Canada's History: Citizenship Test Study Notes

The first peoples and the arrival of Europeans

The Aboriginal, or Indigenous, peoples were the first to live in what is now Canada, arriving thousands of years before any Europeans. They are recognised today in three distinct groups: First Nations, Inuit and Métis. Their cultures and ways of life varied widely — from the fishing peoples of the Pacific coast to the hunters of the Arctic and the farming communities of the Great Lakes. When newcomers arrived, the knowledge and trade networks of these peoples were essential to survival.

The first Europeans to reach the Atlantic coast were Norse Vikings, who landed in present-day Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago but did not stay. Lasting contact came centuries later. In 1497 the Italian-born explorer John Cabot, sailing for England, mapped Canada's east coast and claimed the rich fishing grounds for the English crown. In the 1530s the French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River and was the first to record the name "Canada," taken from an Aboriginal word for a village.

Permanent French settlement followed in the early 1600s. Samuel de Champlain, often called the "Father of New France," founded Québec City in 1608 and built alliances with several First Nations. These early relationships set the stage for a colony whose economy would soon depend on a single, valuable resource: fur.

New France, the fur trade and the British conquest

The colony of New France grew along the St. Lawrence around the fur trade, especially the trade in beaver pelts prized for European hats. French traders, missionaries and explorers — together with Aboriginal partners and the Métis people who emerged from French and Indigenous unions — pushed deep into the continent. By the mid-1700s, however, France and Britain were rivals for control of North America.

The contest was settled by war. In 1759 the British defeated the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham near Québec City, and by the Treaty of Paris in 1763 New France passed to Britain. To govern a large French-speaking, Roman Catholic population, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act of 1774, which allowed the people of Quebec to keep their Catholic faith, French civil law, language and customs. This act is remembered as an early foundation of Canada's tradition of accommodation and tolerance.

The American Revolution soon reshaped the colonies again. After 1776, more than 40,000 Loyalists — people who wished to stay under the British crown, including Black Loyalists and Iroquois allies — fled the new United States and settled in Nova Scotia, Quebec and the lands that became Ontario and New Brunswick. Tensions flared once more in the War of 1812, when Canadian volunteers, British soldiers and First Nations allies, led by figures such as Sir Isaac Brock and the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, repelled American invasions and helped secure a separate British North America.

Responsible government and Confederation, 1867

By the 1830s and 1840s, colonists were demanding a greater say in how they were governed. The result was "responsible government" — the principle that ministers must hold the confidence of the elected assembly rather than answer only to the British-appointed governor. Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada won this democratic right in 1848, a milestone that paved the way toward self-rule.

Leaders known as the Fathers of Confederation then worked to unite the separate colonies into one country. On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act (today called the Constitution Act, 1867) joined Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into the new Dominion of Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald became Canada's first Prime Minister, and the date is celebrated each year as Canada Day. The young country soon expanded as Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and other provinces and territories joined.

To bind the new nation together, Canada built the Canadian Pacific Railway, completed in 1885, linking the East to British Columbia. Many of the labourers who built the most dangerous mountain sections were Chinese immigrants, who faced great hardship and discrimination. The railway opened the West to settlers, though it also disrupted the lives of First Nations and the Métis, whose resistance under Louis Riel is an important part of this era.

The World Wars and modern Canada

The twentieth century tested and strengthened Canada. Tens of thousands of Canadians served in the First World War (1914–1918); the Canadian Corps' victory at Vimy Ridge in 1917 became a symbol of national pride and growing independence. In the Second World War (1939–1945), more than a million Canadians served, taking part in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Italian campaign and the D-Day landing at Juno Beach in 1944. Canadians remember this service each year on Remembrance Day, November 11.

The decades that followed brought a more diverse and self-governing nation. Canada helped found the United Nations and NATO, adopted the maple-leaf flag in 1965, and in 1982 patriated its Constitution and added the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Successive waves of immigration from around the world, official bilingualism, and a policy of multiculturalism reshaped Canada into the modern democratic, pluralistic country it is today — while it continues to work toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

• c. 1000 — Norse Vikings reach the Atlantic coast
• 1497 — John Cabot maps the east coast for England
• 1535 — Jacques Cartier explores the St. Lawrence
• 1608 — Champlain founds Québec City
• 1759 — Battle of the Plains of Abraham
• 1774 — The Quebec Act
• 1812 — The War of 1812 begins
• 1867 — Confederation: the Dominion of Canada
• 1885 — The Canadian Pacific Railway is completed
• 1982 — Constitution patriated; Charter of Rights and Freedoms

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