Although incorporated into Canadian Confederation in 1867, Canada’s history spans thousands of years from Paleo-Indian arrivals to the present day. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Aboriginal peoples throughout present-day Canada had their own culture, trade, social organization and spiritual beliefs, which almost all disappeared over time after the arrival of the Europeans, and later archaeological excavations brought the lost history to the public.
Archaeological and primitive genetic evidence indicates that North and South America were the last continents to which humans migrated. About 50,000–17,000 years ago, humans slowly moved across the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia into northwestern North America. At that time, they were trapped all the way to Alaska and the Yukon for thousands of years by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. About 16,000 years ago, humans entered Canada along southern and eastern Beringia as a result of melting ice.
North America’s climate stabilized around 10,000 years ago – glacial lakes are thought to have formed at the end of the last ice age. During the Archaic period most peoples were very active hunter-gatherer groups and over time these peoples continued to expand their territorial limits.
But the timing of the first migrations to this new world is still debated, with it long thought that humans would not have reached the Americas until after the end of the Ice Age. This is because it was thought that Old World human cultures prior to the last Ice Age, 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, were not able to survive in cold arctic conditions and did not have the technology or watercraft they developed to cross the open ocean.
Recent research indicates that humans reached Australia across vast expanses of open sea at least 30,000 years ago, and that Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) inhabitants of Europe 20,000 years ago lived in extremely cold environments and may have had watercraft capable of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. It is theoretically possible to prove that humans could have reached North America from northeastern Siberia at any time in the last 100,000 years.
Different aboriginal cultures are known to have existed at different times, such as the Woodland Culture, which spanned from 2,000 BC to 1,000 AD and was active in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes region. Again the Hopewell culture which spread along the American rivers from 300 BC to 500 AD. The Hopewell Exchange System is most closely connected to the culture and society of the people on the Canadian shores of Lake Ontario.
However, distinct Paleo-Eskimos, known as the Dorset people in the Arctic Islands, whose culture was discovered around 500 BC and this Paleo-Eskimo culture was replaced by the ancestors of today’s Inuit around 1500 AD. This transition is supported by the archaeological record and Inuit mythology. Inuit culture is ethnographically different from Westerners. Common law did not exist in Inuit society before the introduction of the Canadian legal system.
The Norse, who originally settled in Greenland and Iceland, arrived around 1000 BC and established a small Norse settlement on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland. Italian-born John Cabot was the first European to land in Canada under King Henry VII of England after the Norse or “Viking Age”.
A review of records reveals that on June 24, 1497, he discovered land somewhere north of the Atlantic Provinces. The first landing site is believed to have been at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, although it may have been elsewhere. After 1497, Cabot and his son Sebastian Cabot set sail to explore the Northwest Territories, and other explorers continued to explore the New World from England, although details of these voyages are not well recorded. Although the English made landfall in North America in 1497 and King Henry VII claimed the land for England, it was not exercised and no attempt was made to establish a permanent colony.
St. Lawrence met the Iroquois on the “Hochelaga” with Jacques Cartier during his second voyage in 1535. France’s interest in the New World began with Francis I of France, who in 1524 explored the region between Florida and Newfoundland in the hope of reaching the Pacific with the navigational aid of Giovanni da Verrazano. Made landfall somewhere and claimed this land for England on behalf of Henry VIII.
Among the French, Jacques Cartier planted a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula in 1534, and Francis I claimed the land in his name, creating a territory called “Canada” the following summer. Cartier traveled up the “St. Lawrence” River to Lachine Rapids where Montreal now stands. As a result of France’s claim and actions in the colony of Canada, the name Canada appears on international maps to show the existence of this colony in the St. Lawrence River region. Originally in the late 15th century, French and British expeditions discovered and colonized parts of the interior of North America, including present-day Canada. Claimed the colony of New France in 1534 and settled permanently in 1608.
The English, led by Humphrey Gilbert, claimed St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1583 by Queen Elizabeth’s royal charter as the first English colony in North America. During the reign of King James I, the English established additional colonies at Cupid’s and Ferryland, Newfoundland, and soon established the first successful permanent settlement in southern Virginia. On September 29, 1621, King James William granted Alexander a charter to establish a new world Scottish colony. In 1622, the first settlers left Scotland. They were initially unsuccessful and a permanent Nova Scotian settlement was not established until 1629, at the end of the Anglo-French War. These colonies did not last long except for the fisheries in Ferryland under David Kirk. In 1931, under Charles I of England, the Treaty of Souza was signed, ending the war and returning Nova Scotia to the French. New France was not fully restored to French rule until the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1932.
By the early 1700s New France settlers were well established along the St. Lawrence River and in parts of Nova Scotia, with a population of about 16,000. But new arrivals from France ceased over the next decade, meaning that English and Scottish settlers in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the thirteen southern colonies outnumbered the French population by a ratio of about ten to one.
From 1688 to 1763, there were four French and Indian Wars between the thirteen American colonies and New France, and two additional wars in Acadia and Nova Scotia. During Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), the British conquest of Acadia in 1710 resulted in the formal ceding of Nova Scotia (except Cape Breton) to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht, including Rupert’s Land, which France had conquered in the late 17th century. At the Battle of Hudson’s Bay.
After the French defeat in the Seventh Year’s War, France ceded almost all of its North American possessions to Great Britain in 1763. As part of the terms of the Treaty of Paris, signed after the defeat of New France, France renounced its claims to mainland and North American territory, except for fishing rights to Newfoundland and two small islands. France had already secretly ceded its vast Louisiana territory under the Treaty of Ponte Fontainebleau in which King Louis XIV of France gave his cousin King Charles III of Spain the entire drainage basin from the Gulf of the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. Britain meanwhile returned to its most important sugar-producing colony, Guadeloupe (Guadeloupe produced more sugar than all the British Isles combined, and Voltaire infamously referred to Canada as “a few acres of snow”).
During the American Revolution, some Acadians and New England sympathizers from Nova Scotia joined the rebels, although hundreds did join the rebels. The invasion of Quebec by the Continental Army in 1775 and Guy Carleton’s support of local militias aimed at wresting Quebec from British control halted the Quebec War, and the defeat of the British army at the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781 signaled the end of Britain’s struggle to suppress the American Revolution. The British North American colonies were heavily involved in the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain. The war on the border with the United States resulted in several failed attacks on both sides. American forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813 and drove the British out of western Ontario, killing the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and destroying his military power.
The 1837 rebellion against the British colonial government took place in Upper and Lower Canada, with both English and French-Canadian rebels using bases in the neutral United States to wage various wars against the authorities. The towns of Chambly and Sorrel were captured by the rebels, and Quebec City was cut off from the rest of the colony. Montreal rebel leader Robert Nelson read the “Declaration of Independence of Lower Canada” to a crowd in Napeveril in 1838. However, after fighting across Quebec, the rebellion of the patriot movement was defeated. In retaliation hundreds of villagers were arrested and several villages were burnt down.
The British government then sent Lord Durham to Canada to investigate the situation, and under the Act of Union of 1840, Canada was incorporated into the United Kingdom’s single colony, the Province of Canada, and in 1848, responsible government was achieved in Nova Scotia a few months later.
Meanwhile the colony of Vancouver Island was chartered in 1849 with a trading post capital at Fort Victoria. To be clearly defined, the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands was created in 1853 and the Colony of British Columbia in 1858 and the Stickine Territory in 1861 and incorporated into the Colony of British Columbia in 1863.
Many of us know that on July 1, 1867, the four provinces of Canada West, Ontario, Canada East, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia united to form a new country called the Dominion of Canada under the British North America Act. Dominion Day is celebrated every year on July 1 to commemorate Canada becoming a self-governing country, now known as Canada Day.
Note that from 1841 to 1867 Upper Canada was known as Canada West and Lower Canada, Canada East although in 1840 Upper and Lower Canada were collectively referred to as the Province of Canada.
Although the official formation of Canada began in 1867, the present-day other provinces and territories subsequently joined the Canadian Federation at various times. Originally, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories joined the Canadian Federation in 1870, followed by British Columbia in 1871 and Prince Edward Island in 1873. Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905. The last province, Newfoundland and Labrador, ended in 1949 with the accession of the British North American nation of Canada.
Toronto, Canada
