canadian
flying aces including William George Barker
and Billy Bishop, helped to give the nation a
new sense of identity.fi 47] The War Office in
1922 reported approximately 67,000 killed and
173,000 wounded during the war.[1481 This
excludes civilian deaths in wartime incidents
like the Halifax Explosion.[148]
Woman suffrage
Women's political status without the vote was
vigorously promoted by the National Council of
Women of Canada from 1894 to 1918. It
promoted a vision of "transcendent citizenship"
for women. The ballot was not needed, for
citizenship was to be exercised through
personal influence and moral suasion, through
the election of men with strong moral
character, and through raising public-spirited
sons.[1 53] The National Council position
reflected its nation-building program that
sought to uphold Canada as a White settler
nation. While the woman suffrage movement
was important for extending the political rights
of White women, it was also authorized
through race-based arguments that linked
White women's enfranchisement to the need
to protect the nation from "racial
degeneration."[1 53]

Women did have a local vote in some

provinces, as in Canada West from 1850, where
women owning land could vote for school
trustees. By 1900 other provinces adopted
similar provisions, and in 1916 Manitoba took
the lead in extending full woman's suffrage.[1
54]
Simultaneously suffragists gave strong support
to the prohibition movement, especially in
Ontario and the Western provinces.[1 55][1 56]
The Military Voters Act of 1917 gave the vote
to British women who were war widows or
had sons or husbands serving overseas.
Unionists Prime Minister Borden pledged
himself during the 1917 campaign to equal
suffrage for women. After his landslide victory,
he introduced a bill in 1918 for extending the
franchise to women. This passed without
division, but did not apply to Quebec
provincial and municipal elections. The
women of Quebec gained full suffrage in 1940.
The first woman elected to Parliament was
Agnes Macphail of Ontario in 1921 .[1 57]

Interwar

Anachronous map of the world between

1920 and 1945 which shows The League of
Nations and the world.
On the world stage
As a result of its contribution to Allied victory
in the First World War, Canada became more
 assertive and less deferential to British
authority. Convinced that Canada had proven
itself on the battlefields of Europe, Prime
Minister Sir Robert Borden demanded that it
have a separate seat at the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919. This was initially opposed
not only by Britain but also by the United
States, which saw such a delegation as an extra
British vote. Borden responded by pointing out
that since Canada had lost nearly 60,000 men,
a far larger proportion of its men, its right to
equal status as a nation had been consecrated
on the battlefield. British Prime Minister David
Lloyd George eventually relented, and
convinced the reluctant Americans to accept
the presence of delegations from Canada,
India, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand,
and South Africa.
These also received their own seats in the
League of Nations.[1 58] Canada asked for
neither reparations nor mandates. It played
only a modest role at Paris, but just having a
seat was a matter of pride. It was cautiously
optimistic about the new League of Nations, in
which it played an active and independent role.
[1 59]
In 1923 British Prime Minister, David Lloyd
George, appealed repeatedly for Canadian
support in the Chanak crisis, in which a war
threatened between Britain and Turkey.
Canada refused.[1 60] The Department of
External Affairs, which had been founded in 1
909, was expanded and promoted Canadian
autonomy as Canada reduced its reliance on
British diplomats and used its own foreign
service.[1 61] Thus began the careers of such
important diplomats as Norman Robertson
and Hume Wrong, and future prime minister
Lester Pearson.[1 62]
In 1 931 the British Parliament passed the
Statute of Westminster which gave each
dominion the opportunity for almost complete
legislative independence from London.[163]
While Newfoundland never adopted the
statute, for Canada the Statute of Westminster
became its declaration of independence. [1 64]
In 1926 Prime Minister Mackenzie King advised
the Governor General, Lord Byng, to dissolve
Parliament and call another election, but Byng
refused, the only time that the Governor
General has exercised such a power. Instead
Byng called upon Meighen, the Conservative
Party leader, to form a government.[1 67]
Meighen attempted to do so, but was unable
to obtain a majority in the Commons and he,
too, advised dissolution, which this time was
accepted. The episode, the King-Byng Affair,
marks a constitutional crisis that was resolved
by a new tradition of complete non-
interference in Canadian political affairs on the
part of the British government.[168]
h America, New France and colonization 1534
— 1763

Replica of Port Royal habitation, located at

the Port-Royal National Historic Site of
Canada, Nova Scotia.[44]
French interest in the New World began with
Francis I of France, who in 1524 sponsored
Giovanni da Verrazzano to navigate the region
between Florida and Newfoundland in hopes
of finding a route to the Pacific Ocean.[45] In 1
534, Jacques Cartier planted a cross in the
Gaspé
Peninsula and claimed the land in the name of
Francis 1.[46] Earlier colonization attempts by
Cartier at Charlesbourg-Royal in 1 541, at Sable
Island in 1 598 by Marquis de La
RocheMesgouez, and at Tadoussac, Quebec in
1600 by Franqois Gravé Du Pont had failed.[47]
Despite these initial failures, French fishing
fleets began to sail to the Atlantic coast and
 into the St. Lawrence River, trading and making
alliances with First Nations.[48]
Domestic affairs
In 1921 to 1 926, William Lyon Mackenzie
King's Liberal government pursued a
conservative domestic policy with the object
of lowering wartime taxes and, especially,
cooling wartime ethnic tensions, as well as
defusing postwar labour conflicts. The
Progressives refused to join the government,
but did help the Liberals defeat non-
confidence motions. King faced a delicate
balancing act of reducing tariffs enough to
please the Prairie-based Progressives, but not
too much to alienate his vital support in
industrial Ontario and Quebec, which needed
tariffs to compete with American imports. King
and Conservative leader Arthur Meighen
sparred constantly and bitterly in Commons
debates.
[1 65] The Progressives gradually weakened.
Their effective and passionate leader, Thomas
Crerar, resigned to return to his grain
business, and was replaced by the more
placid Robert Forke. The socialist reformer J.S.
Woodsworth gradually gained influence and
power among the Progressives, and he
reached an accommodation with King on
policy matters.

Champlain's Quebec City habitation c. 1608

In 1608 Champlain founded what is now
Quebec City, one of the earliest permanent
settlements, which would become the capital
of New France. [52] He took personal
administration over the city and its affairs, and
sent out expeditions to explore the interior.
[53] Champlain himself discovered Lake
Champlain in 1609. By 1 61 5, he had travelled
by canoe up the Ottawa River through Lake
Nipissing and Georgian Bay to the centre of
Huron country near Lake Simcoe.[54] During
 these voyages, Champlain aided the Wendat
(aka 'Hurons') in their battles against the
Iroquois Confederacy.[55] As a result, the
Iroquois would become enemies of the French
and be involved in multiple conflicts (known as
the French and Iroquois Wars) until the signing
of the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701.[56]
The English, led by Humphrey Gilbert, had
claimed St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1583 as
the first North American English colony by royal
prerogative of Queen Elizabeth 1.[57] In the
reign of King James l, the English established
additional colonies in Cupids and Ferryland,
Newfoundland, and soon after established the
first successful permanent settlements of
Virginia to the south.[58] On September 29,
1 621, a charter for the foundation of a New
World Scottish colony was granted by King
James to Sir William Alexander.[59] In 1622,
the first settlers left Scotland. They initially
failed and permanent Nova Scotian settlements
were not firmly established until 1629 during
the end of the Anglo-French War.[59] These
colonies did not last long: in 1631, under
Charles I of
England, the Treaty of Suza was signed, ending
the war and returning Nova Scotia to the
French. [60] New France was not fully restored
to French rule until the 1632 Treaty of Saint-
Germain-enLaye.[61] This led to new French
immigrants and the founding of Trois-Riviéres in
1634.[62]
In 1 604, a North American fur trade monopoly
was granted to Pierre Du Gua, Sieur de Mons.
[49] The fur trade became one of the main
economic ventures in North America.[50] Du
Gua led his first colonization expedition to an
island located near the mouth of the St. Croix
River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer
named Samuel de Champlain, who promptly
carried out a major exploration of the
northeastern coastline of what is now the
United States.[49] In the spring of 1605, under
Samuel de Champlain, the new St. Croix
settlement was moved to Port Royal (today's
Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).[51]
The Quebec Settlement : A.—The Warehouse. B.
—Pigeon-loft. C.—Detached Buildings where we
keep our arms and for Lodging our Workmen. D.
—Another Detached Building for the Workmen.
E.—Sun-dial. F.—Another Detached Building
where is the Smithy and where the Workmen
are Lodged. G.—Galleries all around the
 Lodgings. H.—The Sieur de Champlain's
Lodgings. l.—The door of the Settlement with a
Draw-bridge. L Promenade around the
Settlement ten feet in width to the edge of the
Moat. M.—Moat the whole way around the
Settlement. O. —The Sieur de Champlain's
Garden. P.—The Kitchen. Q.— Space in front of
the Settlement on the Shore of the River. R.—
The great River St. Lawrence.
Although immigration rates to New France
remained very low under direct French control,
[68] most of the new arrivals were farmers, and
the rate of population growth among the
settlers themselves had been very high.[69] The
women had about 30 per cent more children
than comparable women who remained in
France. [70] Yves Landry says, 'Canadians had an
exceptional diet for their time."[70] This was
due to the natural abundance of meat, fish, and
pure water; the good food conservation
conditions during the winter; and an adequate
wheat supply in most years.[70] The 1666
census of New France was conducted by
France's intendant, Jean Talon, in the winter of
1665—1666. The census showed a population
count of 3,21 5 Acadians and habitants (French-
Canadian farmers) in the administrative districts
of Acadia and Canada.[71] The census also
revealed a great difference in the number of
men at 2,034 versus 1,181 women.[72]
During this period, in contrast to the higher
density and slower moving agricultural
settlement development by the English
inward from the east coast of the colonies,
New
France's interior frontier would eventually
cover an immense area with a thin network
centred on fur trade, conversion efforts by
missionaries, establishing and claiming an
empire, and military efforts to protect and
further those efforts.[63] The largest of these
canoe networks covered much of present-day
Canada and central present-day United States.
[641
After Champlain's death in 1635, the Roman
Catholic Church and the Jesuit establishment
became the most dominant force in New France
and hoped to establish a utopian European and
Aboriginal Christian community.[65] In 1 642,
the
Sulpicians sponsored a group of settlers led by
Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, who founded
Ville-Marie, precursor to present-day Montreal.
[66] In 1663 the French crown took direct
control of the colonies from the Company of
New France. [67]
Map of North America in 1702 showing
forts, towns and areas occupied by
European settlements. Britain (pink), France
(blue), and
Spain (orange)
By the early 1700s the New France settlers
were well established along the shores of the
Saint Lawrence River and parts of Nova Scotia,
with a population around However
new arrivals stopped coming from France in the
proceeding decades,[74][75][76] resulting in
the English and Scottish settlers in
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the southern
Thirteen Colonies to vastly outnumber the
French population approximately ten to one by
the 1750s.[68][77] From 1 670, through the
Hudson's Bay Company, the English also laid
claim to Hudson Bay and its drainage basin
known as Rupert's Land establishing new
trading posts and forts, while continuing to
operate fishing settlements in Newfoundland.
[78] French expansion along the
 Canadian canoe routes challenged the
Hudson's Bay Company claims, and in 1 686,
Pierre Troyes led an overland expedition from
Montreal to the shore of the bay, where they
managed to capture a handful of outposts.[79]
La Salle's explorations gave France a claim to
the
Mississippi River Valley, where fur trappers and
a few settlers set up scattered forts and
settlements.[80]
There were four French and Indian Wars and
two additional wars in Acadia and Nova Scotia
between the Thirteen American Colonies and
New France from 1688 to 1763. During King
William's War (1 688 to 1 697), military
conflicts in Acadia included: Battle of Port
Royal (1 690); a naval battle in the Bay of
Fundy (Action of July 14 1696); and the Raid
on Chignecto (1696) [81] The Treaty of
Ryswick in 1697 ended the war between the
two colonial powers of England and France for
a brief time.[82] During Queen Anne's War
(1702 to 171 3), the British Conquest of Acadia
occurred in 171 resulting in Nova Scotia, other
than Cape Breton, being officially ceded to the
British by the Treaty of Utrecht including
Rupert's Land, which France had conquered in
the late 17th century (Battle of Hudson's Bay).
[84] As an immediate result of this setback,
France founded the powerful Fortress of
Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island.
Louisbourg was intended to serve as a
yearround military and naval base for France's
remaining North American empire and to
protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River.
Father Rale's War resulted in both the fall of
New
France influence in present-day Maine and the
British recognition of having to negotiate with
the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia. During King
George's War (1744 to 1748), an army of New
Englanders led by William Pepperrell mounted
an expedition of 90 vessels and 4,000 men
against Louisbourg in 1745.[86] Within three
months the fortress surrendered. The return of
Louisbourg to French control by the peace
treaty prompted the British to found Halifax in
1749 under Edward Cornwallis.[87] Despite the
official cessation of war between the British and
French empires with the Treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle; the conflict in Acadia and Nova Scotia
continued on as the Father Le Loutre's War.[88]
The British ordered the Acadians expelled
from their lands in 1755 during the French
and Indian War, an event called the
Expulsion of the
Acadians or le Grand Dérangement.[89] The
"expulsion" resulted in approximately 12,000
Acadians being shipped to destinations
throughout Britain's North America and to
France, Quebec and the French Caribbean
colony of Saint-Domingue.[90] The first wave
of the expulsion of the Acadians began with
the Bay of Fundy Campaign (1755) and the
second wave began after the final Siege of
Louisbourg (1758). Many of the Acadians
settled in southern Louisiana, creating the
Cajun culture there.[91] Some Acadians
managed to hide and others eventually
returned to Nova Scotia, but they were far
outnumbered by a new migration of New
England Planters who were settled on the
former lands of the Acadians and transformed
Nova Scotia from a colony of occupation for
the British to a settled colony with stronger
ties to New England.[91] Britain eventually
gained control of Quebec City and Montreal
after the Battle of the Plains of
Abraham and Battle of Fort Niagara in 1759, and
the Battle of the Thousand Islands and Battle of
Sainte-Foy in 1760.[92]