The Canada is a country of 32 million inhabitants which occupies the Scandinavian portion of the North-American Continent , and is the second larger country of the world with regard to its surface (after the Russia). Inhabited since millenia by the First Nations (people autochtones), Canada evolved/moved starting from a group of colony S European in a federation officially multicultural Bilingue (English and French) and , having peacefully obtained its Souveraineté of the last colonial owner, the the United Kingdom. The France sent to the first important group colonists to the 17th century, but Canada had suddenly been dominated by the British until the country gains its complete independence at the 20th century. Its history was affected by its inhabitants, his geography and its relations with the outside world.

The time précolombienne

The Canada was populated by the ancestors of the Amerindian in Canada, are the Amerindian people approximately ten thousand years ago and the people Inuit S 2000 years ago. According to the estimates of certain anthropologists, the number of Amerindians installed inside the current borders of the the United States could vary between two and eighteen million people, and even forty million for others. The margin of the variation thus appears considerable. For North America, the historians generally retain the number low, that is to say two million, but that does not want to say that they are right. Under the terms of this assumption, one would estimate at approximately 1,7 million the indigenous population of the American territory at the beginning of XVIe century, because it is necessary to withdraw the indigenous population living from Canada, which amounted with less than 300.000 people. Thus, according to this same assumption, the population of origin, in the territory which is the the United States today, counted at least a million inhabitants.

About the year 1000, the Viking S established a village with the Handle in Meadows but could not there be maintained. They were the first Europeans to discover America, five centuries before Christophe Colomb. ¸Les fishing (European) undoubtedly made many visits while following fish of the benches of Newfoundland. The English and French crowns sent forwardings in North America, in particular to look for a way towards the Indies and also to chart the zones of fishings Golfe of the St. Lawrence. French installed permanent forts and founded Canada.

On arrival of Europeans at the 16th century, the indigenous tribes form with the Canada a sparse settlement, except in the Ontarian peninsula or its accesses. They practice a great diversity of common languages without origin. The language algonquin E and the language Déné or “Athapaskan” are spoken. None of these tribes are exclusively wandering, several depend mainly on hunting and follow displacements of the herds of deer tribe. On the other hand, some are characterized by the prevalence from agriculture in their economy and by the relative stability of their habitat. They represent the most organized companies and are represented by the related group of the Huron and the Neutres (around the lakes Erié and Ontario) and of the Iroquois more in the south in the current State of New York. Huron and Iroquois practice agriculture (corn, beans, pumpkins, sunflower and tobacco), hunting and the war. They build more or less temporary villages, sometimes enclosed palisades where they accumulate food provisions. Each year, they give up them during three to four months to devote itself to hunting, fishing and the trade. When wood becomes too rare or the too poor ground, the tribes leave them definitively.

On the west coast, one finds some tribes which are most sedentary being based completely on the pastoral economy. Certain tribes of the Peaceful (Tlinkit, Haida, Tchimshian, Kwakiutl…) achieve seasonal migrations to get game and especially fish (salmon, halibut, herring, oolakan) or seals. They are organized in villages of logs, grouped as clans then in phratries in certain tribes, but the village assumes the essential political role. The religious ceremonies and the social activities hold a particularly important place, which explains the power of the secret societies.

The wandering tribes are generally organized, except for those of Rock or of the interior plates (Chilcotin, Carrier, Tahltan), organized like the tribes of the Pacific. The people of the wooded areas (Micmacs, Malecite in the East, Montagnais, Naskapi, Ojibwa and Cree on the shield), which belongs to the family of language Algonquin E, follow displacements of game and are organized in more or less many bands, directed by chiefs without great capacities (delimitation of the territories of hunting, war). Only Ojibwa, less dispersed, have a less elementary organization. This one weakens it towards the extreme limit of the forest and the Barren Grounds (Chipewyan) and in the Rock ones (Salish, Kootenay) where only the father holds the authority.

The Indians of the Meadow, frequently called to form important concentrations (drives out with the bison, war), enjoy a more complete organization. The Creates plains and Assiniboine run up permanently against the group of the Pieds-Noirs, Piegan, Sarcee and Gens of Blood. The tribes disperse during the winter, but meet in summer to continue the herds of bisons and to keep themselves against their enemies. Chiefs and councils are appointed with the control of the tribes. There exists a police force which takes care of the maintenance of law and order and with the application of the decisions and the payments establish by the Councils.

The religion of the tribes autochtones of Canada is reduced to the worship forces nature simplified sometimes by the belief in a supreme god: the Big shot. The most sedentary tribes make a considerable place with the divinities and the religious ceremonies related to the agricultural life and the women, who assume the agricultural work, play in the government and the family organization a particularly active role. The Iroquoise company has an organization compared by Aubert of Chesnaye with those of the “Republics of Europe”, formed “maternal families”, clans, of phratrie, tribes, linked in their turn in a league.

Colonization

One estimates probable that Mediterranean people such as Phéniciens approached the Canadian coasts because they had ships able to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Around the Year Thousand, the first Europeans to have reached with certainty Canada are the Scandinavians of the medieval time, the Vikings. Vestiges of an establishment going back to this time were found with the Handle in Meadows with Newfoundland. The Viking S called this ground Vinland. It remains to be established if the " Men of Nord" or Norman a hard copy their voyages left.

Gaspar Corte-Real would have been the first European navigator to leave an attesting written document of a new ground beyond the Atlantic Ocean. He would thus have visited the Canadian coast. In the anonymous Portuguese planisphere of 1502, known as Planisphere of Cantino, the Greenland and Newfoundland are represented under Portuguese flags. This cartographic part is of great importance, since it is about the first chart where figure with a clear annotation the most significant part of Eastern contours of the new world. The Chart of Pedro Reinel, part going back to 1504, clearly attests domination of Portuguese knowledge in reference to Newfoundland by its abundant toponymy.

However, it remains certain that Irish, Breton and Basque fishermen (that one tends to reduce to their cityonnetés imperial English, espanoles and Frenchwomen) had sailed already before beyond the cold seas of Iceland and of the Faroe Islands in the search of Morue (even if contrary to the brothers Corte Real, no material proof can support this assertion).

For its second voyage, Giovani Cabotto leaves Bristol in 1498 but by circumstances which one cannot be really sure, did not return to England. Its discoveries at the time of the first voyage in 1497 remain discussed. The only known charts which exist as obviousness of its voyage are that of Juan of Cosa of 1500 (no other navigator is supposed to have travelled to the same place at the time) and one of his/her Sebastien son created in 1534 (whose influence of posterior navigators has without-doubt made influence). Five written letters by various individuals residing in England before 1500, especially those of Soncino and Day, attest knowledge of the “new” grounds in verifiable details with the coasts of current the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Thus, it appears inquestionnable that Cabotto reached a ground in the occident of England (probably to 1.800 miles of the Ireland), but one cannot know with précison or it stopped. It should be affirmed that the primacy of discovered can be allotted to other people only the brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte Real which bequeathed charts or one can determine the shapes of the coasts of current Canada Atlantique.

In 1534, Jacques Cartier takes officially possession of the territory of Canada in the name of France while placing a cross with the current site of the town of Gaspé. It had to be waited until 1600 so that French settles definitively in North America (after an attempt pushed back by the Spaniards in Florida). The French founded initially the village of Tadoussac, marking the birth of the News-France. In 1605, they based Port-Royal on the Baie of Fundy, in what was going to become the Province of the Acadie. The July 3rd 1608, Samuel de Champlain founds the third French city in America, the town of Quebec. News-France is initially exploited by the metropolis only for its furs and its wood. Thereafter, France, interested to establish a colony of settlement there, founds the first civil code. However, the population in the colony, made up at that time only of French and Amerindians, grows at intervals much slower than that of the Dutch and English colonies.

In 1763, at the conclusion of the War Seven Year old, which the France leaves losing, this one decides to preserve its islands of the the Caribbean rather than its colony of North America which is left with the hands of the British. After the War of Independence of the United States of America in 1776, much on combatants to the account of the crown of England, called Loyal supporters, decided to settle more with north, territory which will be later named High-Canada. The the United States and the the United Kingdom were made the Guerre of 1812.

Into 1791, the constitutional Act divides Canada into two: The High-Canada, populated English loyal supporters and the Low-Canada, populated French Canadians (It is at this time that the Canadian term ceased defining only the French-speaking people). The territorial limits of High-Canada corresponded to the south of the current Ontario, and those of Low-Canada in the south of the current Quebec. The constitutional Act also grants to the two colonies a Room of assembly, which marked the beginnings of the democracy with Canada. However, these Rooms do not have aucuns real capacities, because the Governor, named by the King of England, has a right to veto on all the decisions of the Room and also has the right to dissolve it. This situation of false democracy involved the appearance of a movement requiring the ministerial Responsibility, which would grant to the representatives elected by the people a legislative power. In Low-Canada, the Canadian Parti is one of these groups. To High-Canada, this movement will be carried out under the slogan " Reference mark By Pop".

In 1834, the Canadian Party, become the Patriotic Left, sends the document of the 92 resolutions to London, where he formulates his principal constitutional requests (the political independence of Low-Canada and the ministerial responsibility inter alia). Rétorque London with the 10 resolutions of Russell, which are in fact a refusal of the requests of the Patriots. Moreover, the Governor dissolves the Room of assembly. In front of this situation, the Patriots convene public assemblies in order to ask the low Canadian people to boycott the British products. After the Governor had prohibited very assembled of this type, the Patriots come to an armed conflict. The Patriots, being only one militia of disorganized peasants, were crushed by the British army, most powerful of the world at this time. The Patriotic chief, Louis-Joseph Papineau is forced to exile itself with the the United States, his head being put at price by the British government. He writes a Constitution for Low-Canada there. Of return to Canada, Papineau tries one second revolution in 1838, without more success. The majority of the Patriots are sent in prison then slackened, some are exiled and twelve will be hung. It is following this revolt that Lord Durham proposed the union of two Canadas in order to compare the French-speaking people of America to the English language and the Protestant Christian religion (French Canadians being catholic). The French language will survive Canada helped, inter alia, by the presence of Irish, often illiterate immigrants and mainly of Catholic religion, which will marry French-speaking women and whose children will be educated in French, Gaelic being seen as a primitive lange by the imperial capacities angais and French. Also, the adoption by French-speaking families orphan Irish children dead parents of the crossing, following the Great Famine of 1847 and the great capacity of the Catholic church vis-a-vis its faithful, will allow to support the maintenance and the use of the French language in Low-Canada.

In 1840, London, according to the proposals of Lord Durham, carries out the Union of two Canadas under the name of Canada Uni, but grants all the same to the new plain colony the ministerial Responsibility in 1849. Under the mode of Canada-Plain, current Quebec is named Canada-Is and current Ontario, Canada-West.

Creation of Canada

July 1st 1867, by the Act of British North America, the the United Kingdom granted a right of self government to a confederation of four of its colonies under the name of Dominion of Canada gathering the Quebec (old the Low-Canada), the Ontario (old High-Canada), the New Brunswick and the Nova Scotia. Then of other colonies will join this group with the passing of years to form Canada. In order to continue the enlarging of new dominium, John A. MacDonald, first Prime Minister of Canada, is given for challenge to set up a great project of construction of railroad which must be built to connect Canada " of one ocean to the autre" (currency of current Canada). Of course, the construction of this railroad will be entrusted to the company Canadian Pacific Railway.

For the period of construction of the railroad transcanadien by the company Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada will open its borders with immigration in order to populate immense territories lately aquis. Indeed, many immigrants will come from Europe and Asia. Then, good number of them will join the construction of the railroad transcanadien.

With the passing of years, the European populations of origin pushed back the populations autochtones. The central government tried to negotiate territories their pertaining, generally taking favors over their lack of knowledge of the political system. Those were cut off little by little in federal funds.

In 1870, disorders appear within the community mongrel of the lately allowed province of Manitoba in the Canadian federation. The lawyer Louis Riel, itself mongrel, will take their defense and will leave his life there.

The last province to be adhered to the Canadian federation is Newfoundland, in 1949.

Beginning of the twentieth century

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Canadian population increases by much because of immigration, the development towards the west and the economic prosperity of the country. Wilfrid Laurier was then the Prime Minister of Canada.

Implication of Canada in the First World War

Canada being always a Dominion British crown, it enters in war at the conclusion of the declaration of war of Great Britain to Germany, in 1914.

Interval wars

The Déclaration Balfour of 1926 recognizes the independence in fact of the Canada and the Australia, with respect to the the United Kingdom. It establishes dominions with a clean operation.

Relatively complete independence on the foreign affairs took place in 1931 by the Statut of Westminster

Implication of Canada in the Second world war

August 1st

The years 1960

The July 7th 1969 the French language was put at the same level as the English language by the federal government. The multiculturalism was declared the policy official. The repatriation of the Constitution in 1982 will grant a constitutional independence (Canada will not need more Great Britain to bring amendments to its constitution) to Canada, though the province of Quebec, which was directed by provincial the Prime Minister Rene Lévesque at the time, did not sign the new Canadian constitution. No provincial Prime Minister Québécois agreed thereafter to sign this constitution.

At the end of the XXe century, i.e. in 1980 (initiative of Rene Lévesque) and 1995 (initiative of Jacques Parizeau), the Quebec, a Canadian province with French-speaking majority, organized two referendums on its independence whose last failed of little (49,3% for independence, 50,6% against).

The national Historic sites (Canada) are managed by Parcs Canada.

See too

History of the provinces

Other

  • Chronology of military Canada
  • History of Canada
  • Canada and the War of Vietnam
  • History of North America
  • List of famous Inhabitants of Quebec

External bond

  • historical Dictionary of the famous men of Canada and America de Maximilien Bibaud, 1857

  • biographical Dictionary of Canada

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