Canada
 

Overview
Country, North America.

Area: 3,855,103 sq mi (9,984,670 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 32,227,000. Capital: Ottawa. People of British and French descent constitute more than half the population; there are significant minorities of Chinese, South Asian, German, Italian, American Indian, and Inuit (Eskimo) origin. Languages: English, French (both official). Religions: Christianity (mostly Roman Catholic; also Protestant, other Christians, Eastern Orthodox); also Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism. Currency: Canadian dollar. Canada may be divided into several physiographic regions. A large interior basin centred on Hudson Bay and covering nearly four-fifths of the country is composed of the Canadian Shield, the interior plains, and the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands. Rimming the basin are highland regions, including the Arctic Archipelago. Mountain ranges include the Rocky, Coast, and Laurentian mountains. Canada’s highest peak is Mount Logan (19,551 ft [5,959 m]) in Yukon Territory. Five of Canada’s rivers—the St. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Yukon, Fraser, and Nelson—rank among the world’s 40 longest. In addition to Lakes Superior and Huron, both shared with the U.S., Canada’s Great Bear and Great Slave lakes are among the world’s 11 largest lakes in area. The country also includes several major islands, including Baffin, Ellesmere, Victoria, Newfoundland, and Melville, and many small ones. Its border with the U.S., the longest border in the world not patrolled by military forces, extends 5,525 mi (8,890 km). With a developed market economy that is export-directed and closely linked with that of the U.S., Canada is one of the world’s most prosperous countries. It is a parliamentary state with two legislative houses; its chief of state is the British monarch, whose representative is Canada’s governor-general, and the head of government is the prime minister. Originally inhabited by American Indians and Inuit, Canada was visited c. ad 1000 by Scandinavian explorers, whose settlement is confirmed by archaeological evidence from Newfoundland. Fishing expeditions off Newfoundland by the English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese began as early as 1500. The French claim to Canada was made in 1534 when Jacques Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A small settlement was made in Nova Scotia (Acadia) in 1604, and by 1608 Samuel de Champlain had reached Quebec. Fur trading was the impetus behind the early colonizing efforts. In response to French activity, the English in 1670 formed the Hudson’s Bay Company. The British-French rivalry for the interior of upper North America lasted almost a century. The first French loss occurred in 1713 at the conclusion of Queen Anne’s War (War of the Spanish Succession), when Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were ceded to the British. The Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War) resulted in France’s expulsion from continental North America in 1763. After the American Revolution Canada’s population was augmented by loyalists fleeing the United States, and the increasing number arriving in Quebec led the British to divide the colony into Upper and Lower Canada in 1791. The British reunited the two provinces in 1841. Canadian expansionism resulted in the confederation movement of the mid-19th century, and in 1867 the Dominion of Canada, comprising Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario, came into existence. After confederation, Canada entered a period of westward expansion. The prosperity that accompanied Canada into the 20th century was marred by continuing conflict between the English and French communities. Through the Statute of Westminster (1931), Canada was recognized as an equal partner of Great Britain. With the Canada Act of 1982, the British gave Canada total control over its constitution and severed the remaining legal connections between the two countries. French Canadian unrest continued to be a major concern, with a movement growing for Quebec separatism in the late 20th century. Referendums for more political autonomy for Quebec were rejected in 1992 and 1995, but the issue remained unresolved. In 1999 Canada formed the new territory of Nunavut.

Profile
Official name Canada
Form of government federal multiparty parliamentary state with two legislative houses (Senate [1051]; House of Commons [308])
Chief of state Queen of Canada (British Monarch)
Representative of chief of state Governor-General
Head of government Prime Minister
Capital Ottawa
Official languages English; French
Official religion none
Monetary unit Canadian dollar (Can$)
Population estimate (2008) 33,213,000
Total area (sq mi) 3,855,103
Total area (sq km) 9,984,670
1Statutory number.

Main

second largest country in the world in area (after Russia), occupying roughly the northern two-fifths of the continent of North America.

Despite Canada’s great size, it is one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries. This fact, coupled with the grandeur of the landscape, has been central to the sense of Canadian national identity, as expressed by the Dublin-born writer Anna Brownell Jameson, who explored central Ontario in 1837 and remarked exultantly on “the seemingly interminable line of trees before you; the boundless wilderness around you; the mysterious depths amid the multitudinous foliage, where foot of man hath never penetrated…the solitude in which we proceeded mile after mile, no human being, no human dwelling within sight.” Although Canadians are comparatively few in number, however, they have crafted what many observers consider to be a model multicultural society, welcoming immigrant populations from every other continent. In addition, Canada harbours and exports a wealth of natural resources and intellectual capital equaled by few other countries.

Canada is officially bilingual in English and French, reflecting the country’s history as ground once contested by two of Europe’s great powers. The word Canada is derived from the Huron-Iroquois kanata, meaning a village or settlement. In the 16th century, French explorer Jacques Cartier used the name Canada to refer to the area around the settlement that is now Quebec city. Later, Canada was used as a synonym for New France, which, from 1534 to 1763, included all the French possessions along the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. After the British conquest of New France, the name Quebec was sometimes used instead of Canada. The name Canada was fully restored after 1791, when Britain divided old Quebec into the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada (renamed in 1841 Canada West and Canada East, respectively, and collectively called Canada). In 1867 the British North America Act created a confederation from three colonies (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada) called the Dominion of Canada. The act also divided the old colony of Canada into the separate provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Dominion status allowed Canada a large measure of self-rule, but matters pertaining to international diplomacy and military alliances were reserved to the British crown. Canada became entirely self-governing within the British Empire in 1931, though full legislative independence was not achieved until 1982, when Canada obtained the right to amend its own constitution.

Canada shares a 5,525-mile- (8,890-km-) long border with the United States (including Alaska)—the longest border in the world not patrolled by military forces—and the overwhelming majority of its population lives within 185 miles (300 km) of the international boundary. Although Canada shares many similarities with its southern neighbour—and, indeed, its popular culture and that of the United States are in many regards indistinguishable—the differences between the two countries, both temperamental and material, are profound. “The central fact of Canadian history,” observed the 20th-century literary critic Northrop Frye, is “the rejection of the American Revolution.” Contemporary Canadians are inclined to favour orderly central government and a sense of community over individualism; in international affairs, they are more likely to serve the role of peacemaker instead of warrior, and, whether at home or abroad, they are likely to have a pluralistic way of viewing the world. More than that, Canadians live in a society that in most legal and official matters resembles Britain—at least in the English-speaking portion of the country. Quebec, in particular, exhibits French adaptations: more than three-fourths of its population speaks French as their primary language. The French character in Quebec is also reflected in differences in religion, architecture, and schooling. Elsewhere in Canada, French influence is less apparent, confined largely to the dual use of French and English for place names, product labels, and road signs. The French and British influences are supplemented by the cultures of the country’s native Indian peoples (in Canada often collectively called the First Nations) and the Inuit peoples, the former being far greater in number and the latter enjoying semiautonomous status in Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut. (The Inuit prefer that term rather than Eskimo, and it is commonly used in Canada.) In addition, the growing number of immigrants from other European countries, Southeast Asia, and Latin America has made Canada even more broadly multicultural.

Canada has been an influential member of the Commonwealth and has played a leading role in the organization of French-speaking countries known as La Francophonie. It was a founding member of the United Nations and has been active in a number of major UN agencies and other worldwide operations. In 1989 Canada joined the Organization of American States and signed a free trade agreement with the United States, a pact that was superseded in 1992 by the North American Free Trade Agreement (which also includes Mexico). A founding member (1961) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada is also a member of the G8, which includes the world’s seven largest industrial democracies plus Russia.

The national capital is Ottawa, Canada’s fourth largest city. It lies some 250 miles (400 km) northeast of Toronto and 125 miles (200 km) west of Montreal, respectively Canada’s first and second cities in terms of population and economic, cultural, and educational importance. The third largest city is Vancouver, a centre for trade with the Pacific Rim countries and the principal western gateway to Canada’s developing interior. Other major metropolitan areas include Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta; Quebec city, Quebec; and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Land
Canada’s total land area includes thousands of adjacent islands, notably Newfoundland in the east and those of the Arctic Archipelago in the north. Canada is bounded by the Arctic Ocean to the north, Greenland (a self-governing part of the Danish kingdom) to the northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, 12 states of the United States to the south, and the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. state of Alaska to the west; in addition, tiny Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (an archipelagic territory of France) lies off Newfoundland.

In longitude Canada extends from approximately 52° to 141° W, a distance that spans six time zones. In latitude it extends from approximately 42° to 83° N. With its vast Arctic and subarctic territories, Canada is often considered a country only of the far north; however, the peninsula of southern Ontario juts deeply south into the heartland of the United States, and its southernmost point, Middle Island in Lake Erie, is at the same latitude as northern California. Canada occupies a strategic global location, lying on great circle routes (the shortest line joining any two places on the globe) between the United States and Europe and, to a lesser degree, Asia. As a result, many international commercial flights track across Canada.

The combination of physical geography and discontinuous settlement has led to a strong sense of regionalism in Canada, and popular regional terms often overlap. The Atlantic Provinces include all of the Appalachian region except the Quebec portion. If the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is excluded, the three remaining east-coast provinces are called the Maritime Provinces or the Maritimes. Quebec and Ontario are usually referred to separately but sometimes together, as Central Canada. The West usually means all four provinces west of Ontario, but British Columbia may be referred to alone and the other three collectively as the Prairie Provinces or the Prairies. Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut are referred to as the North.

Relief
Canada contains within its borders a vast variety of geographic features. In general, the country’s landform structure can be considered as a vast basin more than 3,220 miles (5,200 km) in diameter. The Cordillera in the west, the Appalachians in the southeast, the mountains of northern Labrador and of Baffin Island in the northeast, and the Innuitian Mountains in the north form its high rim, while Hudson Bay, set close to the centre of the enormous platform of the Canadian Shield, occupies the basin bottom. The western rim of the basin is higher and more massive than its eastern counterpart, and pieces of the rim, notably in the far northwest and in the south, are missing.

The main lines of Canadian landforms continue well into the United States, intimately linking the geography of both countries. To create such a large country, Canadians had to forge transportation and communication links in an east-west direction, against the physiographic grain of the continent. The Canadian North remains one of the least settled and least economically exploited parts of the world.

Canada can be divided into six physiographic regions: the Canadian Shield, the interior plains, the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands, the Appalachian region, the Western Cordillera, and the Arctic Archipelago.

The Canadian Shield
By far the largest of Canada’s physiographic regions, the Canadian Shield (sometimes called the Precambrian Shield) occupies about half of the total area of the country and is centred on Hudson Bay. The shield consists of some of the world’s oldest rocks, which were folded by mountain-building movements and cut down by erosion until the area was reduced almost to a plain. It was warped and folded in places, so parts of it now stand much higher than others, especially around its outer edges. In the north the rim is about 7,000 feet (2,000 metres) above sea level, and fjords with walls from 2,000 to 3,000 feet (600 to 900 metres) high extend many miles into the mountain masses. The Labrador Highlands, including the Torngat, Kaumajet, and Kiglapait mountains, lie south of Hudson Strait. Along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, the shield rim is a 2,000-foot (600-metre) escarpment, the Laurentide Scarp. The rim is almost imperceptible in southern Ontario, but in northern Ontario it rises again to almost 1,500 feet (450 metres) above the northern shore of Lake Superior. From Manitoba northwestward, the shield edge is marked by a large number of lakes.

Most of the shield lies at elevations below 2,000 feet (600 metres). Its lack of hills of any size produces a generally monotonous landscape, but geologically recent glaciations have had a striking effect on the surface. By stripping off the top, weathered material, they roughened the surface into a type of rock-knob, or grained, landscape, with the hollows between the knobs or the troughs between the ridges occupied by enormous numbers of lakes. In other areas the glaciers deposited till or moraine on the surface and in still others left gigantic fields of erratics (boulders and other material different from local bedrock). Eskers—long, narrow ridges of deposits—stretch across the shield, sometimes for more than 100 miles (160 km), marking the course of old, subglacial rivers. In still other places, deposits laid down by glacial lakes that have since drained away have given rise to extensive clay belts. The shield contains a large variety of minerals (e.g., copper, silver, and gold), and its exploitation has been a principal source of Canada’s wealth.

The interior plains
Surrounding the Canadian Shield are a number of extensive lowlands underlain by sedimentary rocks: the Arctic lowlands to the north, the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands to the south and southeast, and the interior, or western, plains to the west. The southern portion of these plains is commonly referred to as the Prairies. The vast interior plains extend from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the U.S. border in the south and from the edge of the Canadian Shield in the east to the Rocky Mountain foothills in the west. Along the shield–interior plains boundary are a number of large lakes, three of which each has a greater surface area than Lake Ontario: Great Bear, Great Slave, and Winnipeg.

In the southeast is the Manitoba lowland, where elevations are generally below 1,000 feet (300 metres). It is underlaid by lacustrine sediments of the glacial Lake Agassiz and is the flattest land in the interior plains. In addition to Lake Winnipeg, it includes Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipegosis. The fertile southern portion, the Red River valley, is covered with black clay and silt soils.

To the west of the Manitoba lowland, the land rises in two steps: the Saskatchewan plain, which ranges from 1,500 to 2,100 feet (450 to 650 metres), and the Alberta plain, which is more than 2,500 feet (750 metres). These plains are rolling landscapes of glacial deposits laid over almost horizontal bedrock. In some areas the undulating plains are interspersed with ranges of low hills (glacial moraines) studded with kettle lakes and flat-bottomed, steep-banked valleys cut by glacial meltwater, now occupied by rivers such as the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan system. Ponds called sloughs dot the landscape of both these plains. These lands also contain large potash deposits and, especially in Alberta, enormous reserves of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. The Cypress Hills of southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta rise to an elevation of 4,816 feet (1,468 metres), the highest point in mainland Canada between the Rocky Mountains (Canadian Rockies) and Labrador.

The Mackenzie Lowlands, extending from the Alberta plain north to the Arctic Ocean, is a flat area covered with muskegs (bogs) and swamps. It is drained by the Mackenzie River.

The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands
The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence region comprises the peninsula of southern Ontario bounded by the Canadian Shield and Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario. It extends along the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. The region, fairly small in area, is nevertheless important for its high agricultural productivity, intensive industrialization, and high degree of urbanization.

The immensely fertile and highly cultivated rolling landscape of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands is composed primarily of glacial landforms: glacial lake bottoms and shorelines, till plains, moraines, drumlins, eskers, and giant spillways carved by glacial streams. In southwestern Ontario the Niagara Escarpment is the only significant exposed bedrock structure. This steep cuestaform ridge runs from Niagara Falls to the Bruce Peninsula west of Georgian Bay and on into Manitoulin Island. In southeastern Ontario the lowland is interrupted by a band of the Canadian Shield, the Frontenac Axis, which extends across the St. Lawrence River to form the Thousand Islands.

Northeast of the Frontenac Axis, the lowlands embrace the Ottawa valley and the St. Lawrence valley to a point some 70 miles (110 km) downstream from Quebec city. During the last glacial period, this area was inundated by ocean water, known as the Champlain Sea, which produced a very flat plain. The level plain is broken by the seven Monteregian Hills near Montreal. The westernmost of these is Mont-Royal (Mount Royal) in Montreal, about 820 feet (250 metres) high.

The Appalachian region
The Appalachian region extends from the eastern townships of Quebec (south of the St. Lawrence valley) northeastward to the Gaspé Peninsula and the Maritime Provinces and on to the island of Newfoundland. The region consists of ancient folded rock formations that have been eroded into low, rounded mountains dissected by valleys and interrupted by lowland areas developed on weaker rock formations. Three broad groups of highlands can be recognized. The highest mountains (e.g., Gosford, Jacques-Cartier, and Richardson), with elevations about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres), are found in southern Quebec. The highlands in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are lower, and the hills have been dissected out of a plateau upland. The major portion of Newfoundland is also a dissected plateau, but along the west coast the Long Range Mountains rise to more than 2,000 feet (600 metres) in elevation. The region’s relatively small areas of lowland extend along the seacoast and the major rivers.

The Western Cordillera
The Cordilleran region comprises a series of mountain belts some 500 miles (800 km) wide along Canada’s Pacific coast. The great heights and angularity of the peaks, many of which rise to more than 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), indicate that these are much younger mountains than the Appalachians. Signs of alpine glaciation are widely evident. In many places valley glaciers remain active, and snowcapped peaks are frequently hidden in the clouds. Some of the mountain slopes are so precipitous that they are bare of trees. Viewed from above, the entire landscape seems to be an irregular sea of mountain ranges, trending in a north-south direction.

The Rocky Mountains make up the eastern portion of the Cordillera from the Yukon border south to the 49th parallel, where they continue into the United States. The high ranges of the Canadian Rockies form the Continental Divide between eastward- and westward-flowing rivers and contain some of the most rugged and picturesque landscapes in North America. The highway between Banff and Jasper, Alberta, is particularly noted for its spectacular mountain scenery. The Rockies include more than 30 peaks exceeding 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), including Mount Robson, which rises to 12,972 feet (3,954 metres). Five of Canada’s national parks are located within the Rockies, including Banff, which was established in 1885. Three major passes cut through the Rockies: the Yellowhead Pass, which is used by the Canadian National Railways, and the Kicking Horse Pass and Crowsnest Pass, which are used by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Trans-Canada Highway is also routed through the Kicking Horse Pass.

The front range of the Canadian Rockies is bordered on the west by a major valley, about 15 miles (25 km) wide and several thousand feet deep, known as the Rocky Mountain Trench. To the west of the trench the Columbia Mountains rise to peaks of more than 10,000 feet (3,000 metres). The Columbia Mountain system includes, from east to west, the Purcell, Selkirk, and Monashee groups. Northwest of these are the Cariboo Mountains, famous for their helicopter alpine skiing. Between the Columbia Mountains and the Coast Mountains farther west is a broad region of interior mountains and plateaus. Although some of the surface of this region is fairly level, most of it has been folded into mountains and hills.

The Coast Mountains, part of the Pacific mountain system, are another group of high mountains, with several peaks rising over 15,000 feet (4,500 metres) high; they include Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan, which reaches 19,551 feet (5,959 metres) in the Saint Elias Mountains. All along the coast there are spectacular fjords with precipitous cliffs that often rise 7,000 feet (2,100 metres) from the water. Off the coast is a chain of mountains that appear as a series of islands, the largest of which are Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. In the far north the main mountain groups are the Richardson, Mackenzie, Selwyn, and Pelly mountains. The rugged Cassiar Mountains stand just south of the Yukon border. The region is a major source of lead, zinc, copper, and gold; its eastern fringes contain coal deposits.

The Arctic Archipelago
The Arctic Archipelago is composed of thousands of islands north of the Canadian mainland. The southeastern islands are an extension of the Canadian Shield. The balance consists of two distinctive landform regions: the Arctic lowlands to the south and the mountains of the Innuitian Region to the north. The Innuitian ranges are geologically young mountains similar to the Western Cordillera, with some peaks and ridges reaching 10,000 feet (3,000 metres). Much of the Innuitian Region is permanently covered with snow and ice through which mountain peaks occasionally protrude.

Drainage
With less than 1 percent of the world’s population, Canada has some one-seventh of the world’s supply of accessible fresh water. Much of this water is stored in lakes and wetlands that cover about one-fifth of Canada’s total area. The Great Lakes—the world’s largest surface of fresh water—are shared with the United States and form part of the international border. Other large lakes include Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in the Northwest Territories and Lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg in Manitoba. About three-fourths of Canada’s land area is drained by rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean and Hudson and James bays. The Arctic drainage basin is dominated by the Mackenzie River, Canada’s longest river, which flows 2,635 miles (4,241 km) from its source to its mouth. With its many tributaries, it drains 690,000 square miles (1,800,000 square km). The St. Lawrence is the largest river flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. Its drainage basin includes the Great Lakes, forming an inland navigable waterway extending some 2,340 miles (3,765 km) into the heart of the continent. The longest Pacific-draining river that is wholly within Canada is the Fraser. The Yukon and Columbia rivers, which both rise in Canada, also flow to the Pacific, but they do so through the United States (Alaska and Washington state, respectively).

The utility of Canadian rivers is limited by two factors: many flow through the northern part of the country, which is sparsely populated, and most of them are frozen over in winter. In the densely settled regions, pollution has further reduced the usefulness of the water. Almost all Canadian rivers are characterized by rapids and falls, many of which have been developed for hydroelectricity.

Climate
Because of its great latitudinal extent, Canada has a wide variety of climates. Ocean currents play an important role, with both the warm waters of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic and the Alaska Current in the Pacific affecting climate. Westerly winds, blowing from the sea to the land, are the prevailing air currents in the Pacific and bring coastal British Columbia heavy precipitation and moderate winter and summer temperatures. Inland, the Great Lakes moderate the weather in both southern Ontario and Quebec. In the east the cold Labrador Current meets the Gulf Stream along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, cooling the air and causing frequent fog.

The northern two-thirds of the country has a climate similar to that of northern Scandinavia, with very cold winters and short, cool summers. The central southern area of the interior plains has a typical continental climate—very cold winters, hot summers, and relatively sparse precipitation. Southern Ontario and Quebec have a climate with hot, humid summers and cold, snowy winters, similar to that of some portions of the American Midwest. Except for the west coast, all of Canada has a winter season with average temperatures below freezing and with continuous snow cover.

Temperatures
In the winter those parts of the country farthest from open water are the coldest, so that in the interior plains and in the North the winters are extremely cold. The lowest temperature ever recorded was −81 °F (−63 °C) at Snag, Yukon, in 1947. During the summer, however, the parts of Canada farthest from open water are the warmest. The highest temperature recorded was 113 °F (45 °C) at Midale and Yellow Grass, both in Saskatchewan, in 1937. Thus, west-coast Vancouver has an average January temperature of 37 °F (3 °C) and an average July temperature of 64 °F (18 °C), while in Regina, Saskatchewan, on the interior plains, average temperatures vary from −1 to 67 °F (−18 to 19 °C). The daily range of temperature is also narrower on the coasts than in interior locations.

Rainfall
Humid air masses from the Pacific cause enormous quantities of orographic (mountain-caused) rain to fall on the west coast and mountain areas. Several sites along the British Columbia coast receive annual quantities in excess of 100 inches (2,500 mm), but British Columbia receives much less precipitation in summer than in winter because low-pressure systems move on a more northerly track in summer and seldom cross the southern part of the coast. Vancouver has an annual average precipitation of about 40 inches (1,000 mm).

In the interior plains and the North (Arctic and subarctic), precipitation is seldom more than 15 inches (400 mm) per year; it drops to as low as 2 inches (50 mm) at Eureka on Ellesmere Island. As air currents generally move from west to east, the west-coast mountains effectively keep marine air out. Spring and summer are wetter than winter.

Ontario and Quebec have more rainfall than the interior plains because the air masses pick up water vapour from the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico. Average annual precipitation is about 30 inches (800 mm) in Toronto and 40 inches (1,000 mm) in Montreal. Because winters are not as cold as in the interior plains, the air is less dry, and enough snow falls to make winter and summer precipitation about equivalent.

The Atlantic Provinces are wetter than the provinces of Central Canada. Yearly precipitation, most of which is cyclonic in origin, exceeds 50 inches (1,250 mm) in places and is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. There are few thunderstorms, and the low Appalachian Mountains produce only a little orographic rainfall. In general, the rainfall on Canada’s east coast is less than that on the west coast because the prevailing wind is offshore.

Snowfall
Canada’s snowfall does not follow the same pattern as rainfall. In the North and the interior plains, snowfall is light because cold air is very dry. The snow is hard and dry, falls in small amounts, and is packed down by the constant wind. The east and west coasts are areas of lighter snowfall because the ocean usually makes the air too warm for large quantities of snow to fall. The depth of snow increases inland from each coast, reaching maximums of about 240 inches (6,100 mm) in the Rocky Mountains and on the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Still farther inland, a lack of moisture brings the depth of snow down again. Freezing precipitation may occur during the colder months in any part of the country, occasionally disrupting transportation and communication.

Soils and plant and animal life
Both landforms and climate affect the distribution of plants, animals, and soils. Ecologists recognize broad regions called ecosystems that are characterized by fairly stable complexes of climate, soils, and plant and animal life. The boundaries of these regions are not usually sharp lines on the landscape but are broad transition areas. The discussion that follows concentrates on preagricultural, or natural, vegetation. In southern Canada only remnants of these ecosystems remain.

Tundra
Tundra is the dominant land type of the Arctic and subarctic regions. Tundra also exists above the timberline in the Western Cordillera, but the discussion here is generally confined to the northern tundra. With long, cold winters, short, cool summers, and low precipitation, the soils are thin or absent, and the vegetation is sparse. The tundra is highly susceptible to environmental damage. Because of the small number of plant and animal species and the fragility of the food chains, damage to any element of the habitat may have an immediate chain reaction through the system. The permafrost (persistently frozen ground) is easily damaged by heavy equipment and by oil spills. The Inuit, who fish, hunt, and trap for a living, are directly affected by abuses of the ecology.

Considering the climatic conditions, tundra vegetation is quite varied. The long daylight periods of spring and summer contribute to sudden, rapid growth. Although the rock deserts are almost devoid of vegetation, relatively fast-growing mosses often surround large rocks. In rock crevices such plants as the purple saxifrage survive, and the rock surfaces themselves may support lichens, some of the orange and vermilion species adding colour to the landscape. Lichen tundra is found in the drier and better-drained parts. Mosses are common, and some species may dominate the landscape to such an extent that it appears snow-covered. The heath and alpine tundra support dwarf, often berry-bearing, shrubs, and the ground between usually is covered with a thick carpet of lichens and mosses.

The distinctive animals of the tundra are seals and polar bears, the latter feeding on seals, and musk oxen, caribou, arctic hares, and lemmings, which feed on the tundra vegetation and are prey for wolves and white Arctic foxes. Few birds make the tundra their year-round habitat, great snowy owls and ptarmigan being exceptions. Numerous birds that normally live in mild climates, however, often fly to the tundra for nesting. Two large birds that do this are the snow goose and the Canada goose.

Forest regions
Canada has several large and distinct forest zones, which blend into a number of transitional zones. The northern coniferous, or boreal, forest (taiga) is the world’s second largest area of uninterrupted forest; only Russia has a greater expanse of boreal forest. The severe winter and short growing season limit the number of tree species. Among them the white and black spruce and white birch are common, and balsam (fir) and tamarack (larch) also have wide distribution. The boreal forest is an important source of pulpwood and also produces considerable lumber, but much of the northern area is too inaccessible for commercial lumbering.

A vast transitional zone, the taiga shield, comprising some 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km) of mixed boreal and tundra growth, connects the northern forest and the tundra region. Generally, the trees in this subarctic zone, with its cold, dry climate, are small and of little commercial consequence. The zone, underlaid with intermittent permafrost, can be characterized as an ecological crossroads, with a balance almost as delicate as that of the tundra.

Along the southern edge of the boreal forest lie two other transitional zones. In the interior plains the forest merges with the grasslands to create an arc of aspen parkland, characterized by prairie vegetation dotted with groves of quaking (trembling) aspen and other poplar species in low moist areas and along valley bottoms. East of the Manitoba-Ontario border is a band of mixed coniferous-deciduous forest that extends into both the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands and the Appalachian region. In addition to the species of the boreal forest, there are white pine, red pine, white cedar, and eastern hemlock. The deciduous trees include sugar maple, red maple, beech, red oak, and white ash.

Remnants of the only predominantly deciduous forest in Canada grow in the most southerly portion of the southwestern Ontario peninsula. This is an extension of the Carolinian forest zone of the United States, and, in addition to the species it shares with the mixed forest, it contains trees usually found much farther south, such as the tulip tree, sycamore, black and white oak, and several types of hickory.

As might be expected from the strong relief and the sudden change in climate within relatively short distances, the forests of the Western Cordillera are complex. The subalpine forest, of Engelmann and white spruce and lodgepole pine, is characteristic of the slopes of the Rockies from about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) up to the timberline. The forests of the Selkirk, Purcell, and Monashee mountains contain Engelmann spruce at higher elevations, merging with western red cedar and western hemlock on the lower slopes. Douglas fir is common on drier slopes. A generally open forest of aspen and yellow pine interspersed with glades of grass is typical of the ranges that traverse the rather arid interior plateau. Douglas fir and lodgepole pine are found on higher slopes.

The forest of the Pacific coast, where steep slopes facing moisture-bearing winds produce a high rainfall, is Canada’s densest tall timber forest. Abundant moisture and a long growing season are conducive to the growth of evergreens with very hard wood, excellent for construction lumber. Douglas fir, western hemlock, and western red cedar are the outstanding trees; they grow to great height and thickness. Alder, cottonwood, and maple are subsidiary, along with western white pine and various kinds of spruce. Dense stands of immense trees—their trunks rising to considerable heights and their crowns almost touching—give a grandeur to the forest.

Canada’s forest soils are acidic, the result of various degrees to which minerals are leached out of the topsoil; they are thus relatively infertile for agriculture. The degree of acidity and leaching is greater in the coniferous and less in the mixed and deciduous forests. With proper soil management, the mixed and deciduous forest soils make good farmland.

Wildlife regions correspond closely to the different forest zones. The subarctic supports large numbers of woodland caribou. The boreal forest includes nearly all species of mammals and birds recognized as distinctively Canadian. Among these are moose, beavers, Canada lynx, black bears, wolves, snowshoe hares, and a variety of birds, including Canada jays, blue jays, gray jays, ravens, and crows. In summer the coniferous forest fills with scores of varieties of warblers and other small birds that go north to nest. Farther south, white-tailed deer thrive on the forest borders and partially cleared areas. There are also numerous smaller mammals, including gray and red squirrels, minks, raccoons, muskrats, skunks, jackrabbits, cottontail rabbits, groundhogs, and a variety of mice and moles. In southern Ontario the wild turkey, which had disappeared because of hunting and reduction of its habitat, was reintroduced in the 1980s with some success. Coyotes are now seen as far south as the parkland ravines of Toronto. A broad range of wildlife species inhabit the Western Cordillera, with its wide variety of terrain and vegetation. Rocky Mountain sheep, mountain goats, elk, mule deer, and black bears are common in the southern mountains.

Grasslands
The southern portion of the interior plains is too dry for forests and gives rise to grasslands or natural prairies. The native vegetation of the most southerly area consists of shortgrass with sagebrush and cactus. Farther north, where there is slightly more precipitation, there is a band of tallgrass prairie. At its northern limit the grasslands merge with the transitional parkland at the edge of the boreal forest. Today the grass area is small, crops having replaced grass in all but dry or hilly areas.

With its high organic matter and mineral content, the grassland soils are among Canada’s most fertile. The best soils for crops are the dark brown to black soils of the tallgrass and parkland zone, the area of Canada that is famous for wheat cultivation. The less fertile light brown soils of the shortgrass country tend to be alkaline, and the predominant agricultural activities are dryland farming and grazing. Wind erosion is a serious problem in prairie regions wherever the grassland has been converted to cultivated farmland.

Among the common grassland mammals are Richardson’s ground squirrel and the pocket gopher, both of which damage young grain crops. They continue to proliferate despite predation by badgers, hawks, and owls and farmers’ attempts at control. The first settlers to cross the Canadian prairies encountered enormous herds of bison (often called buffalo), but by the end of the 19th century hunters had reduced their numbers to near extinction. Bison may now be seen only in wildlife reserves. With the bison gone, mule deer and the pronghorn antelope are the remaining large mammals on the shortgrass plain. Farm drainage projects and extended drought have greatly reduced the prairie’s waterfowl habitat, causing a decline in their numbers.

People
Principal ethnic groups
Canada contains a mixture of diverse national and cultural groups. At the time of Canada’s first census, in 1871, about half the population was British and nearly one-third was French. Since that time the proportion of Canadians of British and French ancestry has dropped to about one-fourth each, as fewer people have immigrated from the United Kingdom and France and considerably more have arrived from other countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Because immigrant groups have tended to settle in particular locales, they generally have retained their cultural identity. For example, Ukrainians largely migrated to the Prairie Provinces, where the land and climate were similar to their homeland, and many Dutch settled on the flat, fertile farmland of southwestern Ontario, where they practiced fruit and vegetable growing as they had done in The Netherlands. Many Chinese, Portuguese, Greeks, and Italians have settled in specific sections of large cities, particularly Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

The mix of ethnic groups differs greatly from province to province. The proportion of people claiming ancestry from the British Isles ranges from about two-thirds in Newfoundland and Labrador to less than 5 percent in Quebec; the proportion of people of French descent ranges from a majority in Quebec to less than 2 percent in Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, and Saskatchewan. More than one-third of Canadians identify themselves as being of mixed, or “multiple,” origins.

U.S. immigration
Historically, Canada received many immigrants from the United States, particularly during and after the American Revolution (1775–83), when colonists who remained loyal to the British crown (known as Tories in the United States and United Empire Loyalists in Canada) moved to what are now the Maritime Provinces and southern Quebec and Ontario. By 1790 about one-sixth of British North America’s total population was from territory that had become the United States. The American immigrants had been exposed to the ideas of representative government that had evolved along the Atlantic seaboard, and their ideas of governmental institutions were blended in Canada with those of people who came directly from Britain. There was some migration from the United States to Canada during the mid-19th century that increased in the late 19th and 20th centuries, but immigration to the United States from Canada was significantly higher.

Native peoples
An estimated 200,000 Indians (First Nations) and Inuit were living in what is now Canada when Europeans began to settle there in the 16th century. For the next 200 years the native population declined, largely as a result of European territorial encroachment and the diseases that the settlers brought. However, the native population increased dramatically after 1950, with high birth rates and access to improved medical care. Some one million people in Canada now identify themselves as Indian, Métis (of mixed European and Indian ancestry), or Inuit; of this number, more than three-fifths are Indian, nearly one-third Métis, and most of the remainder Inuit. Together they comprise less than 5 percent of Canada’s total population, though aboriginal peoples constitute half of the population of the Northwest Territories and a considerably greater proportion of Nunavut. The largest of the Indian groups is the Cree, which includes some 120,000 people.

In Canada the word Indian has a legal definition given in the Indian Act of 1876. People legally defined as Indians are known as status Indians. Indians who have chosen to give up their status rights or who have lost them through intermarriage with those of European ancestry are called nonstatus Indians. (Beginning in 1985, Canadian law has allowed those who lost their status through intermarriage to reclaim it, and marriage no longer triggers an automatic loss of status.) Through treaties with the Canadian government, more than 600 status Indian bands occupy more than 2,250 reserves. The resources of these reserves are quite limited, and the majority of status Indians have a standard of living below the Canadian average. The treaties and agreements about reserves apply to only a portion of the Indian people. Large tracts of land were never taken from the Indians by treaty, and various groups are still negotiating land claims and self-government with the federal and provincial governments. These negotiations made significant progress, and in 1996 the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples concluded that Canada needed to protect the distinctive values and lifestyles of its aboriginal peoples.

The Inuit who inhabit the far north do not have any reserves and are not protected by any treaties. Many of them—a number estimated to be more than 40,000—still live in scattered camps and settlements of 25 to 500 people, although larger towns such as Iqaluit in Nunavut are growing rapidly. Since the latter part of the 20th century, mining, oil exploration and pipeline construction, and mammoth hydroelectric developments have greatly affected their traditional way of living off the land. The worldwide decline in demand for furs greatly diminished their income, and the Inuit came to depend increasingly on government social and welfare programs. Education and training programs were instituted to enable them to compete for employment. Perhaps the most decisive step, however, was the creation in 1999 of the territory of Nunavut— carved out of the eastern section of the Northwest Territories—with a largely Inuit population and an advanced form of self-government.

Languages
Canada’s constitution established both English and French as official languages. However, English is dominant throughout most of the country; only one province, New Brunswick, is officially bilingual, and French is the official provincial language only in Quebec, where French is the first language of four-fifths of the population. About three-fifths of Canadians speak English as their first language, while less than one-fourth identify French as their primary tongue. The mother tongue of nearly one-fifth of Canadians is a language other than English or French; most speak another European language (notably Italian and German), but the largest immigrant group speaks Chinese, reflecting the growth in Chinese immigration since the 1980s. Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit, has a number of variations. Cree is the most common of the native languages.

Religion
About seven-eighths of Canada’s population claim affiliation in some degree with an organized religious faith. Most are either Roman Catholic or Protestant; the major Protestant churches are the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Lutheran church. Roman Catholics constitute the largest single religious group, accounting for more than two-fifths of the population. Protestants, the second largest group, make up nearly two-fifths of the population. In Quebec more than four-fifths of the population is at least nominally Roman Catholic, and New Brunswick also has a Roman Catholic majority. Canada’s religious composition reflects the most recent immigration trends; in the last two decades of the 20th century, the numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists rose sharply. The numbers of Jews and adherents of the Eastern Orthodox faith also has risen. About one-eighth of Canadians classify themselves as nonreligious.

Settlement patterns
When Europeans began exploring and developing resources in what is now Canada, they found the land sparsely populated by many different Indian peoples in the south and the Inuit in the north. The native peoples were primarily hunters and gatherers and often were nomadic. Because they were few in number, the native peoples made little impact on the natural environment; they harvested only the resources needed for their own consumption, and there were no large settlements. Even though the native peoples had lived in the area for thousands of years, the Europeans perceived that they had found a pristine country with rich resources that awaited exploitation.

Different groups of Europeans came at different times to develop and export the abundant fish, furs, forests, and minerals. With the development of each new resource, new settlements were established. Most of the settlements based on these resources remained small, however, and some of them disappeared when their resources were depleted. A few port cities—including the eastern cities of St. John’s, Newfoundland; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Saint John, New Brunswick—continued to grow as they benefited from the export of successive resources. Montreal owed its early growth to the fur trade, but later it became an important entrepôt for exporting a succession of raw and processed materials and importing manufactured goods from Europe. Later Toronto and the west-coast city of Vancouver also grew quickly because of entrepôt activities. Winnipeg, Manitoba, owed its early growth to its gateway role in the agricultural development of the interior plains.

Except for the port cities, Canada’s most densely settled areas and largest cities developed in the areas with good agricultural land. Some nine-tenths of the population lives within a narrow strip of land along the U.S.-Canadian border—an area that constitutes only about one-tenth of Canada’s total land area. Intensive commercial agriculture in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence lowlands gave rise to a dense network of villages, towns, and cities. Later, manufacturing and service industries reinforced population growth in this region, making it Canada’s urban, industrial, and financial heartland. Villages, towns, and cities also evolved from the agricultural pursuits in the western grasslands, but, because the manufacturing and service sectors did not grow, those areas were much less intensively urbanized. The development of the petroleum industry there, however, did stimulate the growth of two large cities, Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta.

At the beginning of the 20th century, about one-third of Canadians lived in urban areas, but by the end of the century four-fifths of the population lived in communities of more than 10,000 people and nearly three-fifths resided in metropolitan areas of 100,000 or more.

The growth of most of Canada’s large cities on good farmland, characterized by a low-density pattern of urban sprawl, has aroused considerable public concern about reducing Canada’s limited agricultural land resources. In the Niagara Peninsula of southwestern Ontario, the area with the best climate in Canada for producing soft fruits and grapes, urbanization has destroyed some one-third of the fruit land. To prevent further reduction, the Ontario Municipal Board in the 1980s delineated permanent urban boundaries and ordered that urban growth be directed away from fruit-growing areas.

Settlement did not proceed sequentially westward from an Atlantic beginning. Permanent settlement depended on agricultural land—which in Canada occurs in patches, separated by physical barriers. Different patches were settled by people from various European countries, so that a diversity of cultures and settlement patterns developed across the country.

In the Appalachian region, farms are spaced along the roads at irregular intervals wherever land can be cultivated. In Quebec the first settlers laid off long, narrow tillage strips from the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the St. Lawrence River into the interior. As settlement moved farther inland, roads were built parallel to the waterways, from which further narrow lots extended on either side. The same pattern occurred in the Red River valley of Manitoba and even parts of Ontario, where the early settlers were also French.

In most of Ontario and the eastern townships of Quebec, land subdivision was made according to British and American surveying practices. The townships were more or less square, but the grid became irregular because it was started from a number of different points, each of which used a differently oriented base. In the Prairies, on the interior plains, the grid is much more regular, partly as a result of the topography and partly because a plan for the subdivision of the whole region was laid out before it was settled, and based rigidly on lines of latitude and longitude.

Settlement patterns in mountainous British Columbia were greatly influenced by water access routes.

Demographic trends
Traditionally Canada has sought to increase its population through immigration in order to expand the workforce and domestic markets. As a result, immigrants now make up about one-sixth of Canada’s total population. Immigration peaked in 1913, when more than 400,000 arrived. Immigration was discouraged during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but after World War II tens of thousands of displaced persons from Europe were admitted, and in the 1970s and ’80s large numbers of refugees from Europe, Asia, and Latin America were welcomed to Canada. Canada’s immigration policy is nondiscriminatory regarding ethnicity; however, individuals with special talents or with capital to invest are given preference. Since the latter part of the 20th century, Asian immigration (notably Chinese) has increased dramatically, accounting for about half of all immigrants during the 1990s.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the notable feature of internal migration was the movement from eastern Canada to the Prairie Provinces. Although British Columbia has continued to gain from migration since the 1930s, much of this has been at the expense of the Prairie Provinces. Alberta gained population from throughout Canada during the oil boom of the 1970s. This trend leveled off in the 1980s and early ’90s, but it increased again at the beginning of the 21st century. Saskatchewan has had more emigration than immigration since the 1940s. Ontario consistently has received far more people since the 1940s than the other provinces, but most of this growth has been from immigration rather than interprovincial migrations. The population of the Atlantic Provinces has grown more slowly than it has in regions farther west. The cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary have attracted both migrants and immigrants.

During the 20th century, natural increase, rather than immigration, was the major factor in Canada’s population growth. Until the 1960s the crude birth rate (live births per 1,000 population) remained in the high 20s, while the crude death rate (deaths per 1,000 population) declined from more than 10.6 in 1921 to 7.7 in 1961. Thereafter the rate of natural increase slowed, however, because of a sharp drop in the birth rate accompanied by a slight decrease in the death rate. The rate of natural increase is much lower than the world average and is about the same as those of the United States and Australia. Canada has an aging population. Whereas fewer than one in 10 Canadians were age 65 or older in the 1970s, by the start of the 21st century the figure stood at nearly one in six. Life expectancy in Canada, which averages about 80 years, is among the world’s highest.

Economy
The early settlement and growth of Canada depended on exploiting and exporting the country’s vast natural resources. During the 20th century, manufacturing industries and services became increasingly important. By the end of the 20th century, agriculture and mining accounted for less than 5 percent of Canada’s labour force, while manufacturing stood at one-fifth and services, including transportation, trade, finance, and other activities, employed nearly three-fourths of the workforce. For many years Canada supported its manufacturing industries through protective tariffs on imported manufactured goods. As a result, many U.S. firms established branch plants in order to supply the Canadian market. Another cornerstone of Canada’s economic policy was the government’s provision of grants and subsidies to stimulate economic development in areas of slow growth. In the 1980s Canada began moving away from these two basic policies. Compliance with international rules on trade and the establishment of a free trade area with the United States (1989)—which with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 came to include Mexico—reduced protection for Canadian manufacturing plants. Funding for regional economic development programs was also reduced. Some multinational companies have relocated their factories to countries where costs are cheaper, causing job losses and political dissatisfaction within Canada.

Canada’s economy is dominated by the private sector, though some enterprises (e.g., postal services, some electric utilities, and some transportation services) have remained publicly owned. During the 1990s some nationalized industries were privatized. Canadian agriculture is firmly private, but it has come to depend on government subsidies in order to compete with the highly subsidized agricultural sectors of the European Union (EU) and the United States. Several marketing boards for specific farm commodities practice supply management and establish floor prices.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Agriculture
Less than one-twelfth of Canada’s land area is suitable for crop production. About four-fifths of this cropland is in the Prairie Provinces, where long sunny days in summer and adequate precipitation combine to provide excellent grain yields. However, the widest range of crops and the highest yields occur in southwestern British Columbia and southern Ontario.

Although agriculture employs less than 4 percent of the Canadian labour force, it is vital to the national economy, producing large volumes of food for both the domestic and export markets and providing raw materials for food processing, wholesale, and retail industries. There has been a significant trend away from the family farm (more than one-fourth of Canadians lived on farms in the 1940s) toward larger farm units, mechanized farm operations, specialization in fewer products, and the use of improved varieties, breeds, and farming methods.

There are distinctive types of farming in different areas of the country. The Prairies are known for grain (particularly wheat), oilseeds (especially canola), and cattle grazing. Central and eastern Canada have a wider variety of crops and livestock, and farmers tend to specialize in either a particular cash crop or a livestock type. Southwestern Ontario produces large amounts of grain corn (maize), soybeans, and white beans. Both southern Ontario and southwestern British Columbia produce a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Dairying is important around all the major cities. Because of the challenging climate and soil conditions, many Canadian farmers have embraced genetically modified organisms, though their disfavour in Europe jeopardizes exportability.

Forestry
Almost half of Canada’s land area is covered with forest, the accessible portions of which provide abundant resources for lumber, pulp, and paper. The most valuable forest region for timber production is the west coast, where the climate is conducive to the growth of giant trees with excellent lumber. Forest products form a larger part of Canada’s export trade than do the combined exports of farm, fish, and mineral products. Canada is the world leader in the export of pulp and paper and also exports large amounts of softwood lumber, mostly to the United States. British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec are the leading provinces in the production of forest products.

Canada’s forest industry has to struggle constantly against the threats of fire, insects, and disease. Some control of insects has been achieved through the aerial spraying of insecticides, but this practice also eradicates insect-eating birds and predator insects. Because forests have significant value in maintaining an ecological balance in the environment and also provide important recreational opportunities, the forest industry is increasingly held to account for environmentally damaging practices. For example, public pressure during the 1990s led to increased governmental supervision of logging methods and the forest industries’ implementation (on a voluntary basis) of sustainable resource-management methods (e.g., eliminating clear-cutting).

Fishing
Canada has rich fishing grounds off both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts. The parts of the continental shelf with the shallowest water are known as fishing banks; there plankton, on which fish feed, thrive because the sunlight penetrates to the seafloor. The most important of these fishing banks is the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Bradelle Bank, Sable Bank, Georges Bank (shared with the United States), and a number of other fishing banks are found off the coasts of the Maritime Provinces. On the Pacific coast the continental shelf is very narrow, but numerous mountain streams are suitable for salmon spawning. In the rivers of the far north and in the Arctic Ocean there are abundant fish on which large numbers of the native peoples depend for food. Overfishing and pollution depleted the fish resources in southern Canada significantly after the mid-20th century. Indeed, in 1992 the Canadian government imposed a moratorium on cod fishing—with disastrous effects for employment along the east coast. More international regulating agreements controlling catches have improved the situation somewhat. To offset the losses caused by smaller catches, fish prices rose sharply.

Canada catches only a tiny fraction of the fish taken from the world’s oceans, but it ranks among the leaders in volume of fish exports because of Canada’s relatively small population and low per capita fish consumption. Historically, in the Atlantic Provinces the fishing industry contributed significantly to the value of all goods produced in the region. Until the 1990s, small coastal communities throughout the region were wholly or partly dependent on the fishing industry. The most important species caught in eastern waters arehaddock, redfish, flatfish, turbot, pollock, flounder, sole, halibut, herring, mackerel, tuna, and lobster; cod remains an important sport fish. Salmon and herring are the leading catches off the Pacific coast.

Resources and power
Minerals
Canada is rich in mineral resources. The vast Canadian Shield, with its masses of igneous and metamorphic rocks, contains numerous large deposits. Metallic minerals are also found in such rock types in the Western Cordillera and the Appalachians. Although there are some metallic mineral and fossil fuel deposits in sedimentary rocks in the Western Cordillera and the Appalachians (including the adjacent seabed), the largest volume of coal and petroleum has so far been found in the interior plains of western Canada. Mining has been a key factor in the development of Canada’s northlands. In many areas, roads and railroads built to serve new mining operations have encouraged the subsequent development of forest and recreational resources. Development has often been accompanied by environmental damage.

Canada has long ranked among the world leaders in the production of uranium, zinc, nickel, potash, asbestos, sulfur, cadmium, and titanium. It is also a major producer of iron ore, coal, petroleum, gold, copper, silver, lead, and a number of ferroalloys. Diamond mining, particularly in the Northwest Territories, is significant as well. As mining is no longer as labour-intensive as it once was, it now employs only a small portion of the Canadian labour force; however, mining-related industries (e.g., iron and steel and transportation) account for a much larger share. Because Canada exports a large proportion of its mineral production, the mining industry is sensitive to world price fluctuations. During times of high demand, prices rise, and mining companies increase their production and open new mines; when demand falls, production is cut, mines close, and workers are laid off. Single-industry communities typically become ghost towns when mines are closed.

Energy
Canada is richly endowed with hydroelectric power resources. It has about one-sixth of the world’s total installed hydroelectric generating capacity. However, most of the suitable hydroelectric sites have already been highly developed, with three-fifths of Canada’s power generated from hydroelectric sources. Increasingly, the country has turned to coal-fueled thermal energy, especially as nuclear power generation—which provides about one-eighth of Canada’s power—has declined because of safety concerns. Canada also has vast coal reserves, particularly in the western provinces (except Manitoba) and in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Canada can meet its own petroleum needs and has a surplus of natural gas and electricity. The largest producing oil and gas fields are in Alberta, but potential reserves lie both in the Arctic and off the east coast. There are also large deposits of uranium and of oil and coal mixed in sands.

Manufacturing
Manufacturing accounts for about one-fifth of Canada’s gross national product and employs about one-seventh of the labour force. Canada’s iron and steel industry is modern and efficient and produces steel products for the manufacture of such durable goods as motor vehicles, mining equipment, and household appliances. The United States and Canada negotiated an automotive products agreement in the mid-1960s, after which the Canadian automobile industry expanded dramatically. Until Japanese automakers began building plants in Canada in the 1980s, the industry consisted of branch plants of U.S. firms. The high-technology and electronics industries experienced rapid growth in the last two decades of the 20th century. Although there is some manufacturing in all large cities, more than three-fourths of Canadian manufacturing employment is located in the heartland, which extends from Quebec city to Windsor, Ontario, on the periphery of the U.S. automobile-manufacturing centre, Detroit, Michigan. Overall, manufacturing growth has been led by exports—principally to the United States. Both large and small manufacturers have benefited, particularly from free trade agreements, though employment in the sector declined as a result of automation.

Finance
Canadian financial services have exhibited a great deal of flexibility in responding to the monetary needs of the economy. To operate in Canada, a commercial bank must be individually chartered by the federal government. Most normal central-banking functions are fulfilled by the Bank of Canada, which has substantial autonomy in determining monetary policy. The official currency is the Canadian dollar, which is designed and distributed by the Bank of Canada. The national bank implements its monetary policies through its relations with the country’s large chartered (commercial) banks, which are highly developed and form the centre of the financial system. Other financial institutions—for example, credit unions, provincial savings banks, and trust and mortgage-loan companies—increasingly have amalgamated. However, the large banks, which are relatively free from controls on activities involving foreign exchange, still remain the main financial institutions.

Canada has stock exchanges in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg; exchanges in Alberta and Vancouver merged in 1999 to form the Canadian Venture Exchange. There is extensive interpenetration between Canadian and U.S. stock exchanges. In the bond market the role of government-sector borrowing traditionally has been dominant. The degree of foreign ownership of Canadian industry is very high, accounting for as much as half of the primary resource sector (except agriculture) and manufacturing. The largest portion of the foreign investment is from the United States.

Trade
Trade has always been central to Canada’s economy. Canada’s economic development historically depended on the export of large volumes of raw materials, especially fish, fur, grain, and timber. However, raw materials have declined as a percentage of Canada’s exports, while processed, fabricated, and manufactured goods have increased. By 1990 roughly four-fifths of Canada’s exports were processed to some degree. Since about the mid-1970s the leading Canadian exports have been automobiles (which account for about one-fourth of the total value of exports), automobile parts, and other types of machinery and equipment, particularly such high-technology products as computerized communication systems. Fabricated metals and other materials and forestry products, including wood pulp and newsprint, are other important exports.

Manufactured goods have always been Canada’s primary imported goods. Automobiles and automobile parts are the leading imports, followed by industrial machinery. Other significant imports are chemical products, textiles, petroleum, and such foods as vegetables in the winter season and tropical and subtropical fruits and nuts.

The United States is Canada’s chief trading partner, constituting about three-fourths of all Canadian trade; exports account for a larger share of trade than imports. The dependence on U.S. trade is not just a technical matter of market shares in imports and exports. Because exports are so important, business trends in the United States feed back directly and quickly into the Canadian business sector. Changes in consumer tastes in the United States may have disproportionate effects on Canadian producers.

Canada also retains strong ties with Europe, but newly emerging trade patterns may decrease somewhat Canada’s dependence on its traditional pattern. Japan now ranks as Canada’s second largest trading partner. Other important partners include the United Kingdom, Mexico, China, and Germany.

Services
The service sector in Canada employs more people than all other activities combined. Among the fastest-growing service areas is tourism. Canada is one of the world’s leading destinations for foreign travelers, particularly from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Germany. Canadian and foreign travelers spend several billion dollars each year on transportation, accommodations, food, recreation, and entertainment as they travel in the country. By 1990 tourism was providing employment for about 5 percent of Canada’s total labour force. Business services—particularly in computer applications—also have grown considerably.

Labour and taxation
About one-fourth of Canada’s labour force belongs to trade unions, many of which are linked to unions based in the United States. The Canadian unions tend to strive for wage parity with their American counterparts. This causes labour-management tensions because Canadian productivity levels are generally lower than those in the United States, which is primarily the result of smaller production runs. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), formed in 1956, is a national organization of independent trade unions that represents about two-thirds of all unionists. Among the largest affiliates of the CLC are the National Union of Public and General Employees, the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada, and the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada.

In comparison with the United States, Canadian individual income tax rates are higher, which, combined with the generally higher wages south of the border, leads many professionals to seek employment in the United States. Overall, tax revenues account for about one-fifth of gross domestic product. Personal income taxes generally make up between two-fifths and half of the federal government’s total revenue, while corporate income taxes generate slightly more than one-tenth of the total. Other important federal taxes include various consumption taxes (e.g., on sales, fuel, alcohol, customs, and tobacco) and health and social insurance taxes. The provinces and territories receive revenue from the federal government to fund various services, including health care and education. The federal government also provides so-called “equalization” transfers to the provincial governments, which subsidize poorer areas. Provincial and local governments can also raise taxes for their needs.

Transportation and telecommunications
It was essential that Canada develop an efficient transportation system because of its enormous size, the patchiness of its population distribution, and the need to move primary and manufactured goods over long distances to coastal ports.

Roads and highways
The populated sections of Canada are well traversed by highways and roads, but vast areas of the larger provinces and the territories that are sparsely settled are virtually without roads of any kind. Access to outlying settlements is often provided by roads built by logging, pulp and paper, and mining companies, although these are not always available for public travel. When the Trans-Canada Highway was opened officially in 1962, it became possible to drive the 4,860-mile (7,821-km) route from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, to Victoria, British Columbia. Ferry connections extend the highway on both coasts, and in 1997 an 8-mile (13-km) bridge linking Prince Edward Island to the mainland was completed. Highway networks are dense in the urban industrial heartland, and motor vehicles are ubiquitous, numbering more than one for every two inhabitants. The trucking industry grew steadily after World War II—and spectacularly after the introduction of NAFTA. Public concern over highway safety has increased with the density of commercial traffic.

Railways
The number of railway miles per capita in Canada is among the world’s highest. Although the railways connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the major networks are confined to the southern part of the country. Even in the west, where they extend farthest north, the transcontinental routes do not go north of Edmonton, Alberta, and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. North-south regional lines, however, reach Hudson Bay at Churchill, Manitoba; James Bay at Moosonee, Ontario; and central Labrador at Schefferville, Quebec.

Two transcontinental systems operate most of Canada’s railway facilities. The Canadian National Railways (CN) system, formerly a government-owned body, was privatized in 1995. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CP) is a joint-stock corporation. Although these systems are highly competitive, they cooperate on many routes where duplication of service would not be profitable. They are supplemented by a major north-south line on the west coast, the British Columbia Railway, and a number of regional railways serve mining and timber resource developments in the North. Thousands of railway miles have been retired, particularly in the Prairie Provinces, but new railroads to the vast resources in the North have also been constructed, leaving the total track mileage relatively unchanged.

The retirement of track miles is at least partly related to the major decline in the railway share of passenger transportation after World War II in favour of automobile and air travel. In 1977 the Canadian government created VIA Rail, a crown corporation that assumed responsibility for most passenger trains. VIA Rail owns its trains, but it uses the tracks and other facilities of CN and CP. Even though VIA Rail introduced new equipment and improved services, it was not able to stem the tide of declining railway passenger travel. Beginning in the late 1980s, government subsidies were cut and many passenger routes discontinued. Most of Canada’s railway passenger service is concentrated in the densely populated corridor from Windsor to Quebec city. GO Transit, an agency of the Ontario government, began operating commuter trains in the heavily urbanized area around Toronto in 1967. Similar commuter train operations began in the Montreal area in 1984 and in the Vancouver region in 1995.

Waterways
A large proportion of goods carried in Canada, in both domestic and international trade, uses water facilities for some part of its journey. The inland shipping routes are dominated by the 2,342-mile (3,769-km) St. Lawrence–Great Lakes waterway, which provides navigation for vessels of 26-foot (8-metre) draft to the head of Lake Superior. It includes the major canals of Canada. There are seven locks between Montreal and Lake Ontario; the Welland Canal bypasses the Niagara River and Niagara Falls between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie with eight locks; and the Sault Sainte Marie Canal and lock link Lakes Huron and Superior. The 16 locks overcome a drop of some 582 feet (177 metres) from the head of the lakes to Montreal. The St. Lawrence Seaway accommodates all but the largest oceangoing vessels, making the upper St. Lawrence and Great Lakes area open to four-fifths of the world’s maritime fleet. The main commodities shipped are grain from Thunder Bay on Lake Superior to St. Lawrence ports, and iron ore to steel mills in both Canada and the United States.

On the west coast, large volumes of forest products, coal, and crude oil are moved by tug and barge operations. On both the east and especially the west coasts there are extensive networks of ferry services. Shipping is crucial to the development of the Canadian Arctic, as it provides a means of transporting mineral resources to markets and bringing supplies to remote communities. In addition to ocean shipping to the Arctic, barges transport supplies along the Mackenzie River all the way to its mouth.

By international standards the Canadian merchant fleet is quite small. Most Canadian-registered merchant vessels operate on domestic routes, and only a few Canadian-flag ships operate deep-sea routes. The Canadian Coast Guard ensures that all ships plying Canadian waters, including the Arctic waterways, meet the requirements of the Canada Shipping Act and follow pollution-prevention procedures; it also operates icebreakers, which keep shipping lanes open, and provides service for the far north.

Airways
Vast distances, rugged terrain, and extreme variations in climate have shaped the development of civil aviation in Canada and made air transport tremendously important. Air Canada forms the nucleus of Canada’s domestic freight and passenger air service. Several regional domestic air carriers are affiliated with Air Canada and operate other scheduled commercial services. Smaller carriers operate limited scheduled services, some of them to parts of Canada that are inaccessible by other means of transportation. There are also a number of sizable charter operations, which, like Air Canada, operate both international and domestic routes. An open-skies agreement between Canada and the United States in 1995 provided both Canadian and American airlines with increased transborder opportunities.

Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport is by far the busiest in the country, handling annually some one-third of Canada’s passenger traffic and more than two-fifths of its air cargo. Montreal has two major airports: Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the chief business airport, and Mirabel, some 20 miles (32 km) north of the city, which specializes in charters and cargo.

Pipelines
Pipelines are a major element in Canada’s vast transportation network. Growth has been rapid since 1950, when pipelines were a negligible factor in intercity freight traffic. Some of the world’s longest petroleum and natural gas pipelines link the oil and gas fields of Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and Saskatchewan to major cities as far east as Montreal, and two major pipelines several hundred miles in length cross the Rocky Mountains and supply the lower mainland of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, Canadian crude production using pipelines increased fourfold.

Telecommunications
Canada has one of the world’s highest ratios of telephones per capita, with virtually all households having at least one phone. This penetration helped spur the development of Canada’s high-technology sector, particularly in the Ottawa valley (sometimes dubbed “Silicon Valley North”). Indeed, New Brunswick was home to North America’s first fully digitized telephone network. The federal Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission regulates telecommunications commerce. The market, once dominated by three large privately owned companies, has become more competitive since 1980, as a growing number of companies have been licensed to provide local, long-distance, and cellular service. As a result, costs have declined and services have expanded. Likewise, competition among satellite-communication providers has also opened up since 2000, when Telesat Canada relinquished the monopoly it had held on the market since 1969. Computer use in offices and homes is widespread, and Canada’s population has one of the world’s highest proportions of Internet users. The country is also a global leader in the use of fibre-optics technology.

Government and society
Constitutional framework
Formally, Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The titular head is the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom (locally called the king or queen of Canada), who is represented locally by a governor-general (now always Canadian and appointed by the Canadian prime minister). In practice, however, Canada is an independent federal state established in 1867 by the British North America Act. The act created a self-governing British dominion (recognized as independent within the British Empire by Britain in 1931) and united the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada into the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. Rupert’s Land and the Northwest Territories were acquired from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1869, and from them Manitoba was created and admitted to the confederation as a province in 1870; its extent was enlarged by adding more areas from the territories in 1881 and 1912. The colonies of British Columbia and Prince Edward Island were admitted as provinces in 1871 and 1873, respectively. In 1905 Saskatchewan and Alberta were created from what remained of the Northwest Territories and admitted to the confederation as provinces. In 1912 the provinces of Quebec and Ontario were enlarged by adding areas from the Northwest Territories. In 1949 Newfoundland and its mainland dependency, Labrador, joined the confederation following a popular referendum (the province was officially renamed Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001). The Yukon Territory (renamed Yukon in 2003) was separated from the Northwest Territories in 1898, and Nunavut was created from the eastern part of the territories in 1999. Thus, Canada now consists of 10 provinces and 3 territories, which vary greatly in size.

All vestiges of British control ended in 1982, when the British Parliament passed the Canada Act, which formally made Canada responsible for all changes to its own constitution. The Canada Act (also known as the Constitution Act) is not an exhaustive statement of the laws and rules by which Canada is governed. Broadly speaking, the Canadian constitution includes other statutes of the United Kingdom; statutes of the Parliament of Canada relating to such matters as the succession to the throne, the demise of the crown (i.e., death of the monarch), the governor-general, the Senate, the House of Commons, electoral districts, elections, and royal style and titles; and statutes of provincial legislatures relating to provincial legislative assemblies. Many of the rules and procedures of Parliament are not laid down in the Constitution Act but are established by (often British) convention and precedent.

The constitution stipulates that either English or French may be used in all institutions (including the courts) of the Parliament and government of Canada and in all institutions of the National Assembly of Quebec, the legislature of New Brunswick, and their governments. The act guarantees Quebec the right to a Roman Catholic school system under Roman Catholic control, exclusive jurisdiction over property and civil rights, and the French system of civil law. The 1982 constitution was amended to include a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides extensive protections for civil liberties. Further amendments to the constitution require the support of the bicameral federal Parliament (House of Commons and Senate) and seven provinces that together represent half of the population. All the provinces approved the constitution except Quebec, which claimed that it infringed on its policy of restricting the use of the English language, did not give Quebec a veto on future constitutional changes, and failed to officially recognize Quebec as a distinct society. Efforts have been made at the national level to create a dual culture in Canada rather than simply to preserve two cultures. Thus, the Official Languages Act of 1969 declares that the English and French languages “enjoy equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all the institutions of the Parliament and Government of Canada.”

Federal legislative authority is vested in the Parliament of Canada, which consists of the sovereign (governor-general), the House of Commons, and the Senate. Both the House of Commons, which has 308 directly elected members, and the Senate, which normally consists of 105 appointed members, must pass all legislative bills before they can receive royal assent and become law. Both bodies may originate legislation, but only the House of Commons may introduce bills for the expenditure of public funds or the imposition of any tax. The House of Commons is more powerful than the Senate, whose chief functions include investigation, reviewing government legislation, and debating key national and regional issues.

The governor-general, who holds what is now a largely ceremonial position, is appointed by the reigning monarch of the Commonwealth upon the advice of the Canadian government. The governor-general formally summons, prorogues, and dissolves Parliament, assents to bills, and exercises other executive functions. After a general election, the governor-general calls on the leader of the party winning the most seats in the House of Commons to become prime minister and to form a government. The prime minister then chooses a cabinet, generally drawn from among the members of the House of Commons from that same party. Almost all cabinet ministers head executive departments, and the cabinet, led by the prime minister, develops all policies and secures passage of legislation.

The ministers of the crown, as members of the cabinet are called, are chosen generally to represent all regions of the country and its principal cultural, religious, and social interests. Although they exercise executive power, cabinet members are collectively responsible to the House of Commons and remain in office only so long as they retain its confidence. The choice of the Canadian electorate not only determines who shall govern Canada but also, by deciding which party receives the second largest number of seats in the House, designates which of the major parties becomes the official opposition. The function of the opposition is to offer intelligent and constructive criticism of the existing government.

The Canada Act divides legislative and executive authority between the federal government and the provinces. Among the main responsibilities of the national government are defense, trade and commerce, banking, credit, currency and bankruptcy, criminal law, citizenship, taxation, postal services, fisheries, transportation, and telecommunications. In addition, the federal government is endowed with a residual authority in matters beyond those specifically assigned to the provincial legislatures, including the power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada.

Provincial government
Provincial political institutions and constitutional usages mirror those operating at the federal level. In each province the sovereign is represented by a lieutenant governor appointed by the governor-general in council, usually for a term of five years. The provincial lieutenant governor exercises powers similar to those of the federal governor-general.

Each province holds elections for a single-chamber legislative assembly, from which a premier and cabinet are selected; legislators serve for five-year terms. The provinces have powers embracing mainly matters of local or private concern such as property and civil rights, education, civil law, provincial company charters, municipal government, hospitals, licenses, management and sale of public lands, and direct taxation within the province for provincial purposes. The vast and sparsely populated regions of northern Canada lying outside the 10 provinces—Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut—are administered by the federal government, but they elect members to the House of Commons and enjoy local self-government.

A major part of Canada’s constitutional development has occurred gradually through judicial interpretation and constitutional convention and through executive and administrative coordination at the federal and provincial levels of government. Through such devices, the national and provincial legislatures have been able to retain their separate jurisdictions over different aspects of the same matters. Regular meetings of provincial premiers and the federal prime minister are held to discuss federal-provincial jurisdictional issues, generally ensuring an accommodation that gives fair assurances to the aspirations of the provinces without disrupting the integrated national structure of Canada.

Local government
Because municipal government falls under the jurisdiction of the provinces, there are 10 distinct systems of municipal government in Canada, as well as many variations within each system. The variations are attributable to differences in historical development and in area and population density. Thus, the legislature of each province has divided its territory into geographic areas known generally as municipalities and, more particularly, as counties, cities, towns, villages, townships, rural municipalities, or municipal districts.

The county system as understood in Britain or the United States exists only in southern Ontario and southern Quebec. County councils are composed of representatives from rural townships, towns, and villages and provide a second level of services for the whole county. This two-tiered municipal government was first extended to urban areas when Metropolitan Toronto was established in 1953. A number of other highly urbanized areas in Ontario have since adopted a metropolitan or regional form of government to deal with common areawide problems. More recently, cities such as Toronto have been further amalgamated with their surrounding districts; at the same time, the number of representative councillors has been reduced.

The more than 4,500 incorporated municipalities and local government districts in Canada have various powers and responsibilities suited to their classification. A municipality is governed by an elected council. The responsibilities of the municipalities are generally those most closely associated with the citizens’ everyday life, well-being, and protection. In addition to local municipal government, there are numerous local boards and commissions, some elected and others appointed, to administer education, utilities, libraries, and other local services.

The sparsely populated areas of the provinces are usually administered as territories by the provincial governments. Aboriginal self-government became an increasingly important issue during the last two decades of the 20th century.

Justice
Canadian courts of law are independent bodies. Each province has its police, division, county, and superior courts, with the right of appeal being available throughout provincial courts and to the federal Supreme Court of Canada. At the federal level, the Federal Court has civil and criminal jurisdictions with appeal and trial divisions. All judges, except police magistrates and judges of the courts of probate in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, are appointed by the governor-general in council, and their salaries, allowances, and pensions are fixed and paid by the federal Parliament. Judges serve in office until age 75, at which time they are required to retire. Criminal law legislation and procedure in criminal matters is under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada. The provinces administer justice within their boundaries, including organizing civil and criminal codes and establishing civil procedure. Since 1982, when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was incorporated into the constitution, the interpretative role of the Supreme Court has increased significantly.

Political process
Suffrage and elections
The 308 members of the House of Commons, from which the prime minister is selected, are elected for a maximum term of five years by universal suffrage in single-member districts (known in Canada as ridings). The prime minister may dissolve the House of Commons and call new elections at any time within the five-year period. The Senate consists of 105 members who are appointed on a provincial basis by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister and who may hold office until they reach 75 years of age.

All Canadian citizens at least 18 years of age are eligible to vote. Traditionally, voter participation in Canada was fairly high, with some two-thirds of eligible voters regularly casting ballots; however, as in many established democracies, turnout declined significantly in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Women received the right to vote in federal elections in 1918, but men have generally predominated in federal elections and appointments. During the 1990s, however, Kim Campbell became Canada’s first woman prime minister; women now generally constitute about one-fifth of all members of the House of Commons. The first woman governor-general was Jeanne Sauvé, who served from 1984 to 1990. In 1999 Adrienne Clarkson became Canada’s first governor-general of Asian ancestry.

Political parties
During much of the 20th century, Canada had two major political parties: the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals. Although both parties were ideologically diverse, the Progressive Conservatives tended to be slightly to the right, while the Liberals were generally regarded as centre-left. These two parties formed all of Canada’s national governments. From the 1930s to the ’80s both the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals became somewhat more liberal regarding social and health welfare policies and government intervention in the economy. Under the leadership of Brian Mulroney, who became prime minister in 1984, the Progressive Conservative government underwent a distinctly conservative shift, which included selling crown corporations, deregulating many industries, and granting tax advantages to corporations and the wealthy. However, after Mulroney’s retirement in 1993, his party suffered a cataclysmic decline in the House of Commons, their number of seats being reduced from 169 to 2 in October 1993. At the same time, the Liberals increased their representation from 83 to 178. In particular, the Liberals dominated federal elections in Ontario, which elects one-third of all members of the House of Commons; in 2000, for example, the Liberals won 100 of Ontario’s 103 seats, though they won only half of the overall popular vote and failed to control the provincial government.

Throughout much of the 20th century, the main third party was the New Democratic Party (NDP), its support largely concentrated in western Canada. The NDP occupies a left-of-centre position, advocating an extension of the welfare state. It often won 30 to 40 seats in the House of Commons, but it, too, saw its representation cut dramatically in the 1990s. In particular, the decline of the NDP and Progressive Conservatives was the result of the regionalization of Canada’s elections. The Bloc Québécois, which supports Quebec’s independence and maintains links with the provincial Parti Québécois, won 54 seats in the House of Commons in 1993 and became the official opposition. In 1997, however, the conservative and western-based Reform Party of Canada, which opposed concessions to Quebec, won 60 seats to become the official opposition. In 2000 the Reform Party was replaced by the conservative Canadian Alliance—formed by elements of the old Reform Party and disgruntled Progressive Conservatives—which subsequently became the official opposition. The Canadian Alliance merged in 2003 with the remaining Progressive Conservatives to create the Conservative Party of Canada, which continued in opposition.

The Quebec question
The issue of Quebec’s autonomy dominated Canadian politics for the last decades of the 20th century. Through various historical constitutional guarantees, Quebec, which is the sole Canadian province where citizens of French origin are in the majority, has developed a distinctive culture that differs in many respects from that of the rest of Canada—and, indeed, from the rest of North America. Although there are many in Quebec who support the confederation with the English-speaking provinces, many French Quebecers have endorsed separatism and secession from the rest of Canada as a means to ensure not only material prosperity and liberty but also ethnic survival. As a consequence, they have tended to act as a cohesive unit in national matters and to support those political parties most supportive of their claims. In 1976 Quebec’s voters elected the Parti Québécois, whose major policy platform was “sovereignty association,” a form of separation from Canada but with close economic ties, to form its provincial government. In 1980, however, three-fifths of Quebecers voted against outright separation; in 1995 a proposition aimed at separation—or at least a major restructuring of Quebec’s relationship with Canada—was defeated again, though by a margin of only 1 percent. The 1995 referendum highlighted Quebec’s internal divisions, as nine-tenths of English speakers opposed separation while three-fifths of French speakers supported it.

There have been several unsuccessful efforts to entice Quebec to approve the constitution formally and to develop a balance of powers acceptable to both Quebec and the rest of Canada. For example, the Meech Lake Accord (1987), which would have recognized Quebec’s status as a distinct society and would have re-created a provincial veto power, failed to win support in Manitoba and Newfoundland, and the Charlottetown Accord (1992), which addressed greater autonomy for both Quebec and the aboriginal population, was rejected in a national referendum (it lost decisively in Quebec and the western provinces). The Clarity Act (2000) produced an agreement between Quebec and the federal government that any future referendum must have a clear majority, be based on an unambiguous question, and have the approval of the federal House of Commons.

Security
Police
The police forces of Canada are organized into three groups: the federal force, called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP); provincial police; and municipal police. The RCMP, or Mounties—one of Canada’s best-known organizations—was established in 1873 for service in the Northwest Territories of that time. It is still the primary police force in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, but it also has complete jurisdiction of the enforcement of federal statutes throughout Canada, which includes the control of narcotics. The maintenance of peace, order, and public safety and the prevention and investigation of criminal offenses and of violation of provincial laws are provincial responsibilities. Ontario and Quebec have their own provincial police forces, but all other provinces engage the RCMP to perform these functions. Provincial legislation makes it mandatory for cities and towns and for villages and townships with sufficient population density and real property to furnish adequate policing for the maintenance of law and order in their communities. Most large municipalities maintain their own forces, but others engage the provincial police or the RCMP, under contract, to attend to police matters. In 1984 the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was created to replace the security service previously provided by the RCMP. The CSIS’s purpose is to conduct security investigations within Canada related to subversion, terrorism, and foreign espionage.

Defense
Matters relating to national defense, including the armed forces, are the responsibility of the minister of national defense. Canada’s armed forces constitute a considerably smaller proportion of the Canadian labour force than do the armed forces of its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and its defense spending is lower per capita than that of most of its allies. Except during wartime, military strength has never been central to Canada’s national security efforts. Instead, the country has participated in peacekeeping efforts through the United Nations and has formed strong alliances with the United States and NATO. The Canadian military maintains separate army, navy, and air force divisions within a unified command structure. The Royal Military College of Canada is the country’s service academy.

Health and welfare
Canadians are proud of their Medicare system, which was built on the idea that sophisticated health and medical treatment should be available to everyone. Although the system is publicly financed, services are delivered by the private sector. The federal government determines national standards, but provincial governments are responsible for providing, financing, and managing most health-related services. Health care benefits account for about one-third of all provincial expenditures. As Canadians have been living longer, the costs of the system have increased dramatically, leading many provincial governments to curtail benefits or increase social insurance taxes. During the 1990s, for example, many hospitals were closed, and user fees were increased or introduced for some services (e.g., drug prescriptions) as part of cost-cutting measures.

The federal government has responsibilities for the administration of food and drug legislation (including narcotics control), quarantine, immigration and sick-mariners services, and the health and welfare of Canada’s aboriginal population and past and present members of the Canadian armed forces. There are a number of social security and social assistance programs. The Family Allowance Act has been a unique feature of the Canadian social security system since its inception in 1945. The Canada Pension Plan provides retirement, disability, and survivors’ benefits. The Old Age Security Act provides a monthly pension to all persons at least 65 years of age, while the guaranteed-income supplement provides additional income for pensioners. Financial aid is available under provincial or municipal auspices to persons in need and their dependents, though, as with medical care, provincial governments began cutting benefits in the 1990s. The unemployment insurance system is financed by premiums paid by employers and employees, along with federal government contributions.

Education
Under the British North America Act of 1867, organizing and administering public education are provincial responsibilities. The federal government is directly concerned only with providing education in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, where it allocates funds but does not administer the system; in Indian schools throughout Canada; for inmates of federal penitentiaries; for the families of members of the Canadian forces on military stations; and through Canada’s Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. In addition, the federal government finances vocational training of adults and provides financial support to the provinces for the operating costs of postsecondary education.

Education policies vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but each province has a department of education headed by a minister who is a member of the provincial cabinet. Most Canadian children attend kindergarten for one year before they enter an eight-grade elementary school at age 6 or 7. At about 14 years of age, most children enroll in a regular four-year secondary school.

Traditionally, higher education was the preserve of universities. Now, however, they are supplemented by various institutions without degree-granting status—for example, regional colleges in British Columbia, institutes of technology in Alberta, institutes of applied arts and sciences in Saskatchewan, colleges of applied arts and technology in Ontario, and collèges d’enseignement général et professionel (community colleges) in Quebec. Canada has some 75 degree-granting institutions and more than 200 community colleges, ranging from institutions with a single faculty and enrollments of a few hundred to institutions with many faculties and research institutes and more than 50,000 students. Among the largest universities are the multicampus Université du Québec (founded 1968) and the University of Toronto (1827). One of Canada’s most prestigious universities is McGill University (1821), a private, state-supported English-language university in Montreal.

The oldest French-speaking university in Canada, Laval, in Quebec city, traces its roots to 1663; it was officially founded as a university in 1852 and was recognized by a papal bull in 1872. Universities in English-speaking Canada were established after the American Revolution. University of King’s College (1789) in Nova Scotia and what is now the University of New Brunswick (1785) were patterned on King’s College (now Columbia University) in pre-Revolutionary New York City. Most other universities in pioneer days were begun by churches, but almost all have since become secular and almost entirely financially dependent on the provincial governments. Beginning in the late 1950s, Ontario established a number of new postsecondary institutions. One of these, the University of Waterloo (founded in 1957 and incorporated as a university in 1959), has a cooperative program (alternating academic and work terms) and has gained an international reputation in mathematics and computer science. A number of private universities have been established in Canada, including Royal Roads University, which was established at a former federal military college near Victoria, British Columbia. A somewhat unusual characteristic of Canadian universities has been the system of “affiliated colleges” linked to a “parent” degree-granting institution though separated from it physically. English is the common language of instruction at most universities, except for a few bilingual institutions and several French-language schools.

Cultural life
In 1951 the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences issued a report (what became known as the Massey Report) warning that Canadian culture had become invisible, nearly indistinguishable from that of the neighbouring United States, owing to years of “American invasion by film, radio, and periodical.” Henceforth, the government declared that Canada’s mass media would be required to encourage Canadian content—books, television programs, magazines, and other locally made cultural products. By most accounts, the policy has been quite successful, though that success has largely been the result of individual—not federal—efforts.

In its broadest sense, Canadian culture is a mixture of British, French, and American influences, all of which blend and sometimes compete in every aspect of cultural life, from filmmaking and writing to cooking and playing sports. Other peoples have added distinctive elements to this mixture: for example, Canada’s large foreign-born population is evident in the splendid and varied restaurants (notably South Asian) that line Toronto’s Yonge Street, Vancouver’s Chinese population has given that city a tradition of folk opera and puppetry that rival those found in China, Italian is widely spoken in the coffeehouses of Montreal, and Canada’s indigenous peoples are finding a growing voice through a broad range of fine and folk arts. In 1971, 20 years after the release of the Massey Report, Canada adopted multiculturalism as official national policy, and the federal government now gives support to various ethnic groups and assistance to help individuals participate fully in Canadian society.

Since the mid-20th century, economic growth has provided Canadians with greater means for practicing and enjoying the arts. Most provincial governments provide some form of financial assistance for the arts and for cultural organizations within their borders, and many have advisory and funding councils for the arts. At the national level, the Canada Council for the Arts (headquartered in Ottawa) was established in 1957. It is funded by an endowment, an annual grant from the federal government, donations, and bequests. The annual Governor General’s Literary Awards are Canada’s preeminent literary prizes; they are granted to books—one in French and one in English—in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature (text), and translation.

Daily life and social customs
Because Canada is so diverse historically and ethnically, there is no single national culture; the melting-pot ideal of the neighbouring United States is translated in Canada as something of a stew, with distinctive flavours from the hundreds of influences that make up the larger Canadian culture. Although French and English share official-language status, the particular culture of an area is generally a reflection of the dominant language; thus, French influences are confined largely to Quebec and New Brunswick. Canada’s aboriginal peoples also maintain their own distinctive cultures, particularly in the North, and immigrants have both integrated into Canadian daily life and continued to maintain some unique elements of their ancestral homelands. Still, the country unites to celebrate Canada Day (July 1), which commemorates the formation of the country in 1867.

British and American influences are strongly felt in Canadian daily life in English-speaking portions of the country. Quebec’s French culture is perhaps most noticeable through its distinctive architecture, music, and cuisine. Dishes popular in French areas—for example, poutine (french fries covered in gravy and topped with cheese) and meat pies such as tourtières and paté à la rapure (with beef, chicken, or clams)—are uncommon elsewhere in Canada under those names, though a French tourtière shares most of the ingredients of a comfortable English roast-and-potato supper, french fries with gravy or malt vinegar are a favourite snack wherever they are available, and both French- and English-speaking Canadians are likely to enjoy pizza, tandoori, or Chinese food as much as any presumed national dish. Quebec is also among the world’s leading producers of maple syrup, and sweets laced with maple sugar are common throughout the country.

Canada’s native peoples were long stigmatized and placed on the periphery of national society—and drug and alcohol addiction was common on many reserves—but more recently they have attempted to recapture their traditions. Indian art—such as stone and bone sculpture, basketmaking, and carving—is particularly popular. Most of the best arts and crafts exhibit unique characteristics that identify the region in which they were made. Native festivals and ceremonies abound, and this increased social activism has led to political gains.

The arts
Literature
The first truly Canadian literary works were written in French by explorers, missionaries, and settlers, and many of them became the inspiration for subsequent writings. Some were notable literature, such as Marc Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle France (1609; History of New France). The first major contribution in English was made by Thomas Haliburton of Nova Scotia, with his The Clockmaker; or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville (1836). The years following were also marked by some works that have become classics—for example, William Kirby’s Golden Dog (1877), Robert W. Service’s Trail of ’98 (1910), Sara Jeannette Duncan’s The Imperialist (1904), the humorous works of Stephen Leacock, and the long series of Jalna novels by Mazo de la Roche. From roughly the mid-16th to the mid-18th century, the colonial literature of New France was published in France and intended for European readers. The first French books to be published in Canada appeared only in the 1830s. Much writing thereafter was influenced by the strongly Roman Catholic Quebec movement.

Several first-rate Canadian writers emerged in the 1940s. Hugh MacLennan established an international reputation with Barometer Rising (1941) and Two Solitudes (1945), Thomas Raddall with His Majesty’s Yankees (1942), and W.O. Mitchell with Who Has Seen the Wind? (1947). Gabrielle Roy’s novel Bonheur d’occasion (1945; “Secondhand Happiness”; Eng. trans. The Tin Flute) was an immediate success, and Germaine Guèvremont’s Le Survenant and Marie-Didace (1945 and 1947; published together as The Outlander) placed her in the forefront of French-language novelists, in both Montreal and Paris. Still later came the novels of Robertson Davies and the satires of Mordecai Richler. The French Canadian novel came into its own with Marie-Claire Blais’s La Belle Bête (1959; Mad Shadows) and the notable works of Jacques Godbout, such as L’Aquarium (1962), and Hubert Aquin’s Prochain Épisode (1965; “Next Episode”). In 1979 the Prix Goncourt, one of France’s most prominent literary awards, was won by Acadian writer Antonine Maillet for her novel Pélagie-la-charrette (Eng. trans. Pélagie).

In the 1960s and ’70s other writers such as Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, and Margaret Atwood gained international prominence. In the 1980s Davies wrote a successful trilogy of novels, and Richler produced his most ambitious work, Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989). Contemporary practitioners with international followings include Timothy Findlay, who captured the Governor General’s Literary Award for The Wars (1977), and Newfoundland-born Wayne Johnston. The immigrant’s recollection of new and old societies and the difficulty of transition has been well explored by Michael Ondaatje, Nino Ricci, Rohinton Mistry, and others.

Although the growth of novel writing was the main feature of Canada’s literary scene after World War I, marked changes also took place in the work of Canadian poets during that period. John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields (1915) was the best-known Canadian verse related to World War I, but since then E.J. Pratt, Earle Birney, Irving Layton, Anne Hébert, James Reaney, Al Purdy, and Ralph Gustafson, among others, have attracted widespread attention. To their achievements should be added newer voices such as those of Patrick Lane, Susan Musgrave, and Dionne Brand. There has also been a growing movement to collect the literature of Canada’s native people, as exemplified by the work of American-born Canadian poet and typographer Robert Bringhurst.

Canadian playwriting experienced something of a renaissance beginning in the 1960s. Toronto has now become the third largest production centre in the English-speaking world after London and New York City. Leading playwrights include the prolific Michel Tremblay, who has been a force since his groundbreaking Les Belles-Soeurs (1968; “The Sisters-in-Law”), and John Gray, who established his reputation with Billy Bishop Goes to War (1981).

Visual arts
Sculpture and handicrafts have existed since Canada’s earliest history, though it was only in the 20th century that museums and scholars began to take note of important works of art such as the stone carvings of the Inuit and the totem-pole carvings of the Northwest Coast Indians. Since then, new kinds of Inuit sculpture and graphic work have flourished, as artists have built on their own history and also borrowed elements from Western tradition. (For more on these traditions, see arts, Native American.)

Painting has been the focus of most Canadian artists since the arrival of the Europeans. Canadian painters were greatly influenced by the styles of their European roots, but their subject matter increasingly came to be Canadian locales and landscapes. In the mid-19th century Paul Kane, an immigrant from Ireland, traveled across Canada and painted numerous canvases depicting Canadian landscapes and the lives of native people, fur traders, and missionaries, all rendered in a contemporary European genre and style. During the same period, Cornelius Krieghoff, of German descent, painted more than 2,000 canvases of anecdotal scenes in Quebec. His paintings brought new dimensions to the Canadian scene and a colourful romanticism—influenced by contemporary German trends—unsurpassed by other Canadian artists of the time. Homer Watson continued the exploration of landscapes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reflecting the influence of the American Hudson River school in his work.

After the Dominion of Canada was created in 1867, many Canadian artists attempted to form exhibiting groups that espoused a distinctly Canadian painting style free from American and European influences. In 1907 the Canadian Art Club, a small society of painters, was formed in Toronto. Beginning in 1913, another group of painters in Toronto sought to develop a national form of painting, taking their inspiration from the Canadian landscape and the work in particular of the Canadian painter Tom Thomson. A.Y. Jackson is among the best-known of this group, which took the name Group of Seven after an exhibit in 1920. Emily Carr, a contemporary of the Group of Seven, depicted native Northwest Coast people in her art.

After the 1930s, Canadian painters generally moved away from the landscape theme. In Quebec, where art tended to be more theoretical than in the other provinces, painting evolved through a number of movements. A Surrealist-influenced group in Montreal known as Les Automatistes dominated the Canadian art scene in the 1940s, with members such as Jean-Paul Riopelle and Fernand Leduc gaining prominence. In reaction to that movement, Montreal artists such as Guido Molinari and Claude Tonsignant in the mid-1950s freed contemporary painting from its Surrealist style and directed it toward an emphasis on structure and colour. Similar trends occurred in the 1950s in Toronto, where a group called Painters Eleven, led by Harold Town and Jack Bush, promoted abstract art. By the 1960s, contemporary European and American trends—such as Pop art and conceptual art—dominated Canadian painting. Still, landscape remained the favourite theme of many painters, whether in a traditional or an avant-garde style.

Sculpture in Canada was for many years much less avidly pursued than painting. The works that were produced consisted largely of carved figures made of wood, stone, or bronze. However, beginning in the 1960s, sculptors challenged the traditional notions of form, content, and technique and took up international sculptural genres and styles such as earth art and Minimalism. Artists such as Les Levine and Michael Snow also worked as painters, but their three-dimensional work established their reputations.

In the 1970s and ’80s artists in all media explored a wide range of styles: major artists included Betty Goodwin, known for her mixed-media work and drawings; Ivan Eyre, known for his graphic figurative paintings; and Roland Poulin, known for his abstract concrete sculptures. During this period a new tradition of constructed sculpture developed in which abstract shapes were created from a variety of materials, including steel, aluminum, and plastic, and Canadian sculptors began to collaborate with architects in the design of public buildings.

By the end of the 20th century, new media such as video art and performance art were challenging the dominance of painting and traditional forms of sculpture. An increasing number of museum and gallery spaces were being opened to promote the work of contemporary Canadian artists; particularly notable was the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, which opened in Toronto in 1999. At the beginning of the 21st century, art in Canada was marked by a questioning of the nature of art, as well as by experimentation and innovation. The resulting work has ranged from the intensely personal to public discourses about social and environmental issues.

The performing arts
There was a virtual explosion of musical activity in Canada in the second half of the 20th century. Choral music societies sprang up across the country. Opera grew; Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver had regular opera seasons, and the Toronto-based Canadian Opera Company toured extensively, often to remote parts of the country. Construction of a permanent opera house in Toronto began in 2003. Many cities have their own symphony orchestras, particularly those with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) broadcast centres, where musicians can be sustained by radio and television assignments. The symphony orchestras of Toronto and Montreal are internationally recognized. Worldwide acclaim has also been won by musical groups such as the Orford String Quartet, the Festival Singers of Canada, and the Canadian Brass.

Individual Canadian performers who have received international renown include singers Maureen Forrester and Lois Marshall, pianists Glenn Gould and Austrian-born Anton Kuerti, guitarist Liona Boyd, country musician Hank Snow, and jazz musicians Maynard Ferguson and Oscar Peterson. Notwithstanding the vibrant music scenes in most major cities in Canada, the lure of the gigantic American market has long attracted Canadian performers, and, though many Canadians have made important contributions to the history of rock and pop music, often they have done so as expatriates—including Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and all but one of the members of the Band. On the other hand, the Guess Who, international hit makers of the 1960s and ’70s, decided to remain in Canada and became a source of national pride for some. Other Canadian pop performers of note include Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, Bruce Cockburn, k.d. lang, Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain, Barenaked Ladies, and the Cowboy Junkies. Canada also has a large and flourishing recording industry, which has been able to find a substantial niche in the international market and, owing to Canadian content regulations imposed on broadcasters, at home.

Canada can claim three top-ranking professional ballet companies: the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (founded in 1939), the National Ballet of Canada (founded in 1951), and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (founded in 1957). Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal is a dynamic dance company that combines ballet technique and jazz music. The National Ballet is the largest and most widely traveled company; it tours throughout Canada as well as in the United States and Europe.

Canada’s professional theatre evolved out of the amateur little theatre movement, which involved Canadian playwrights and performers and which developed a knowledgeable and appreciative audience. Several year-round repertory groups in the largest cities became professional. In 1953 the Stratford Festival was founded in Stratford, Ontario, and it became an immediate success, drawing audiences from across Canada and the United States to see performances of the plays of English playwright William Shakespeare. Another celebrated theatre is the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, which stages the plays of George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries. The Blyth Festival, in rural southwestern Ontario, specializes in Canadian plays on rural issues. In Quebec during the 1960s and ’70s, drama expressed the Québécois society’s social and political aspirations. By the 1980s French Canadian theatre again became concerned with broader universal issues. Toronto became a hotbed of improvisational comedy in 1973, when Chicago’s famed Second City theatre established a troupe there that became a proving ground for a number of Canadian actors who went on to become motion-picture stars, including Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, John Candy, and Martin Short.

Although most Canadian amateur and professional musical theatre companies frequently present Broadway musicals, Canadians continue to compose musicals on Canadian topics. A most distinctive group is the Charlottetown Festival, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (founded 1965), which produces Canadian shows exclusively. Its most successful show, Anne of Green Gables, an adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel, has been staged both in London and on Broadway.

The enthusiasm engendered by the success of theatre ventures set off a new Canadian determination to have professional theatre on a regular and nationwide scale. Spectacular new theatres were built across the country after 1958, among them the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown; Place des Arts in Montreal; National Arts Centre in Ottawa; Hummingbird Centre (formerly O’Keefe Centre), St. Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts, and Pantages Theatre in Toronto; Centennial buildings of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Northern and Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditoriums of Edmonton and Calgary, respectively; and Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver. The trend has continued and even moved to the outskirts of cities; for example, North York (formerly a suburb of Toronto but since 1998 part of the Toronto metropolis) has some of the area’s best recital and performance venues.

Filmmaking
Canadian artists and technicians are prominent in every aspect of the motion picture industry—in Toronto and Vancouver, but also, and most notably, in Hollywood. Among the actors and directors who have achieved international renown over the years are Mack Sennett, Norman Jewison, Ted Kotcheff, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, and Denys Arcand.

The National Film Board of Canada was established by the federal government in 1939 to produce films, filmstrips, and still photographs that reflect the life and thought of Canada and to distribute them both domestically and abroad. It has earned international acclaim for the imaginativeness as well as the artistic and technical excellence of its work, winning both awards from film festivals around the world a reputation for the country as a leading international centre of documentary filmmaking. In 1967 the federal government established the Canadian Film Development Corporation to foster and promote a feature-film industry through investment in productions, loans to producers, and grants to filmmakers. The weakness of the Canadian dollar relative to U.S. currency as well as the skills of its filmmaking industry have enabled the country to attract a number of international film and television productions, with Toronto and Vancouver providing the locale for films set in other major cities. The impact of television on filmmaking is evident by the fact that about three-fourths of the films produced as features, advertising, trailers, newsclips, and newsreel stories by Canada’s private and governmental filmmaking agencies are for television.

Cultural institutions
Along with developments in the visual arts came the establishment of art collections and art galleries. The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, dating from 1880, includes not only the most extensive and important collection of arts by Canadians but also collections built up along international lines to help trace the origins of Canadian artistic traditions. It also circulates exhibitions to several hundred centres in the country each year. In addition, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver have large public art galleries, and many arts councils and university galleries house important collections. For example, the University of Toronto has an extensive gallery on campus to showcase its expanding collections. The country also has a well-developed public library system, particularly since the beginning of a “free books for all” movement in Ontario in the 1880s. Established in 1953, the National Library of Canada in Ottawa contains copies of every book published in the country.

Many museums in Canada display Canadian historical artifacts. Several national museums on specific themes are located in Ottawa, and many cities and towns have local museums. The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada’s largest museum, is visited by some one million people annually. Other notable institutions include the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia; the Point à Callière (Museum of Archaeology and History) in Montreal; the War Museum, which contains a full-sized reproduction of a World War I trench, in Ottawa; the Provincial Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador, which features ancient tribes and Viking expeditions and has branches in St. John’s, Grand Bank, and Grand Falls–Windsor; the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, which houses an excellent collection of artifacts from the native peoples of Canada; and the Museum of Man and Nature, which has exhibits on the Plains Indians, in Winnipeg. There are also many historic parks and monuments in Canada, the most ambitious being the 20-square-mile (52-square-km) site around the reconstructed Fortress of Louisbourg in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Sports and recreation
Canadians participate in a wide array of sports and other recreational activities. Sports play an important role in the Canadian school system, largely the result of the country’s well-coordinated network of governmental and nongovernmental agencies devoted to physical education.

Several of the sports played in Canada are derived from those of the indigenous peoples or the early settlers. Lacrosse, which had become Canada’s national game at the time of confederation, was played in many parts of the country and adopted by later immigrants. By 1867 definite rules had been established, and the game had become organized. Ice hockey is also Canadian in tradition and leadership. Its exact origins are disputed; one theory traces hockey to the Irish game of hurling and another to a French field game called hoquet, known in English as field hockey. The game has spread far afield since its rules were first codified in 1875, and it remains one of Canada’s most popular winter sports. The original teams of the National Hockey League were all Canadian; the league’s champion is awarded the Stanley Cup, which is named for Frederick Arthur, Lord Stanley of Preston, Canada’s governor-general from 1888 to 1893. “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcasts, originating with announcer Foster Hewitt on radio in 1931 and still televised, are popular with millions of Canadians. Many of the game’s best players are Canadians, and Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe are widely held to be two of the greatest hockey players of all time. Toronto is home to the Hockey Hall of Fame, founded in 1943.

Other team sports have been more strongly influenced by the United States. The Canadian Football League (CFL) plays a gridiron football game only slightly different from American football in the United States. The annual Grey Cup game that decides the CFL championship has become a national event. Toronto has two teams, the Blue Jays and Raptors, that compete, respectively, in major league baseball and the National Basketball Association. There are even Canadian connections to the origins of baseball and basketball; a version of the former was played as a modified game of rounders in the 1830s near what is now London, Ontario, and the latter was developed by Canadian-born James A. Naismith while he was working in the United States. Curling, a sport similar to lawn bowls and played on ice, is a popular recreation in Canada, and the national teams are among the most competitive in the world. Other winter sports widely enjoyed by Canadians, as both participants and spectators, include ice skating and downhill and cross-country skiing. Among the many warm-weather recreational activities, fishing, hunting, and canoeing are perhaps most associated with Canada.

The Canadian Olympic Association was founded in 1904 and was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 1907. Canadian athletes have participated in every Olympic Games since 1904 (with the exception of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow). Montreal hosted the 1976 Summer Games and Calgary the 1988 Winter Games; Vancouver was selected as the site of the 2010 Winter Games. Canadian Olympians have excelled in a variety of events, including figure skating, swimming, track and field (athletics), and diving. Although Canada has dominated international ice-hockey competition more than any other sport, the Olympic gold medals won by the men’s and women’s teams in 2002 were the country’s first since 1952.

Canada’s vast national park system, which extends from coast to coast, began around the hot springs centred in Banff National Park (established in 1885) in Alberta. Tourists from the United States and elsewhere and Canadian vacationers are attracted to the park sites throughout the year to view the striking natural scenery and to partake of the numerous recreational activities offered. Many of the parks, including those in the Canadian Rockies, have been designated World Heritage sites. Alberta’s Waterton Lakes National Park was joined to Montana’s Glacier National Park in 1932 to form the world’s first binational park. There are also extensive provincial park systems, with one (Cypress Hills) straddling the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Auyuittuq National Park in Nunavut is the country’s largest and one of the few national parks in the world above the Arctic Circle.

In 1919 the federal government established the Historic Sites and Monuments Board to advise on matters of national historic importance, with particular reference to commemoration or preservation. Most of the national historic parks are military or fur-trading forts, historic buildings, or reconstructions of historic buildings; most have museums. They range from Cape Breton’s Fortress of Louisbourg to the boyhood home of the former prime minister W.L. Mackenzie King in Ottawa and a reconstructed theatre of the gold-rush days in Dawson, Yukon. Two are preserved Yukon riverboats. The provinces have similar preservation policies. In the west many of the marked sites, such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, commemorate native cultures past and present. Several provinces have restored or reconstructed pioneer communities. British Columbia’s first provincial historic park was the restored gold-mining town of Barkerville. In Ontario, Sainte-Marie, the headquarters of the Jesuit mission to the Huron Indians in the 17th century, has been restored.

Media and publishing
Press
In every sizable Canadian city there is a daily newspaper, most of which also publish editions on the Internet; many of the largest cities have more than one daily. Smaller towns are served by weekly newspapers. Daily newspaper circulation is generally controlled by several major corporations, but editorial policy is developed at the local level. Toronto-based The Globe and Mail, which fashions itself as Canada’s national newspaper, is distributed six days per week across the entire country. A rival to The Globe and Mail is The National Post, which began publication in 1998. The Toronto Star enjoys the widest newspaper circulation. Major provincial papers include Alberta’s Edmonton Journal, British Columbia’s The Vancouver Sun, and Manitoba’s Winnipeg Free Press. Quebec has several daily newspapers, including The Gazette in English and Le Devoir, Le Journal de Montréal, and La Presse in French. Supporting the newspapers is the Canadian Press, a news-gathering agency. Several hundred magazines are published in Canada, but many of the popular magazines that circulate in Canada are from the United States. Maclean’s is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine. Reflecting the country’s love of sports, the Hockey News is among the weeklies with wide circulation.

Canada has more than 300 publishing houses, including the offices of foreign publishers. English Canadian book publishing is centred in Toronto, whereas French Canadian publishing is based largely in Montreal. As with other cultural industries, the presence of the United States looms large, though Canadian publishers are protected by legislation that requires that Canadians control any company engaged in the distribution, publishing, or retailing of books in the country. Although Canadian books are popular, only about one-fifth of books sold in Canada are written by Canadian authors.

Broadcasting
In a geographically huge country that includes groups of people of diverse origins separated by vast distances, broadcasting not only is important to provide information and as entertainment but also is crucial for linking the various regions together to develop a sense of national community. It is for this reason that Canada has developed an elaborate structure and organization for delivering radio and television broadcasts. Canada was the first country in the world to use geostationary satellites for television broadcasting. The publicly owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) provides two national networks for both radio and television, one in English and one in French. The CBC also has 24-hour cable news channels in English and French and a special northern service to provide broadcasts to the more remote Arctic settlements in both official languages as well as in Indian and Inuit-Aleut languages. Radio Canada International broadcasts globally in several languages. In television broadcasting there is a second national network, the privately owned CTV (Canadian Television), and several other private networks serve limited areas, such as Global TV in Ontario. Private radio and television stations usually are affiliated with one of the major networks. As a result, all Canadians have access to radio, and almost all have a choice of two Canadian television channels. Cable stations have proliferated, catering to every taste and interest, and satellite connections have also given Canadians access to U.S. and international television networks. There are about 100 commercial television stations and 500 radio stations in Canada.

Canadian broadcasting is regulated by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, which was established in 1968. It authorizes the establishment of networks and private stations and specifies how much of the broadcast content must be Canadian in origin. The CBC, which broadcasts high-quality music, drama, and documentary programs, has played an important role in developing Canadian talent in the entertainment world.

Norman L. Nicholson
Ralph R. Krueger
Roger D. Hall

History
Prehistory to early European contact
Precontact aboriginal history
North America’s first humans migrated from Asia, presumably over a now-submerged land bridge from Siberia to Alaska sometime about 12,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age; it has also been argued, however, that some people arrived earlier, possibly up to 60,000 years ago. Unknown numbers of people moved southward along the western edge of the North American ice cap. The presence of the ice, which for a time virtually covered Canada, makes it reasonable to assume that the southern reaches of North America were settled before Canada, and that the Inuit (Eskimo) who live in Canada’s Arctic regions today were the last of the aboriginal peoples to reach Canada. There is general agreement that Native American peoples are related to Asian peoples and that the closest resemblances are between North American Arctic peoples and their counterparts in Siberia.

Although there are no written records detailing the history of Canada’s aboriginal society prior to the first contact with Europeans, archaeological evidence and oral traditions give a reasonably complete picture of the precontact period. There were 12 major language groups among the peoples living in what is now Canada: Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan, Athabascan, Kootenaian, Salishan, Wakashan, Tsimshian, Haidan, Tlinglit, Inuktitut, and Beothukan. Within each language group there were usually political and cultural divisions. Among the Iroquoian people, for example, there were two major subgroups, the Iroquois and the Huron. These subgroups were further divided. At the time of contact, the Iroquois had organized themselves into the Iroquois Confederacy, consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples. A sixth group, the Tuscarora, joined later.

Considerable variation in cultures, means of subsistence, tribal laws and customs, and philosophies of trade and intertribal relations existed in precontact Canada. The Eastern Woodland Indians, such as the Huron, Iroquois, Petun, Neutral, Ottawa, and Algonquin, created a mixed subsistence economy of hunting and agriculture supplemented by trade. Semipermanent villages were built, trails were cleared between villages, fields were cultivated, and game was hunted. There was a high level of political organization among some of these peoples; both the Huron and the Iroquois formed political and religious confederacies and created extensive trade systems and political alliances with other groups. Peoples living in the far north do not appear to have formed larger political communities, while those of the west coast and the Eastern Woodlands formed sophisticated political, social, and cultural institutions. Climate and geography undoubtedly were major factors affecting the nature of the societies that evolved in the various regions of North America. The one characteristic virtually all the groups in precontact Canada shared was that they were self-governing and politically independent.

European contact and early exploration
At the beginning of the 9th century ad, seaborne Norse invaders pushed out of the Scandinavian Peninsula to Britain, Ireland, and northern Europe. In the mid-9th century a number of Norse craft reached Iceland, where a permanent settlement was established. Near the end of the 10th century the Norse reached Greenland and ventured to the coast of North America; at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland are the remains of what are believed to be as many as three Norse settlements. According to available evidence, the Norse settlers and the Inuit (whom the Norse called Skraeling) initially fought each other but then established a regular trade relationship. The Norse settlements were soon abandoned, probably as the Norse withdrew from Greenland.

Europeans did not return to northern North America until the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto, known in English as John Cabot, sailed from Bristol in 1497 under a commission from the English king to search for a short route to Asia (what became known as the Northwest Passage). In that voyage and in a voyage the following year, during which Cabot died, he and his sons explored the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and possibly Nova Scotia and discovered that the cold northwest Atlantic waters were teeming with fish. Soon Portuguese, Spanish, and French fishing crews braved the Atlantic crossing to fish in the waters of the Grand Banks. Some began to land on the coast of Newfoundland to dry their catch before returning to Europe. Despite Cabot’s explorations, the English paid little heed to the Atlantic fishery until 1583, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert laid claim to the lands around present-day St. John’s, probably as a base for an English fishery. The French also claimed parts of Newfoundland, primarily on the north and west coasts of the island, as bases for their own fishing endeavours. The fishery ushered in the initial period of contact between the Indians and the Europeans. Although each was deeply suspicious of the other, a sporadic trade was conducted in scattered locations between the fishing crews and the Indians, with the latter trading furs for iron and other manufactured goods.

David J. Bercuson
Roger D. Hall

The settlement of New France
Jacques Cartier
Frenchman Jacques Cartier was the first European to navigate the great entrance to Canada, the Saint Lawrence River. In 1534, in a voyage conducted with great competence, Cartier explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and claimed its shores for the French crown. In the following year Cartier ascended the river itself and visited the sites of Stadacona (modern Quebec city) and Hochelaga (Montreal). His reports were so favourable that the French king, anxious to challenge the claims of Spain in the New World, decided to set up a fortified settlement. Internal and European politics delayed the enterprise until 1541, when, under the command of Jean-François de La Rocque, sieur (lord) de Roberval, Cartier returned to Stadacona and founded Charlesbourg-Royal just northwest of Quebec. Cartier had hoped to discover precious gems and minerals, as the Spaniards had done in Mexico and Peru, but the mineral specimens he sent home were worthless; indeed, “false as a Canadian diamond” became a common French expression. Disappointed in his attempt to reach the mythical “Kingdom of Saguenay,” the reputed source of precious metals, Cartier returned to France after a severe winter, deserting Roberval, who had arrived in Newfoundland with reinforcements. Roberval also failed, and during the remainder of the century only two subsequent attempts were made at exploiting the French claim to the lands of the St. Lawrence. But the French claim remained; it had only to be made good by actual occupation.

Samuel de Champlain
In 1604 the French navigator Samuel de Champlain, under Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts, who had received a grant of the monopoly, led a group of settlers to Acadia. He chose as a site Dochet Island (Île Sainte-Croix) in the St. Croix River, on the present boundary between the United States and Canada. But the island proved unsuitable, and in 1605 the colony was moved across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia). The colony was to be a trading post and a centre of settlement, but the rugged, forested inlets of the Nova Scotian peninsula, the heavy forests of the St. John River, and the many bays and beaches of Cape Breton and Prince Edward islands made it impossible to enforce the monopoly of the fur trade against enterprising interlopers.

In 1608 de Monts and Champlain left Acadia and made their way to the St. Lawrence. At “the place where the river narrowed” (Quebec), they built a “habitation” (i.e., a fur-trading fort, or factory) to control the great river and to be the entrepôt of its fur trade. Already in 1603 Champlain had noted that the Iroquois, whom Jacques Cartier had found there, had withdrawn from the St. Lawrence under pressure from the Algonquin Indians of the north country. The French then became the allies of the Algonquin in the rivalry that began for control of the inland fur trade. In 1609, in accordance with this alliance, Champlain and three companions joined an Algonquin war party in a raid against the Mohawk, the easternmost group of the Iroquois Confederacy. The party ascended the Richelieu River toward Lake Champlain. In an encounter with a Mohawk band, Champlain and his men killed some Iroquois, and the Europeans’ firearms panicked the remainder. This skirmish signaled the initial commitment of New France to the side of the Algonquin andand the Huron (the latter being Iroquoian but hostile to the confederacy) in what became a century-long struggle for control of the output of furs from as far away as the western Great Lakes. That commitment deepened in succeeding years. The conflict between the Iroquois and Huron was based on trade rivalries that had existed before European settlement. Although the French supported the Huron, the Dutch and later the English sided with the Iroquois.

The company of de Monts and his frequent successors, for whom Champlain remained the lieutenant in New France, had the obligation to bring out settlers, as well as the exclusive right (seldom enforced) to trade in furs. Their efforts at settlement were even less successful, partly because settlement was not easy in a country of heavy forests and severe winters and partly because the fur trade had little need of settlers beyond its own employees. Moreover, the company had scant funds to bring out and establish colonists on the land. Champlain, who encouraged missionaries—first the Recollects (Franciscans), then the Jesuits—to come to Quebec to convert the Indians, was most interested in exploration. Already in Acadia he had surveyed in 1606 and 1607 the coast southward and westward to Stage Harbor, only to be rebuffed by hostile Indians.

In 1613 Champlain set out from Quebec to explore the upper St. Lawrence basin. He passed the island of Montreal, not settled since Cartier’s time but used by traders who bypassed Quebec. In order to avoid the heavy rapids of the St. Lawrence, he ascended its great tributary, the Ottawa River, only to be turned back at Allumette Island by Algonquin middlemen who were trading for the furs of the Huron and other people farther inland and who wished to retain that trade. At Allumette Champlain learned of an “inland sea” (Hudson Bay), the existence of which he had divined before he could have heard of Henry Hudson’s discovery of it in 1610. Undaunted, he ascended the Ottawa again in 1615, traversed the Mattawa River, Lake Nipissing, and the French River to Georgian Bay, and turned south to “Huronia” (the land of the Huron). Champlain wintered with the Indians and went with a Huron war party to raid an Onondaga village south of the St. Lawrence. He was slightly wounded and the party was repulsed, but Champlain had once more confirmed the alliance of the French with the northern tribes and the Huron against the Iroquois and, by the opening of the Ottawa route, had secured the mid-continent for the French fur trade.

The discovery of this inland, central region was perhaps Champlain’s main achievement. However, from 1616 to 1627 he had little success in maintaining the fur trade. The fault was not entirely his, for the enterprise itself was very difficult. The coupling of trade and settlement was somewhat contradictory, and it was impossible to finance both out of annual profits, especially as the French government failed to uphold the monopoly.

The Company of New France
The French government supplied more active support after the remarkable revival of royal power carried out in the 1620s by Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de Richelieu. Richelieu sought to make French colonial policy comparable to that of England and the Netherlands, joint victors with France in the long struggle in Europe against Spain. These countries had found a means of both raising capital and enforcing trading rights through the medium of the joint-stock company. Richelieu used his power to create such a company—the Company of New France, commonly called the “Hundred Associates” from the number of its shareholders—to exploit the resources and settle the lands of New France. The company was given broad powers and wide responsibility: the monopoly of trade with all New France, Acadia as well as Canada; powers of government; the obligation to take out 400 settlers a year; and the task of keeping New France in the Roman Catholic faith.

The company was chartered and its capital raised in 1627. The next year, however, war broke out with the English, who supported the French Protestants, or Huguenots, in their struggle against Richelieu. The war was mismanaged and inconclusive, but it gave a pretext for the Kirke brothers, English adventurers who had connections in France with Huguenot competitors of the Hundred Associates, to blockade the St. Lawrence in 1628 and to capture Quebec in 1629. For three years the fur trade was in the hands of the Kirkes and their French associates, the brothers de Caën. It was a stunning blow to the new company and to Champlain, who was taken prisoner to England. At the same time, Acadia, already raided from Virginia in 1613, was claimed by Scotland. An attempt at settlement there was made by Sir William Alexander, to whom Nova Scotia (New Scotland) had been granted by the Scottish king James VI (after 1603, James I of England).

It is difficult to estimate the effect of the war on the policy of the Hundred Associates. Canada and Acadia were restored by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1632, and the company retook possession in 1633. On the surface all seemed to go smoothly. In 1633 Champlain returned as governor, the government and settlement of Acadia was farmed out to the vigorous Isaac de Razilly, and the Jesuits assumed sole responsibility for Roman Catholicism in Canada. The fur trade was resumed, and the Trois Rivières settlement was founded in 1634 to control the Saint-Maurice River. Settlement began, but the company seemed unable to recoup the losses caused by the capture of Quebec and by five years of trade disruption. Profits that would both pay dividends and provide for the costs of settlement continued to be elusive. The company remained the proprietor of New France until 1663, providing a succession of governors and other officials, but it was unable to meet its obligations to colonize. Weary of its profitless task, the company leased the fur trade to private companies and then, in 1645, to a group of Canadian residents known as the Community of Habitants (Communauté des Habitants).

The character of French settlement
The fur trade was not New France’s sole enterprise. By 1645 settlers in Canada and Acadia were producing provisions for the fur traders and the annual ships. A characteristic mode of landholding, known as the seigneurial system, began to evolve. Under the system, the state granted parcels of land to seigneurs, who were responsible for securing settlers (habitants) and for providing them with basic services such as a mill or a road to the nearest town. The habitants were granted large plots (averaging about 100 acres [40 hectares]) and were obliged to pay dues—cens et rentes—that included several days of service per year to the seigneur. The system appeared to resemble the semifeudal seigneurial system in France, but three factors made the system far more flexible and less feudal than its French counterpart: in New France it was not the seigneur but the local militia captain who was district military leader; the seigneur was usually not of noble blood and enjoyed no special political distinction to set him apart from the habitants; and the abundance of land and the existence of a forest frontier undermined efforts by a seigneur to impose a true semifeudal discipline on his habitants. Another important difference in the Canadian seigneurial system was that in New France the habitants effectively possessed their plots permanently and even had the right to will them to their children.

The great partner and sometime rival of the fur trade was the missionary endeavour of the Jesuits, who had two obligations: (1) to keep New France Catholic by ministering to its people and excluding Huguenots and (2) to convert the Indians. The missionaries made the conversion of the agrarian Huron their principal concern. Huronia was the hub of the inland fur trade. Making Huronia a Christian community would create a centre of Christianity and confirm the French commercial alliance with the Huron and their Algonquin clients. French missionaries had already visited Huronia in the mid-1620s, and in 1634 the Jesuits resumed the mission, which thrived (at least outwardly) for 10 years.

As the French-Huron alliance tightened, Iroquois hostility toward both parties increased, a case of traditional tribal trade rivalries being exacerbated by newer trade rivalries involving Europeans. The introduction of European weapons and the imperatives of the fur trade transformed the nature of Indian warfare, which once had been little more than blood sport. The Iroquois sought to eliminate the Huron and take complete control of the interior fur trade. Using firearms obtained from the Dutch in the Hudson River valley, they launched ever more devastating raids on Huronia. The French tightly controlled the firearms trade with their Huron allies, putting the latter at a tremendous disadvantage. In 1648–49 the Iroquois inflicted major defeats on the Huron, virtually eliminating them as a significant factor in the region.

These checks to both the fur trade and the missions, at least in terms of the intentions and hopes of 1627, were the result not only of bad luck and poor management but also of the economic conditions of New France, which depended almost entirely on the fur trade for profit. Settlement was unprofitable to both the company and the colonists. Thus, the population of New France grew relatively slowly, rising from an estimated 200 residents in 1642 to perhaps 2,500 by 1663. The fur trade, however, was booming, spurred by the popularity of the beaver hat in Europe. The traders brought French goods to trade with the flotillas of canoes that carried the furs of the Ottawa and Great Lakes regions and that before 1648 were usually operated by Huron middlemen. This was the sole commercial enterprise of New France at the time.

Royal control
New France, though a proprietary colony, was governed by the company, which appointed governors for Canada and Acadia, and a few dependent officers. The kings of France remained interested in the colony, both because of the vast potential wealth of the area and because the crown might have to resume the powers of government given to the Hundred Associates. Government was, in fact, very much what it would have been if the colony had been directly under the rule of the crown. In 1647 a council was established in New France that included the governor, the chief religious authority, the superior of the Jesuits, and the governor of Montreal. During the brief rule of the Community of Habitants, representatives (syndics) of the people of Quebec, Trois Rivières, and Montreal were consulted on local matters. However, this was the nearest approach to anything resembling representative government; by and large, government in New France was authoritarian and highly paternalistic.

The assumption of direct royal control by Louis XIV in 1663 and the colonial ambitions of his great finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, led to a recasting of French colonial policy and of the government of New France. Colbert entrusted commercial policy to a new Company of the West Indies. Politically, he made New France a royal province, governed much like a province of France itself. New France was to be controlled by three persons: a governor, an intendant, and a bishop. The governor was the largely titular head of this triumvirate, although he was responsible for matters of defense and relations with the Indians. He was aided in his decision making by the Superior Council (at first called the Sovereign Council), which was to advise him during the long periods when he had no communication with France. The intendant was responsible for internal matters, and the bishop administered mission work and the church. Both the intendant and the bishop were members of the council. Bitter rivalries were not unknown among these officials, particularly as the governor was an aristocrat and the intendant from the bourgeoisie.

Colbert’s reorganization generally gave New France firm and rational government, which was strongly centralized and efficient for the times. Acadia was an exception; torn by feuds among French rivals, claimed by England, and occupied by New Englanders eager to exploit its fishery, Acadia did not again become an effective part of New France until 1667–70. The strength of the royal government was in inverse proportion to the weakness of a small and scattered population. Great efforts made by the first intendant, Jean Talon, resulted in the influx of thousands of settlers (including hundreds of women) to New France in the 1660s and early ’70s. In 1666 the population reached 3,215, and a decade later it was about 8,500; thereafter, however, the population grew largely by natural increase, though at a prodigious rate. Most of the population lived in the three towns (Montreal, Quebec, and Trois Rivières) and in seigneuries along the banks of the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal. However, scores of the men went inland with trading canoes, and some of these voyageurs remained inland permanently, marrying Indian women and fathering the Métis, people of mixed French and Indian ancestry.

The frontier of New France was not a broad front of advance but, rather, a penetration of the wilderness via the rivers in search of furs and strategic position. It was necessary to continue alliances with Indians, and those alliances were constantly challenged by the Iroquois, who controlled the region south of Lakes Ontario and Erie in the 1650s. War with the Iroquois continued, as did the push into the interior, and in 1673 the explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest, traveled down the Mississippi River as far as its confluence with the Arkansas River.

The growth of Anglo-French rivalry
In the 1660s two voyageurs, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers and Pierre Esprit Radisson fled to New England, exasperated by the high cost of the long haul back to Quebec and by the heavy tax on fur pelts. From there they were escorted to England, where in 1668 they persuaded a group of London merchants to attempt to gain the fur trade of the mid-continent by way of Hudson Bay. The Hudson’s Bay Company, incorporated in 1670 as a proprietary company (i.e., one that owned the land outright), was given exclusive trading rights in all the territory draining into Hudson Bay. New France now found itself caught between the Iroquois, supported by the Dutch and English, to the south and the Hudson’s Bay Company to the north. After he arrived in 1672, Louis de Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, the governor of New France, made a vigorous push into the continental interior. Frontenac had been directed to concentrate settlement in areas with easy sea access to France, but he defied those instructions in search of profits from furs. For this and other transgressions he was recalled in 1682.

Over the next three decades the French struggled—sometimes with success—to improve their strategic position in America. The British failed in an assault on Quebec in 1690 and were almost completely expelled from Hudson Bay by 1700, while in the late 1690s Frontenac (who had returned as governor in 1689) finally defeated the Iroquois, who sued for peace. Much of this success was lost, however, by the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended Queen Anne’s War (1702–13) between the British and French in North America, as well as the War of the Spanish Succession. Under the treaty’s terms, France lost its claim to Hudson Bay, its hold on Acadia, and its position in Newfoundland. After Queen Anne’s War a generation of peace followed, during which the governors of New France built a line of fortified posts: Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Chambly on the Richelieu River, and Carillon (Ticonderoga) on the portage from Lake George to Lake Champlain; the trading posts of Niagara, Toronto, Detroit, and Michilimackinac extended the line to the west. At the same time, French priests and military emissaries kept the Acadians and the Indian allies of New France aware of their former ties with New France. The Acadians, claiming to be neutral, obstinately refused to take the oath of allegiance to the British crown.

New France enjoyed steady growth during the early 18th century. French défrichements (“clearings”) spread along the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal, the iron forges at Saint-Maurice produced iron for Quebec stoves and even cannons, and shipbuilding flourished. The colony nevertheless remained largely dependent on the fur trade, which, in turn, relied on keeping the west open. Access to the far west was frustrated, however, by three wars with the Fox (1714–42), who strove to close the Wisconsin portages to French traders. Then Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye turned the flanks of the Fox and Sioux by proceeding by way of Lake Superior and the Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods and the Red and Saskatchewan river country. There he found a new region for the French fur trade and also cut into the English trade in the area of Hudson Bay and the Hayes River.

The expansion of New France in these years was challenged, however, by the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe in 1740 (the war’s American phase is called King George’s War [1744–48]). Fighting broke out again in Acadia, on Lake Champlain, and among the English and French Indian allies in the Great Lakes region and the Ohio River valley. It was a confused conflict of raids and reprisals marked by only one action of major significance—the capture of Louisbourg (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) by an expedition from New England. Holding the St. Lawrence River valley, the Great Lakes, and the mouth of the Mississippi River, the French commanded the better strategic position in America, though the English colonies were far wealthier and more populous.

All this was understood by Roland-Michel Barrin, marquis de La Galissonière, the exceptionally able governor of New France (1747–49). He declared in a memorandum to the French court that New France must restore its position by a bold advance into the Ohio River valley, which theretofore had not been claimed by New France or its Indian allies. His policy was adopted by his successors, and in 1749 Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville led an expedition down the Ohio to claim the valley for France and to confine English colonists and their fur trade to the east of the Allegheny Mountains. The British colonists from New York to Virginia immediately felt the threat to their trade, expansion, and settlement. In 1749 the Ohio Company was formed in London with English and American support, and the fortress of Halifax in Nova Scotia was built to counter the French fort at Louisbourg, which had been restored to New France by the peace of 1748 ending King George’s War. In 1753 an American expedition under George Washington (later the first president of the United States) was sent to the Forks of the Ohio to make good the English claim.

The French and Indian (Seven Years’) War
The French had also been active on the Ohio and had opened a line of communication from Lake Erie to the Forks. The rivals clashed on the Monongahela, and Washington was forced to surrender and retreat. This clash marked the beginning of the Anglo-French war known in America as the French and Indian War (1754–63) and in Europe and Canada as the Seven Years’ War (1756–63).

At the start of the war, the two sides seemed grossly mismatched. The English colonies contained more than 1,000,000 people, compared with the 70,000 of New France, and were prospering, with strong agricultural economies and growing trade ties with the West Indies and Britain. Their location along the Atlantic coast, the size of their population, and the large area they encompassed meant that the best France could hope for in the war was the maintenance of the status quo. New France was economically weak, dependent on France for trade and defense, and strategically vulnerable with but two seaward outlets to its continental empire, New Orleans and Quebec. Nonetheless, the French and the local militia were excellent soldiers, experienced in forest warfare and supported by several thousand Indian allies. They also received military help from France in 1756 in the form of 12 battalions of regular troops (about 7,000 soldiers), a contingent of artillery, and the command of the Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Grozon, marquis de Montcalm, who was an excellent field general.

The conflict was pursued around the globe, with fighting in India, North America, Europe, and elsewhere as well as on the high seas. Britain, which was primarily a sea power, initially did not have the land army resources to overwhelm the French in America, and instead it was forced to rely heavily on the colonial militia. However, the colonies were politically disunited, and their militia forces were neither as well organized nor as well trained as those of New France. Thus, early victories went to the French, who captured Fort Oswego and Fort William Henry in 1757 and sternly repulsed the British at Fort Carillon (Fort Ticonderoga) in 1758. Then greater numbers of troops and supplies and more skillful British generalship began to turn the tide. In 1758 the British captured and razed Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, and the following year Sir Jeffrey Amherst began a cautious but irresistible advance from Fort William Henry by way of Fort Carillon to Lake Champlain. Also in 1759 an expedition under General James Wolfe sailed up the St. Lawrence and besieged Quebec, which fell to the British after the celebrated Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Sir William Johnson took Niagara, and John Forbes took the Forks of the Ohio. New France was caught in cruelly closing pincers. In 1760 Amherst closed in on Montreal, and New France capitulated. By the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, all of French North America east of the Mississippi River was ceded to Britain, with the exception of the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland.

The British victory produced three major results. First, the danger from New France to the American colonies was ended, thus weakening their dependence on Britain. Second, the British (largely Scots with some Americans) took over and expanded the Canadian fur trade. And, third, Britain now possessed a colony populated almost wholly by persons of alien descent and Roman Catholic religion.

Early British rule, 1763–91
The Quebec Act
At first New France was to be governed by the Royal Proclamation (October 7, 1763), which declared the territory between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi to be Indian territory and closed to settlement until the Indians there could be subdued. New France became known as the Province of Quebec, which was to have a royal governor who had the authority to call an assembly. However, the 70,000 French inhabitants of Quebec could neither vote nor sit in the assembly by virtue of their Roman Catholicism.

Few British Americans moved to Quebec (there were perhaps 500 migrants in all), and those who did were attracted primarily by the prospect of taking control of the fur trade. Their bourgeois mentality and repeated demands for the “rights of Englishmen” tended to alienate the conservative British officers who administered the colony. Among the latter was General James Murray, who was appointed the colony’s first governor in 1763. Murray sympathized with the condition and difficulties of the French and ignored the demands of the recently arrived Protestants for an assembly, with the result that an agitation by the Protestants led to his recall. He was replaced in 1766 by General Guy Carleton (later 1st Baron Dorchester), who was expected in Quebec to carry out the policy of the proclamation. However, Carleton soon came to see that the colony was certain to be permanently French. He decided that Britain’s best course was to forge an alliance with the elites of the former French colony—the seigneurs and the Roman Catholic church.

Carleton returned to England in 1770 to press his new policy for Quebec on the government of Lord North. The trouble the imperial government continued to have with the colonies to the south secured official acceptance of Carleton’s policy. The result was the Quebec Act of 1774, which marked a radical departure from the manner by which British colonies in America were governed. It granted permission for Roman Catholics in Quebec to hold public office; stipulated that an appointed council, rather than an elected assembly, would advise the governor; and legitimized French civil law, though English criminal law was to be in force. The Quebec Act also recognized the legitimacy of the French language and the Roman Catholic faith, gave the church power to enforce the collection of tithes, and formalized the authority of the seigneurs to collect cens et rentes. In addition, Quebec’s territory was greatly expanded, its western border henceforth stretching to the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Carleton had sought to cement French loyalty to Britain. As the American Revolution would demonstrate, however, the Quebec Act did not do that. Instead, it brought about a virtual revolution in Quebec society. The Quebec Act gave the seigneurs, the church, and the clergy a degree of authority and influence they had never enjoyed even under the French regime. Prior to 1763 many of the clergy’s edicts had been ignored by the larger society, while the political power of the bishop had been inconsequential compared with that of the governor and intendant; the latter two officials often circumscribed church authority in matters such as relations with the Indians. After 1774, however, the bishop and the church reigned supreme in their own sphere, especially since British governing authorities were loath to interfere in religious matters. The Quebec Act also enhanced the status of the seigneurs by giving them unchallenged legal authority to set the terms and conditions of settlement on their lands. Magnifying this important change, some seigneurs sold their holdings to members of the newly arrived English-speaking merchant class. These new seigneurs, with no understanding of the informal habitant-seigneur relationship under French rule, frequently thought of themselves—and acted—as landed gentry in their dealings with the habitants.

Carleton had erred, either misunderstanding or ignoring the underlying realities of the social structure and class relations he found when he arrived in Quebec. He imposed his own vision of what Quebec ought to be, an action that earned the British the support of the church and the seigneurs but the distinct dislike of the habitants, who soon realized just how much their position in society had been eroded. As the years went by, that erosion would have a dramatic impact on their living standards.

The influence of the American Revolution
To the American colonies, the Quebec Act was menacing—it reestablished to the north and west an area despotically ruled, predominantly French and Roman Catholic, with an alien form of land tenure. Instead of intimidating the American colonies, the act helped push the Americans to open revolt. Indeed, the first act of the American Continental Congress in 1775 was not to declare independence but to invade Canada. The failure of that invasion ensured that the continent north of the Rio Grande would, on the recognition of American independence, be divided between the Americans and the British.

Not all American colonists had supported the cause of independence, and many had resisted it in arms. At the conclusion of hostilities, these loyalists had to make their peace with the new republic, though many went into exile. The refugees, known as United Empire Loyalists, were the object of considerable concern to the British government, which sought to compensate them for their losses and to assist them in establishing new homes. Some went to the United Kingdom, others to the British West Indies, but the majority emigrated to Nova Scotia or Quebec. Nova Scotia, which to a great extent had been recently settled by American colonists, had not, except for an ineffectual rising or two, joined the revolting colonies. Overawed by British sea power and by the fortress of Halifax, Nova Scotians at first kept quiet, and later many of them even made fortunes privateering against American commerce. Easily reached by sea from New York, Nova Scotia became the chief refuge of the loyalists. Some settled in the peninsula itself, some in Cape Breton and in the separate colony of Prince Edward Island. A large number, however, settled along the St. John River, north of the Bay of Fundy. Dissatisfied with tardy government from Halifax, they promptly agitated for a government of their own, and equally promptly the new province of New Brunswick was created for them in 1784, with its own governor and assembly.

In Quebec the loyalists simply crossed the new frontier and settled along the St. Lawrence River to the west of the old French settlements. Their impact in Quebec was even greater than in Nova Scotia and led to the creation of the Constitutional Act of 1791. The loyalists who settled in Central Canada were for the most part quite different from those who went to what were soon to be called the Maritime colonies (later the Maritime Provinces). The latter had possessed an elite of government officials and professional men, often loyalist regiments with their officers and men, from the long-settled seaboard areas. The Central Canadian loyalists, however, were largely from upper New York, especially the Mohawk valley country, and from Pennsylvania and were almost wholly simple frontier folk and recent immigrants, driven from their homes by neighbours who often used the Revolution to dispossess them of their lands (thus explaining the bitter fighting along the frontier and the long loyalist hatred in the new province for all things American). Their coming transformed the character of the population of Quebec. That province had been given a government much like that of New France, except for the important office of intendant, and the province was in population almost wholly French, as it was in civil law. Most loyalists had one desire, to hold the land granted them in simple ownership, something the civil law of Quebec did not allow. Some of them—how many is uncertain—also wanted representative government, which was denied by the Quebec Act. Their representations reached London and were listened to with respect.

The Constitutional Act of 1791
The appeals of the loyalists caused a great problem for the British government. The measures taken in the Quebec Act to conciliate the French could not in honour or policy be withdrawn. Yet the loyalists could not be required to live under French civil and land law and without the representative assembly to which they were accustomed. One obvious answer was to divide Quebec into separate French and English provinces. The English province would have, of course, English common law and an assembly. The French province might have been left with the forms of government provided by the Quebec Act. But there had already been one revolution in America, and by 1789 another had broken out in France. British statesmen felt that the former had occurred partly because Americans had not been granted the British constitution in its proper forms. From this view, the thing to do was to give both the new province and Quebec the British constitution in its entirety as far as circumstances might permit. The result would be, it was hoped, to assimilate the French population.

After a fiery debate in the British House of Commons, the Constitutional Act of 1791 gave the same constitution to the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Quebec, respectively). Nothing that had been given the French in 1774 was revoked, but the form of government was changed to the familiar one of governor with his executive council, a legislative council, and an assembly elected on what was for the time a wide franchise. The result of this last provision was that the first assembly in 1792 had a majority of French members.

National growth in the early 19th century
Population trends
The influx of loyalists changed the composition of the population of the British North American colonies by adding elements at once American yet profoundly attached to British institutions; it also increased the population by some 6,000 in the old province of Quebec. To these were to be added the unknown numbers of “late loyalists”—settlers, primarily land seekers, who arrived from the northern states as late as 1812. Some 80,000 came to Nova Scotia, although not all remained; of these, about 20,000 settled in what became New Brunswick, and a few hundred on Prince Edward Island.

The newcomers also added to the growing diversity of the population of the colonies. In Newfoundland there were already the West Country English and a growing number of Irish—a total of more than 26,000 by 1806. Nova Scotia had, in addition to New Englanders, loyalists, and Yorkshiremen, the Germans of Lunenburg and the Highland Scots of Pictou county and of Cape Breton Island—in all, an estimated 65,000 in 1806, with 2,513 on Cape Breton Island. New Brunswick had a population of about 35,000 in 1806, mostly loyalists or of loyalist descent, but already the southern Irish, drawn by the timber trade, were beginning to appear on the rivers of the north shore. Prince Edward Island, with a population of 9,676 in 1806, had some Acadians, some loyalists, some English, Scots, and Irish. In Upper Canada in 1806 the population numbered 70,718; in Lower Canada it was estimated at 250,000.

The first Canadian population mosaic had taken shape as it was to remain for a century, a mixture of British, French, and German. The British element was to be steadily reinforced by northern English (coming by way of Liverpool), Highland and Lowland Scots, and southern and northern Irish. The result was the creation of a society in which religious liberty and a great measure of social equality were necessary for social cohesion and common effort.

Until 1815, however, the number of immigrants was small: Highlanders for Glengarry county in Upper Canada, disbanded soldiers in Lanark county south of the Ottawa River, and a straggle of Irish after the rebellion of 1798 was crushed. Nor did the numbers increase appreciably after 1815; not until 1830 did the English, Scottish, and Irish begin coming to the British North American colonies in great volume. Thereafter, thousands arrived each year. The British North American colonies became predominantly British in population, except in Lower Canada, a fact that was to determine the course of Canadian history for the next 100 years.

The Montreal fur traders
The redivision of the continent begun by the American Revolution had been intensified by rivalry in the fur trade. The French fur trade of Montreal had been taken over by British American traders who conducted the trade with the aid of French experience and skill. The British supplied the capital, and the French voyageurs supplied the skill of canoeists and the knowledge of the country and the Indians. These “Montrealers” pushed the trade with great boldness southwest from Montreal, where they had persuaded the British government not to surrender the fur posts after 1783 on the ground that debts to loyalists had not been paid by the new United States. Thus, the trade of the lands lost by France in 1763 and by Britain in 1783 was kept tributary to Montreal rather than to New York and Philadelphia.

In 1783 the Montreal fur traders established the North West Company to challenge the Hudson’s Bay Company for dominance in the northwest. They organized a regular system of canoe convoys from Montreal to the western plains and what is now Canada’s Northwest Territories, building a chain of fur-trading posts across the west and sending explorers as far as the Pacific coast. The rivalry with the Hudson’s Bay Company sometimes degenerated into violence and even murder. The fur trade was lucrative for both companies and had a profound impact on the Indians of the area. As the Hudson’s Bay Company pushed inland to meet the challenge of its new rival, contacts between whites and Indians expanded, and the Métis population grew and began to develop a distinct culture and its own national ambition.

In 1812 Thomas Douglas, 5th earl of Selkirk, who then was a coproprietor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, established the Red River Settlement in southern Manitoba along the main canoe routes of the North West Company. Acting primarily out of charitable motives, Selkirk recruited poor and indigent settlers from Scotland to farm the land. The Métis, many of whom were North West Company employees, saw the Red River settlers as rivals and the settlement as a threat to their livelihood. Tensions between the two groups reached a climax when the Métis attacked the settlers in 1816 in what came to be known as the Seven Oaks Massacre. That clash and a number of other incidents led to a truce between the two companies and subsequently to a merger in 1821. As a result of the merger (or, more accurately, North West’s acquisition by Hudson’s Bay), the canoe expeditions from Montreal to the west were terminated, and Montreal’s nearly two centuries as an entrepôt of the fur trade ended.

The War of 1812
The War of 1812 can largely be traced to the Anglo-U.S. rivalry in the fur trade. British traders and soldiers had supplied Indian tribes and afforded them moral support in their contest with the advancing U.S. frontier. Britain had surrendered the western posts by the Jay Treaty of 1794, but the cause of the Canadian fur trade and of the Indians remained the same: preserving the wilderness. Certainly, apart from single-ship actions and privateering, the war was fought for the conquest of Canada and elimination of the British as an ally of the Indians. In the end, the war was a stalemate and closed with no concession by either side. However, it did push back the Indian frontier, increase the breach between the United States and the British North American colonies, and confirm the U.S.-Canadian boundary. It also gave Canadians a stake in their land; they had fought for it, sometimes English and French together, and successfully staved off invasion.

The U.S.-Canadian border had been fixed in 1783 by a line running generally westward from the mouth of the St. Croix River to the “high lands” dividing Quebec from Maine; then by the mountains between the St. Lawrence and Connecticut river valleys to latitude 45° N; by that line to the St. Lawrence; and then by the centre line of the river and the Great Lakes and the Pigeon and Rainy rivers to the northwest angle of the Lake of the Woods. The Treaty of Ghent (1814) confirmed this demarcation, although the location of the Maine–New Brunswick boundary remained in dispute until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. A convention in 1818 reduced the rights of U.S. fishermen along the shores of the Atlantic colonies and made latitude 49° N (the 49th parallel) the boundary from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains. Beyond, the Oregon Territory was to be jointly occupied for a period of 10 years, an occupation ended, after some threat of war over the U.S. claim to the whole, by the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which divided the territory and extended the boundary westward along the 49th parallel to the coast.

The rebellions of 1837–38
Political unrest developed in both Upper and Lower Canada soon after the War of 1812. Some of the causes were similar, rooted in the governing structure imposed by the 1791 constitution, while other causes developed from each colony’s particular character. In both colonies, effective government was in the hands of the lieutenant governor and an oligarchy that dominated the legislative and executive councils. In Upper Canada this ruling elite was known as the Family Compact; in Lower Canada it was called the Château Clique. A similarly tightly knit group also dominated Nova Scotia politics. Forming the inner circle of the governor’s advisers, these cliques usually included all the important wealthy men of the colony. In Upper Canada the members of the Family Compact tended to emulate the British landed gentry; by contrast, in Lower Canada the members of the Château Clique were mostly merchants, bankers, or those engaged in the shipping trade. The members of these colonial oligarchies shared religious and cultural affinities, intermarried, provided each other political support, and had similar social, economic, and political aims. In Upper Canada the Family Compact used its political power to attempt to create a class-ordered society on the British model. In Lower Canada the Château Clique wanted to use the tax receipts collected by the legislature to improve the colony’s communications infrastructure, thereby augmenting the Clique’s commercial opportunities. In both colonies only the elected legislative assembly could raise taxes, while the appointed councils advised the governor on how to spend those revenues.

In Upper Canada the basic constitutional problem was exacerbated by a number of local issues. The “alien” question arose after the War of 1812, when Compact members questioned whether former U.S. citizens should be permitted to own property or hold office. The crown-and-clergy “reserves” question concerned the existence of large tracts of unimproved lands. Some of these tracts had been set aside to support the Anglican church, angering other denominations. Other large tracts were being held by land speculators. Still others were to be sold or rented to pay the salaries of officeholders. The tracts blocked development, made communication difficult, and drove up the cost of land. There was also profound disagreement in Upper Canada as to which Protestant denominations should run the colony’s schools. The main grievance against the Family Compact was that it was using the tax revenues of the colony to strengthen its own position and enrich the pocketbooks of its members.

In Lower Canada the tensions created by the constitutional problem were exacerbated by the colony’s linguistic and religious divisions. The French-speaking and Roman Catholic majority, represented in the assembly by the Parti Canadien (later called the Parti Patriote) and dominant in the legislature, grew convinced that the English-speaking, Protestant Château Clique aimed to destroy their way of life. They strongly resented the increase in non-French immigrants and rioted when these immigrants were blamed for an outbreak of cholera and typhoid in Montreal. In rural areas the standard of living of the habitants had fallen precipitously since 1800. This was partly caused by a general downward trend in grain prices and by the continuous subdivision of the habitant farms as each new generation inherited the land; habitant farms had been further sliced into ever narrower lots, each fronting a river or a road. There also had been heavy increases in seigneurial dues, which were blamed on the British colonial regime.

In both colonies, reform-minded political leaders, spurred especially in Lower Canada by the rise of a professional middle class (particularly lawyers and journalists), attempted to break the power of the oligarchy. However, the oligarchies, supported by the governor and the colonial office, held their places. In 1837 armed revolts finally broke out in both Upper and Lower Canada. In Upper Canada the rebels were led by William Lyon Mackenzie, a newspaper publisher and political radical who admired American Jacksonian democracy. In Lower Canada the rebellion was headed by Louis Joseph Papineau, seigneur and leader of the Parti Patriote. In both Upper and Lower Canada farmers made up the majority of those who took up arms; in the former they came primarily from the areas to the north and west of Toronto, in the latter from the parishes to the west and south of Montreal. In both colonies, however, the vast majority of farmers joined neither rebellion.

The revolt in Lower Canada erupted first, precipitated by a government move to arrest Papineau and other leading members of the Parti Patriote. When Papineau and others fled to the countryside, the governor sent troops to arrest them. The first battle, in which government forces were repelled, was fought in November at St. Denis, near Montreal. The rebels were severely defeated in subsequent battles at St. Charles and St. Eustache by British professionals, and Papineau was forced to flee to the United States to escape arrest and a charge of treason.

In Upper Canada a brief clash occurred on Yonge Street north of Toronto in December, when about 800 of Mackenzie’s followers, marching south to the colonial capital, were dispersed at a roadblock occupied by militia and other volunteers loyal to the government. The rebels were routed, and Mackenzie fled to the United States. In the following months in both Upper and Lower Canada the rebels tried unsuccessfully to renew the fighting. Mackenzie and Papineau eventually returned to Canada and were pardoned, though some of their followers were jailed, executed, or deported to Australia.

The union of Canada
The abortive rebellions dramatized the need to reform Canada’s outmoded and constrictive constitution, prompting the “Canadian question” to become a leading issue in British politics. Whig reformer John George Lambton, 1st earl of Durham, was appointed governor-general to inquire into the causes of the troubles. Durham’s stay in Canada was brief, but his inquiry was sweeping and his recommendations trenchant. Durham perceived that the colonies had stagnated and that, if they were to live side by side with the dynamic United States, they must be brought into the full stream of material progress. One political means to achieve this goal was union. Durham decided the time for the union of all the North American colonies had not yet come, but he did recommend the reunion of at least the two Canadas in order to realize the economic possibilities of the St. Lawrence River valley. In Durham’s view, union would also hasten the assimilation of the French, whom he viewed as a backward people. He also adopted a proposal of certain Upper Canadian and Nova Scotian reformers for “responsible government,” which would make the colonial executive responsible to the assembly and assure colonial self-government.

The British government refused an explicit grant of responsible government but did accept the proposal to unite the Canadas. In 1841 the united Province of Canada was established under a new and dynamic governor, Charles Poulett Thomson (later Lord Sydenham). Although the French of Lower Canada (now renamed Canada East) outnumbered the English of Upper Canada (Canada West), both sections received an equal number of seats in the new legislature. The British intended that this policy would facilitate assimilation of the French, but the French, led by such astute reform leaders as Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, took advantage of divisions among the English-speaking legislators by allying themselves with the reformers from Canada West to push for responsible government and to make themselves indispensable for governmental stability. In Britain the success of the Industrial Revolution led to the growth of free-trade liberalism and a desire to dismantle the colonial empire. The last major protective British tariffs (the Corn Laws) were repealed in 1846, and some time after that colonial governors were instructed to implement a policy of responsible government. The policy received its first real test in 1849, when the reform ministry headed by LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin of Canada West passed a law to compensate victims of the 1837 rebellions. Governor General James Bruce, 8th earl of Elgin, Lord Durham’s son-in-law, signed the law despite strong opposition from conservatives. In reaction a mob burned the parliament buildings in Montreal.

The British North American colonies achieved self-government by 1855, and their laws and institutions were remodeled to fit the individual needs of each colony. By midcentury, Canada was poised for expansion. The British repeal of the Corn Laws had deprived the colonies of imperial protective tariffs. Some fearful merchants favoured American annexation, but to no avail. In an attempt to draw the trade of the American Midwest down the St. Lawrence River valley, work was begun on the Grand Trunk Railway in 1853. The Reciprocity Treaty (1854) between Canada and the United States eliminated customs tariffs between the two, and the resulting increase in trade with the United States—which in part replaced trade with the United Kingdom—led to an economic boom in Canada. Economic growth was especially stimulated after 1861 by the American Civil War. When the U.S. government gave notice in 1864 that it wished to abrogate the treaty by 1865, colonial politicians promoted the unification of the British North American colonies to provide a substitute market. This move was also made necessary by a continuing political deadlock between conservatives and reformers in Canada, by growing fears of U.S. military power, and by a desire to annex the northwest. After the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821, direct links between Canada and the west had been cut. In Canada West, however, a shortage of good agricultural land was forcing young men to leave for the United States to homestead, and demands grew to annex the northwest to provide room for expansion.

The first significant step toward union, later called confederation, was the formation of the Great Coalition, a government that united George Brown of Canada West—leader of the so-called Clear Grits reform movement—with the Liberal-Conservatives’ John A. Macdonald of Canada West and George Étienne Cartier of Canada East. In September 1864 the three leaders attended a conference at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in which Maritime political leaders discussed Maritime union. They persuaded the Maritimes to postpone such a union and instead to discuss creating a union of all of British North America. On October 10, 1864, an agreement to establish a general federal union was reached in Quebec. The agreement was immediately approved by the British government, which was eager to allow the colonies to govern themselves and to be rid of its obligation to defend them inland from Quebec. The path to union was not without obstacles. New Brunswick voted against union in 1865, then reversed itself in 1866; Prince Edward Island refused to enter until 1873; Newfoundland (including Labrador) also refused and did not join Canada until 1949. But the Canadas and the British government applied quiet but strong pressure on the reluctant colonies. In 1867 the three colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas were united as four provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario) of the Dominion of Canada under the British North America Act, which, with certain amendments, served as the “constitution” of Canada until the adoption of the Canada Act (also known as the Constitution Act) in 1982.

The British North America Act—later retitled the Constitution Act, 1867—provided constitutions, based on the British model, for the new provinces of Quebec and Ontario, confirmed the language and legal rights of the French, and divided power between the federal government and the provinces. At its origin the union was not truly federal, as the central government was given broad powers, not unlike those the British government had possessed over the colonies. Over time, however, judicial interpretation and the growth of provincial rights moved the country toward a more federal system. For the moment, a strong central government was deemed necessary in order to develop the northwest and to build a railway to the Pacific that would bind the vast new territories there to the original provinces.

From confederation through World War I
Section 146 of the British North America Act provided for the admission of Rupert’s Land (the territory around Hudson Bay) to the new dominion. The first action of the federal government was to buy out the title of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a task completed in the winter of 1868–69. Canada was to pay the company £300,000 for its title, and the company was to retain 5 percent of the Fertile Belt (land fit for agricultural settlement) and designated areas around its various posts. The Canadian government passed a provisional act for the government of the Northwest Territories, sent out a survey party to begin a land survey before settlement began, and appointed William McDougall as governor of Ontario.

The first Riel rebellion
The government regarded the acquisition of the northwest as a simple real estate transaction with the Hudson’s Bay Company. But the company was not the only power in the territory. There were white settlers at the colony of Red River and also the Métis, who made up more than half the colony. Behind the Métis were the powerful Plains tribes—the Plains Cree and the Blackfoot Confederacy, buffalo hunters not under the influence of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Canada had taken no account of the Métis or Indians in effecting the transfer, assuming it could take over from the company and then consider what should be done.

The federal government’s policy was rendered impossible by Louis Riel, a Métis leader educated in Montreal, who organized resistance in Red River to a transfer to Canada without the input of the people of the northwest. With the support of armed Métis, Riel seized control of Red River and forced Canada to postpone the transfer and to negotiate. The result was the creation in 1870 of the small province of Manitoba, in which equal status was given to the English and French languages and an educational system was established like Quebec’s two systems of public confessional schools, Roman Catholic and Protestant. The implication was that the northwest was to be open to French institutions and language as well as English, an assumption that was to be thwarted by the extreme smallness of the new province, which amounted to little more than the Red River Settlement, and by the dominion’s control of natural resources and of the still vast North West Territory.

Riel’s obstructionism did not block Canada’s march to the west, and the dominion at once opened negotiations with delegates from British Columbia, which then consisted of Vancouver Island (organized as a colony in 1849) and the mainland to the western watershed of the Rockies. The mainland first had been made a separate colony in 1858, when a gold rush along the Fraser River began, and had been united with Vancouver Island in 1866. The chief needs of the new colony were responsible government and connection with the east. Union with Canada might afford both, and in the negotiations the chief Canadian representative, George Étienne Cartier, promised both and more—in fact, a railway was begun within 2 years and finished in 10 years (1881). Faced with such generosity, British Columbia’s legislative council agreed to enter the union and became a province in 1871.

Having acquired title to the west, the Canadian government prepared to settle it. First, through a series of treaties negotiated from 1871 to 1877 with the Indians living from northwestern Ontario to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the government extinguished any aboriginal title to the lands. In return for moving to reserves, the Indians were to receive various subsidies and bonuses, educational facilities, rations, and a modicum of health care. Knowing well the disasters that had befallen the native peoples in the United States who had resisted white expansion, the Indians in Canada acquiesced. In the years that followed, however, the government frequently failed to live up to its treaty obligations. As the bison on which the Plains Indians depended disappeared, poverty, starvation, disease, and disaffection spread among the western tribes.

The transcontinental railway
With the addition of British Columbia, Canada extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To maintain that vast area and to ensure its independence from the United States, it was necessary to build a railway to the west coast. In 1872 an effort was made to organize a company to undertake this enterprise—one much greater than any railway yet built anywhere—but Sir John Macdonald’s government, charged with corruption in its dealing with the head of the new company, fell on the eve of the global financial crisis that began in 1873. The railway thereafter could be built only piecemeal until Macdonald returned to power in 1878. An economically revived Canada, fortified with new protectionist tariffs, incorporated the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881, and the line was pushed ahead rapidly with government grants of land and money.

Even so, the railway soon needed new loans from Parliament, and its funds ran out as economic depression returned. Had it not been for the Riel Rebellion of 1885, which underscored the need for the railway in moving troops, the last loan might have been refused. Despite the victory in the creation of Manitoba, many of the Métis—finding life impossible with the influx of new settlers—sold their lands and trekked westward to the Saskatchewan River. Even there they were followed by the government land survey. The bison herds were vanishing, and the railway would supersede transport by boat and cart, from which many of them earned their living. The Plains Indians, alarmed by the depletion of the buffalo and unhappy with the government’s treaties, were also restless. The Métis again organized to claim their rights as they saw them and sent for Riel, who was then living in exile in Montana Territory in the United States. Riel returned and a new armed resistance was formed. Canada rushed a military force to the northwest, where the new railway, though not quite completed, proved its worth, as did the company’s steamers that operated on the Saskatchewan River. The rebellion subsequently was suppressed, and the railway obtained the grant that enabled it to complete its track across the Rockies. Riel, with several associates, was tried and, despite evidence that he was of unsound mind, convicted of treason, though with a recommendation for mercy. Macdonald, as minister of justice and prime minister, refused clemency. The last spike of the Pacific railway was driven on November 7, 1885, nine days before Riel was hanged at Regina.

Reaction of Quebec
Canada had united its new and old territories, but there was a fierce reaction in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Riel, who had not gained much French sympathy in 1870, was now viewed by nationalist French Canadians as a martyr to the cause of French Canadian rights. A clerical-nationalist government was elected in Quebec by a narrow margin, producing a reaction in Protestant Ontario, which, in turn, led in 1890 to the abolition of the confessional schools in Manitoba, where the Roman Catholic schools were almost wholly French-speaking. French Canadians thereafter fell back on the provincial rights of Quebec to maintain the rights of French Canadians—a reaction with serious consequences for the Canadian federation. The Liberal-Conservative Party, hampered by Macdonald’s death in 1891, lost control of the federal government in 1896 largely because of what became known as the Manitoba Schools Question. The Liberal Party, under the French Canadian Wilfrid Laurier, came to power by virtue of a large majority in Quebec. Canada, it seemed, was not to be governed without the support of Quebec, even though the west retained only traces of French-speaking population.

The Klondike gold rush
In 1896 gold nuggets were found in a small tributary of the Klondike River, itself a tributary of the Yukon River. A gold rush began in 1897 and swelled in 1898 as miners and adventurers poured in, mainly from the United States. The Klondike—the last of the great placer finds—was the most publicized of all the great rushes, exciting a world weary of economic hard times with stories of the long climb up the Chilkoot Pass and of red-coated Northwest Mounted Police keeping law and order on the gold-rush frontier. However, Klondike gold was probably the least important mineral discovery of this period. Far more significant for Canada’s economy were the copper, lead, zinc, and silver deposits in the Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia; the coal deposits of the Crowsnest Pass (bordering British Columbia and Alberta); and the gold, nickel, and silver beds of northern and northeastern Ontario and northwestern Quebec. These discoveries stimulated railway and town construction and brought thousands of permanent residents. Indeed, many of the mineral discoveries occurred as a result of the construction of the railways through the dense rock. In the decades that followed, prospectors traced the rich mineral deposits of the Canadian Shield westward from Ontario and Quebec, making major discoveries of base metals (as well as of gold and silver) at Flin Flon, Manitoba, in 1915 and finding rich deposits of radium in the north at Great Bear Lake in 1930. By the 1930s Canada had become a major mining country.

The land rush in the west
At the same time, the land rush to the Prairies widened the country’s agricultural base by the settlement of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. Their population rose rapidly, from 419,512 in 1901 to 1,322,709 in 1911. Manitoba had already been enlarged westward and northward in 1881. The territories, which had been ruled by a governor and appointed council since 1876, were now allowed to elect some members to the council and began the traditional Canadian struggle, first for representative and then for responsible government, which could only come with provincehood. Thus, between Manitoba and the Rockies the demand arose for the creation of a province, and in 1905 not one but two new provinces were formed: Alberta and Saskatchewan. The provinces, roughly equal in area, extended north to latitude 60° N.

As was often the case, the development of the west disturbed the relations of English and French in Canada. A fierce political struggle in the new provinces erupted over Roman Catholic schools, as Laurier tried to extend Catholic rights but met strong resistance. Eventually, a compromise was reached, whereby separate denominational schools were to be created, supported by the taxes of members of a denomination—Roman Catholics in this case.

The Laurier era
For 15 years Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government reflected the acquiescent politics of prosperity and progress, but it also fostered a degree of social activism inspired by the growing Progressive movement in the United States. Many Canadian religious leaders, intellectuals, journalists, educators, politicians, and business leaders concluded that government action was necessary to alleviate poverty, establish safe and sanitary working conditions, improve urban life, and moderate some of the worst excesses of what was then a virtually unbridled capitalism. Progressive policies enacted by the Laurier government and its successors included woman suffrage, the regulation or public ownership of utilities, public health programs, improved and universal education, and government action against the growing number of monopolies and trusts. Although Laurier himself showed little understanding of Progressivism, several of his ministers became convinced Progressives. W.L. Mackenzie King, Canada’s first labour minister, drew up Canada’s first labour relations legislation, adopted in 1907, and its first antimonopoly legislation, passed in 1910.

Canada entered the 20th century in a confident mood, best exemplified by a vast and extravagant expansion of the railway network in response to the settlement of the west and the initial development of the mineral and forest wealth of the nearer, or middle, north. The Laurier government built one transcontinental railway from Quebec to a point east of Winnipeg; from there to Prince Rupert a well-subsidized Grand Trunk Railway of eastern Canada built a subsidiary line, the Grand Trunk Pacific. Not to be deterred by two transcontinental railways in a country that was yet little more than a narrow corridor from east to west, two Canadian private entrepreneurs, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, built or bought the Canadian Northern bit by bit with lavish subsidies from provincial governments. By 1914 Canada had one long, established, coast-to-coast railway (the Canadian Pacific) and two railway lines from Montreal to the Pacific toiling to complete their tracks in the Rocky Mountains. In such a wealth of easy capital and easy prosperity, governments were not likely to be defeated.

Yet two factors—one as old as Canada and one relatively new—soon disturbed the smooth current of prosperity. The former was the position of the French in a predominantly English-speaking Canada, a never-quite-settled issue that again arose over participation in what some French considered Britain’s wars—first the South African War in 1899 and then World War I. As a result, a new nationalist movement, led by Henri Bourassa, arose among French Canadian clerics and intellectuals, who articulated their views in Le Devoir, a newspaper founded in 1910. The second factor was the impingement of the world on a Canada intensely absorbed in its own development and troubles. The two were to combine to end the Laurier regime and bring Canada, still troubled, into the world at large.

Foreign relations
Canada’s contacts with the world in 1900 were almost wholly through Great Britain and the United States. Indeed, Canada’s formal relations with other countries were conducted only through the British Foreign Office because Canada, though self-governing, was still a colony and thus had no independent diplomatic status.

In the late 19th century Canada’s dependence on Great Britain raised the question of whether Canada might be expected, on its own decision, to take some part in Britain’s imperial wars. The British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain was anxious that the dominion should at least be committed in principle to supporting the mother country. Laurier, at the colonial conference of 1897, remained silent on the issue; thereafter he claimed that the Canadian Parliament had the power to decide whether or not Canada would take any action. When the South African War broke out in 1899, many English Canadians actively urged participation, but some French Canadians, led by Bourassa, were actively opposed. A compromise was reached, by which Canada sent volunteers to serve under British command and with British pay, but the rift between French and English Canadians had been further exacerbated. Also, Britain’s naval competition with Germany made Britain eager to have colonial help, preferably by contributions in money or by the colonies’ assuming their own naval defense. Again Laurier sought a compromise. In 1910 he established a Canadian navy, though in time of war the navy was to be placed under British command. The measure was bitterly opposed by the nationalists in Quebec, who argued that conscription in Britain’s army would follow. Their clamorous opposition led to the defeat of the government candidate in a Quebec by-election, foreshadowing Laurier’s fall from power in 1911.

Canada’s relations with the United States were close, but there had been a long record of border disputes, the settlements of which frequently were resented, rightly or wrongly, by Canadians. Canada and the United States also clashed over fishing rights in the North Atlantic and, in the 1890s, over the sealing industry in the Pacific. Raids by the Fenians (Irish supporters of an uprising against British rule) in Canada at the time of confederation symbolized another cause of strain: the Irish American hatred of England and suspicion of Canada as a British colony. Relations worsened over the disputed Alaskan panhandle boundary. The line laid down by treaty between Great Britain and Russia had not since 1867 been marked on the ground by the United States and Canada. It became an urgent issue in 1897 with the Klondike gold rush, as the principal access to the goldfields was through the panhandle, and the disputed territory might contain gold. Canada claimed a line that would have put the heads of major inlets in Canadian territory—thereby giving Canada free access to the Yukon Territory (now Yukon). The United States claimed a boundary that would have excluded Canada from the sea. A joint commission of Americans, British, and Canadians found in favour of almost the whole of the American claim, the one British jurist voting with the three Americans. The decision was bitterly resented in Canada, though Canada’s case had in fact been weak. The episode forced Canada to recognize that it must be prepared to look out for itself, prompting the rise of a new sense of Canadian nationalism.

Two results followed. In preparation for Canadians handling their own foreign affairs, the Department of External Affairs was created in 1909. In addition, to settle long-standing disagreements with the United States, the Permanent Joint Commission on Boundary Waters was also established in 1909, and the following year the long-vexed Atlantic fisheries issues were finally settled. As the United States was beginning to turn to Canada as an outlet for investment and as a source of raw materials, particularly minerals and newsprint, relations between Canada and the United States assumed a new guise. An exchange of ideas began on a new scale, particularly in the ideas of the Progressive movement, which advocated a wide range of reforms to combat the growing social evils caused by industrialism. These ideas were influential on both sides of the border, in Canada sometimes more than in the United States, as when the publicly owned and operated Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission was created in 1906. To some degree these developments were upset by the Canadian election of 1911, when the Conservative Party under Robert Laird Borden defeated Laurier’s Liberals. The campaign was dominated by two issues: Laurier’s naval policy, which was stimulated by Britain’s defense needs in Europe, and a proposed reciprocal trade agreement with the United States. In Quebec the naval policy was denounced as imperialistic. Borden, backed by the business community and renegade Liberals, attacked the reciprocal trade agreement as a sellout of Canada’s British birthright and won a convincing victory. However, Borden’s victory did not interrupt the growth of the Canadian-American relationship.

Although burdened by demands for the distribution of patronage, Borden tried to institute more progressive policies after taking office, but foreign policy issues and defense questions dominated the first years of his government. He struggled to establish a policy of direct cash aid for Britain’s naval building program, in return for a voice in imperial policies that affected Canada. However, he was defeated by the Liberal-dominated Senate and rebuffed by the British. When World War I broke out in August 1914, Canada was almost totally unprepared.

World War I
At the outbreak of the war, Minister of Militia and Defense Sir Samuel Hughes scrapped the carefully laid plans for a mobilization of the existing militia and instead launched a direct appeal to the men of Canada. The country was just emerging from a deep recession, and tens of thousands of British-born young men with no work and imbued with patriotism rushed to serve in the war. An initial contingent of 33,000 troops sailed for England in October 1914 to lay the foundation for the creation of the 1st Canadian Division. In April 1915 the Canadians saw their first major action in the Second Battle of Ypres (Belgium), where German forces first used poison gas as a weapon. As more volunteers came forward, Borden increased the authorized force levels. By the spring of 1917, four Canadian divisions, constituting the Canadian Corps, were in the field, with a fifth division in Britain. The entire corps fought together for the first time in April 1917, when it distinguished itself by capturing Vimy Ridge in northern France. This corps earned an enviable record in battle and represented the first authentic expression of Canada in the world; its strength and reputation meant that Canada could not be treated as a mere colony. The cost of the war to Canada was high. Out of approximately 625,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed in action or died in active service, and another 173,000 were wounded.

At home the war effort was scarcely less impressive. Canadian foodstuffs and raw materials were of first importance in maintaining the Western Allies. No less important were the millions of rounds of ammunition turned out by Canadian factories. In fact, the war was a significant step forward for Canadian industry, which had to learn complicated mass production techniques and apply them to the manufacture of everything from wooden shell crates to training aircraft. The rapid growth of the munitions industry created an acute labour shortage that brought many more women into the industrial workforce. It also promoted the growth of labour unions. At the same time, the accelerated demands of the war economy brought high inflation, which the government was unable to control despite increasingly interventionist policies. Strikes and lockouts grew to crisis proportions by the last year of the war.

At the start of the war, Borden had envisaged an essentially voluntary war effort: employers were urged to treat their workers fairly, workers were urged to curb wage demands, producers were urged to keep price increases down, and men were urged to enlist. As the war dragged on, more and more English Canadians began to view it as a Canadian national war effort, not simply as another British war in which Canadians were taking part. By 1917 the government was trying to regulate many facets of Canadian economic life. It nationalized bankrupt railways, introduced income taxes, and controlled some commodity prices, and, in the spring of 1917, it introduced compulsory military service—conscription—in response to a growing manpower crisis in the Canadian army. Conscription tore Canada apart. French Canada had never been enthusiastic about the war, and many fewer French Canadians volunteered for military service than did English Canadians. To make matters worse, French nationalist feeling had been reawakened by new troubles with respect to the use of the French language in schools in French districts in Ontario and Manitoba. French Canada, led by Laurier, opposed conscription but was overridden by the formation of a Union government—almost wholly English in personnel—and defeated in the wartime election of 1917. Canada was divided as it had not been since 1837.

Despite the rift at home, the entry of Canada into the international community continued. In 1917 the British government under Prime Minister David Lloyd George formed an Imperial War Cabinet, of which the prime ministers of the dominions were members, to conduct the war and to plan the peace. In reality, if not yet in name, the British Commonwealth of Nations had come into being, as recognized by Article IX of the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917, which stated that the British Empire was made up of self-governing nations as well as colonies, with India in a special position. Henceforth, it was hoped that a common policy would be worked out by intergovernmental conferences in peace as well as war.

The interwar wars
Turmoil at home
During World War I, discontent had increased in virtually every region of Canada and in almost all its social classes. When the fighting ended, patriotic constraints on demands for change disappeared, and organized labour and farmers mounted a revolt that swept across Canada. In 1919 Ontario’s Conservative government was ousted by a farmer-labour alliance led by the United Farmers of Ontario. United Farmers governments were elected shortly afterward in Alberta (1921) and Manitoba (1922). In federal politics in 1921 the agrarian-based Progressive Party became the second largest party in the House of Commons. The agrarian revolt was marked by demands for farm price supports and regulation of the grain and transportation industries. At its core, however, the movement was aimed at curtailing the growth of the power of the cities.

A labour revolt paralleled the uprising on the farms. The virtual doubling of union membership across Canada during the war and the failure of the Borden government to control inflation stimulated militancy. There was an upsurge of industrial unrest despite government efforts to impose peace. In 1919 a six-week general strike paralyzed Winnipeg and sparked sympathetic strikes across Canada. The Winnipeg General Strike was eventually crushed by a federal government gripped by a hysterical fear of revolution. By 1921 the labour revolt had subsided, partly because of federal intervention and partly because of the onset of an economic downturn that brought increased unemployment and a virtual collapse of union power.

Commonwealth relations
As a result of their efforts during the war, Canada and the other dominion powers demanded separate signatures to the treaties with the defeated countries and won at least the right to sign separately as members of a British Empire panel. They also demanded and received—despite the doubts of the United States and France—membership in the newly organized League of Nations. Thus, Canada finally became a full-fledged member of the community of nations.

Between World Wars I and II Canada followed an isolationist foreign policy, mainly a consequence of the return to government in 1921 of the Liberal Party, which had come to depend on French Canadian support. French Canadians were overwhelmingly isolationist, and they strengthened the general disposition of Canadians to express their new national feelings by becoming completely autonomous within the British Empire and by resuming their material development as a North American country. The new government of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King was firmly nationalist and noninterventionist, as evidenced by its refusal to support the United Kingdom’s policy in Turkey in 1922. Canadian isolationism effectively ended the hope of a common imperial policy. Instead, there would be conferences, consultations, and information sharing but freedom of action.

King was primarily motivated by his desire to maintain national unity. Recognizing that a close relationship with Britain would further alienate French Canadians (who continued to be upset over the conscription crisis of World War I), he was determined not to split Canada over questions of foreign policy. Canada thus worked with the Union of South Africa and the Irish Free State to disentangle some of the formal ties of empire, and King was instrumental in restricting the authority and status of British governors general in the self-governing dominions. This change and others were embodied in the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which ended all legislative supremacy of the British Parliament over the dominion parliaments and made them, when they proclaimed the act, sovereign states sharing a common crown. Thus, the British Commonwealth of Nations had become a legal reality and Canada an independent nation. Taking advantage of its new independence, Canada established its own foreign service, and the country appointed ministers to Washington, D.C. (1927), Paris (1928), and Tokyo (1929). (In the United Kingdom and Canada, officers called high commissioners played much the same role after 1928, although the office was to some degree political and not just diplomatic.)

The Great Depression
With its economy so heavily dependent on natural resource extraction, Canada was especially hard hit by the Great Depression that followed the crash of the U.S. stock market in October 1929. Unemployment soared, industrial production collapsed, and prices, especially for farm commodities, fell rapidly as demand for all manner of consumer goods virtually disappeared.

The depression was devastating to Canadian farmers and workers. In western Canada prolonged drought, compounded by years of poor soil conservation techniques, devastated vast areas of farmland in southeastern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and southwestern Manitoba. Thousands of farmers abandoned their lands to the drifting soil and moved west to British Columbia, northwest into Alberta’s Peace River region, or into the cities. Governments and private relief agencies were unable to cope with the legions of jobless. King, seemingly oblivious to the scope of the disaster, refused to release federal funds to the provinces to combat unemployment and underwrite relief. Thus, in 1930 King’s Liberal government was swept from office, and the Conservatives, under Richard Bedford Bennett, took power with an absolute majority in the House of Commons.

Bennett faced severe economic and social tests as the depression deepened. His government undertook some modest measures to combat the slump: work camps were set up for unemployed men; federal relief money was channeled to the provinces; the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act was passed to alleviate the burden of the severe drought conditions; the Canadian Wheat Board was established to stabilize wheat prices; and various measures were taken to provide foreclosure relief to farmers. In early 1935 Bennett announced a series of sweeping social reform measures, based on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies in the United States, in what was referred to as the Bennett New Deal; however, much of the legislation that was eventually enacted as part of that program was later declared unconstitutional by the courts.

Bennett endeavoured to open foreign markets to Canadian products. He turned first to the Commonwealth, securing at the Imperial Economic Conference of 1932, held in Ottawa, a series of preferential tariffs, known as the Ottawa Agreements, among the Commonwealth countries (see imperial preference). When the Ottawa Agreements failed to produce the desired results, he approached the United States to begin negotiations for a reciprocal trade treaty, which was eventually signed in 1935 after Bennett had left office. The new agreement was much less inclusive than the 1854 Reciprocity Treaty.

Paradoxically, during the 1930s mining expanded in northern Ontario and northwestern Quebec, particularly in newly opened goldfields. Revenues in those provinces thus stayed relatively high, enabling the federal government to support the poorer provinces, which faced financial disaster as municipalities turned to the provincial governments for resources to provide welfare and relief.

The depression spawned two new important political parties, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1932 and the Social Credit Party in 1935. The former was a coalition of socialist, farm protest, and labour groups that aimed to revolutionize the economy and society democratically. It espoused a program of large-scale government ownership of primary industries, banking, transportation and communications, and even agricultural land. It also advocated strict child and female labour laws, an extensive social welfare system, and greatly expanded rights for labour unions. The Social Credit Party, founded by William Aberhart of Alberta, advocated paying social dividends to fill the gap between the costs of production and the cost of purchase.

Bennett earned a reputation among voters as hard and unsympathetic. In 1935 he refused to allow communist-led unemployed workers to march from British Columbia to Ottawa, a move that precipitated a major riot in Regina, Saskatchewan, in July 1935 when the “On to Ottawa” demonstrators clashed with police. Labour activism during the depression also included efforts by industrial unions to organize mine workers in the new goldfields and the arrival in 1937 of the American-based Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which helped striking autoworkers at Oshawa, Ontario, to force General Motors to recognize their union.

Popular disaffection with Bennett was widespread by October 1935, when voters gave King’s Liberals a resounding victory. The new government, believing that the way to end the depression was to stimulate international trade, signed the new reciprocity agreement with the United States (it was subsequently modified and renewed in 1938). U.S.-Canadian trade subsequently grew dramatically, but in the short term the depression continued. King’s government reorganized and strengthened the government-owned radio network (renamed the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), assumed control of the Bank of Canada, and dismantled the work camps, but it undertook no direct action to fight the depression or its immediate consequences.

The Liberal government was deeply concerned with the devastation the economic depression wrought on government finances. In 1936 an official inquiry by the Bank of Canada revealed that the Prairie Provinces were near bankruptcy. A distinguished Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations worked on a report that amounted to a comprehensive study of the constitutional and financial development of government in Canada and of how the depression had revealed its weaknesses. The federal government, with unlimited power to tax, lacked the power to spend on important matters; the provinces possessed the necessary constitutional power, but, except for Ontario, their financial resources were inadequate. In 1940, on the principle that all provinces should have the means to maintain a minimum level of governmental and social services, the commission recommended the assumption by the federal government of provincial debts, a scheme of federal unemployment insurance, and a reallocation of revenues between the two levels of government. The first two measures were adopted, relieving the debt burden of the provinces and strengthening the federal government, but on the latter there was no agreement, as it would have involved a redistribution of income between wealthier Central Canada and the Maritime and the Prairie Provinces; both Ontario and Quebec were strongly provincialist and resisted redistribution.

Growing international tension
Domestic distress was to some degree submerged in the second half of the 1930s by the worsening outlook in international affairs. The external interests of Canada shifted from the development of the Commonwealth to the fate of the League of Nations and the first shocks of aggression in East Asia and Europe. Canada was too preoccupied with its own affairs up to 1935 to take great note of Japanese incursions into Manchuria or the growing power of Adolf Hitler in Europe. However, by the mid-1930s the fate of the League of Nations, clearly threatened by acts of aggression, drew more and more attention. From 1936 King supported the French and British policy of appeasing Germany, refused to make any public commitments to aid Britain in the event of war, and declared that Parliament would decide Canada’s course if and when fighting broke out. King adopted this course despite knowing that strong ties of culture, emotion, and nationality still bound most English Canadians to Britain and that these ties would inevitably bring Canada into war on Britain’s side—saying as much to Hitler in a visit to Germany in 1937. King’s plan, however, was to delay any commitment to the last possible moment so as not to alienate French Canada until war had actually begun.

World War II
On September 9, 1939, eight days after Germany’s invasion of Poland, Canada’s Parliament voted to declare war on Germany, which the country did the next day. (Its separate declaration of war was a measure of the independence granted it in the 1931 Statute of Westminster; in 1914 there had been no such independence and no separate declaration of war.) The vote was nearly unanimous, a result that rested on the assumption that there was to be a “limited liability” war effort that would consist primarily of supplying raw materials, foodstuffs, and munitions and the training of Commonwealth air crews, mainly for the Royal Air Force. Canadian men were to be actively discouraged from serving in the infantry, which was expected to take high casualties, and it was anticipated that few infantry units would be formed. If this plan were followed, King and other government leaders reasoned, conscription would be unnecessary. King and the leader of the Conservative opposition had both pledged themselves to a “no conscription” policy even before the war began.

The expulsion of the British from the Continent and the fall of France in the spring of 1940 totally changed the circumstances. Canada’s overseas allies had fallen or were in danger of doing so, and the country immediately concluded an agreement at Ogdensburg, New York, with the United States for the defense of North America. Moreover, Canada now stood in the forefront of the war. After Britain, it was (prior to the U.S. entry into the war in December 1941) the second most powerful of Germany’s adversaries. The emphasis on supply gave way to a focus on combat forces. King’s “no conscription” policy had been modified in 1940 when the government introduced conscription for home defense, but at the same time King renewed his pledge not to send conscripts overseas for “active” duty. In 1942 the King government called a national plebiscite asking Canadian voters to release it from that pledge; nearly two-thirds of Canadian voters supported conscription, though in Quebec three-fourths opposed it. Thereafter the government enforced compulsory service for home defense, but King, fearing an Anglo-French cleavage, did not send conscripts overseas during the early years of the war, preferring to avoid such a move unless absolutely necessary.

Still, Canadians were deeply enmeshed in the war. Under increased pressure from military leaders to move Canadian troops into battle, two battalions were sent to help defend Hong Kong (then a British colony), but the results were disastrous, as the Japanese imperial forces swept to victory. An ill-planned and poorly executed raid on the German-occupied French port of Dieppe was attempted, largely by Canadian troops, in August 1942, with significant casualties. Lessons learned from the disaster, however, later proved useful during the planning for the Normandy (France) Invasion in 1944. What became known as the Battle of the Atlantic marked one of Canada’s largest commitments. Canadian escorts helped protect the convoys that traversed the Atlantic bringing supplies to Britain. Again Canada suffered many casualties, both in the naval service and in the merchant marine. Under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, Canadians flew in both Royal Canadian Air Force and combined Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons from the Battle of Britain through the bombing campaigns over Germany to eventual victory. Aircrew losses were particularly heavy in the RAF Bomber Command.

At Normandy in June 1944, Canada was assigned one of the five invasion beaches. Casualties began to mount quickly as the offensive in France dragged on, and the Canadian army became strapped for infantry reinforcements. The Canadian army, which had been fighting in Sicily and Italy since July 1943, was crippled by particularly high infantry casualties in late summer and early fall 1944. King’s minister of national defense, J.L. Ralston, supported sending conscripts overseas and was forced to resign as a result. Ralston’s resignation precipitated a cabinet crisis, which was resolved in November 1944 when King relented and agreed to send conscripts to the front to reinforce the army’s infantry units.

Not only was Canada’s war effort in World War II far more extensive than that in World War I, but it also had a much more lasting impact on Canadian society. By the end of the war, more than 1,000,000 Canadians (about 50,000 of whom were women) had served in the three services. Although total casualties were lower than in the previous war, still some 42,000 were killed or died in service, and 54,400 were wounded. The domestic war effort was no less significant. Canada hosted, and paid much of the cost of, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which trained more than 100,000 Commonwealth airmen. Canadian factories turned out everything from rifles to Lancaster heavy bombers, and Canadian scientists, technicians, and engineers worked on advanced weapons technology, including the atomic bomb (for which Canada supplied the uranium ore). Canadian foods, direct cash contributions to Britain, and munitions for the Allies, including the Soviet Union, contributed to the overall war effort.

The government intervened in almost all aspects of Canadian life to regulate the war effort, ensure a smooth flow of troops and supplies, and curtail inflation. Agencies such as the Wartime Prices and Trade Board and the National War Labour Board represented a massive growth in the federal government, bringing a surge of government spending and a vast increase in the civil service. Toward the end of the war, the King government launched even further social welfare policies, introducing a major veterans’ benefits program, family allowances, farm price supports, compulsory collective bargaining, and a national housing program. It would undoubtedly have gone even further than it did in 1945 and 1946—a national health insurance plan was under consideration—but for the opposition of provincial governments, particularly Ontario and Quebec. Despite that opposition, however, the war produced a significant shift of power toward Ottawa. World War II had been a watershed in Canadian history, as the role of the federal government in engineering national economic growth had been considerably strengthened.

Early postwar developments
Domestic affairs
King retired as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party in 1948, and the mantle of leadership passed to Louis Stephen Saint Laurent, a Quebec lawyer whom King had brought into the government in 1941. Saint Laurent continued most of the domestic policies of his predecessor but pursued a more activist foreign policy. His time in office coincided with the intensification of the Cold War in the late 1940s, precipitating higher defense spending. The increased defense expenditures, combined with opposition from provincial governments, eventually forced the Liberal government to curtail plans to expand existing social programs or to introduce such new ones as national health insurance. Saint Laurent was a popular leader, especially in Quebec, and was aided by a strong cabinet team and an effective civil service. He won major victories in the 1949 and 1953 federal elections, reinforcing the notion that the Liberals were destined to govern Canada forever.

Postwar prosperity
After the war, close to a million veterans reentered civilian life, marrying, having children (this was the start of the “baby boom” in Canada), and going on a buying binge. For the first time since the Great Depression years, Canadians indulged themselves, but the dramatic increase in consumption put tremendous pressure on Canada’s balance of payments with the United States: much of what Canadians were buying was manufactured by its southern neighbour. It also added to inflationary pressures that stimulated industrial unrest, especially in 1945–46. Organized labour had virtually doubled in size during the war, and the unions were ready and willing to demonstrate their new strength by staging major auto, steel, and transportation strikes.

In the two decades after 1950, however, Canada enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity. Many urban dwellers abandoned the cities in favour of the new suburbs that appeared in the 1950s. The growth of the suburbs stimulated transportation construction, including new freeways and rapid transit systems. Canada’s primary economic activities thrived, but the country also embarked on a new phase of industrial development, spurred by large-scale electronic, aeronautic, nuclear, and chemical engineering. Much of the growth derived from the expansion of earlier established industry, such as steel production, though new sources of minerals were part of the boom of the 1950s. Labrador iron and newly discovered deposits of radium, petroleum, and natural gas gave Canada resources it theretofore had only in comparatively small supply. Mining investment revealed two important phenomena underlying the postwar economy: first, the extent to which Canadian economic growth was financed by American capital, largely in the form of direct investment and American ownership of factories, and, second, the fact that foreign investment, again largely American, aided by the American demand for Canadian materials, made the Canadian boom possible. Investment from abroad was eagerly sought, especially by the provincial governments, and Canada prospered both because of it and because of the resulting advanced technology and management.

Canadians were divided on the merits of U.S. investment. Many agreed with Saint Laurent’s minister of trade and commerce, Clarence Decatur Howe, who argued that increased U.S. investment was beneficial for Canada. But others were uneasy over the growth of U.S. control over Canadian businesses and over the obvious partnership between Howe and American enterprises. Never was this unease more apparent than in May 1956, when Howe tried to ram a bill through the House of Commons that would finance a trans-Canada natural gas pipeline backed primarily by U.S. capital. The opposition created an uproar that politically weakened Howe and the Saint Laurent government.

Ethnic minorities
Much of the new economic development took place in Canada’s northlands and had some part in ending the nomadic hunting life of the forest Indians and the Inuit of the Arctic shores and islands. This contact between the Canadian government and the First Nations (as Canada’s Indians were now commonly called) signaled a new dilemma that Canada faced in trying to deal equitably with its aboriginal peoples. After 1945 it was apparent that the old system for administering Indian affairs was collapsing, as poverty and disease were rampant on many reserves. Subsequently, health care on the reserves was greatly improved, and in 1959 the Indian Act was amended to increase opportunities for Indian influence on decisions affecting them. The Métis, equal to those of European ancestry according to the law though in fact often treated as purely native, played an important part in the growing protest. The federal government reacted by granting the franchise for national elections to all Indians in 1960, and several provinces followed suit.

Large-scale immigration challenged Canada’s social structure and contributed to the country’s prodigious economic growth in the decade following the war. In 1948 the government decided to stimulate immigration to Canada, especially from the refugee camps of central Europe, in order to expand Canada’s labour base. The government believed that it was necessary to expand the population if Canada’s industrial growth was to be sustained and a sufficient tax base created to pay for the social welfare measures that had been initiated at the end of the war. More than 125,000 immigrants were admitted in 1948, and, although the flow of arrivals dropped in 1949–50, it subsequently increased to reach a peak of some 282,000 in 1957. The wave of immigration, combined with the higher postwar birth rate, dramatically increased Canada’s population from some 12 million in 1945 to nearly 16 million by the mid-1950s.

As many of the immigrants were from southern Europe, particularly Italy, Greece, and Portugal, immigration added to the numbers of Canadians who were neither French nor British in origin. The changing population mix had profound effects on Canada’s political culture. With the proportion of Canadians of British descent declining, Canada’s ties to Britain, the monarchy, and the Commonwealth weakened, and large numbers of “new” Canadians, as they were called, became active in Canada’s political, economic, and social life. Despite the increasing numbers of immigrants, however, Canadian industry, banks, and large retail establishments continued to be dominated by a small group of largely Protestant, English-speaking families with British roots.

Internal politics
After 21 uninterrupted years in power, a malaise began to settle into the Liberal government. Saint Laurent, though still personally popular, appeared to be old and tired, and it was widely believed that he was losing his grip on the reins of government. Howe’s actions during the debate over the pipeline, many felt, were an indication that he and other Liberal leaders had come to believe in their divine right to govern, and voters were ready to give the Progressive Conservative Party (as the Conservative Party was known after 1942) a chance to lead Canada.

John George Diefenbaker, a new and dynamic Progressive Conservative leader, emerged to end the decades of Liberal rule. A powerful orator, Diefenbaker challenged Canadians to open up the North, diversify their international trade, and end “corrupt” Liberal rule. In 1957 he was elected with a minority government, and the following year he won the largest parliamentary majority in Canadian history up to that time. During Diefenbaker’s term of office, however, Canada suffered a major economic recession. He had to face the strains of an unsuccessful British attempt to enter the European Economic Community (EEC; now commonly known as the European Union); of difficult relations with the United States during its Cuban missile crisis, in which Canada was not consulted and yet was expected to take part in the air defense of North America; and of a domestic struggle over whether or not to install nuclear warheads in Canada and allow their use by the Canadian contingent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Internal dissension reduced the Diefenbaker government to a minority in the House of Commons in 1962 and to defeat in 1963.

The new Liberal government that followed was led by Lester B. Pearson, who included talented figures in his cabinet, though many of them were inexperienced. He set out to launch “one hundred days of decision,” but he was stopped short when his finance minister, Walter Gordon, backed down from controversial proposals to reduce U.S. investment in Canada. This and other blunders and scandals dogged Pearson during his entire five years in office. Pearson never achieved a majority government—though he sought one in a federal election in 1965—but his government was one of the most productive in Canadian history. Under Pearson, Canada gained a national flag, a national social security system (the Canada Pension Plan), and a national health insurance program, and federal public servants won the right to free collective bargaining. While accomplishing all this, however, Pearson was also hampered by the rise of nationalism and separatism in Quebec, and he announced his retirement in late 1967.

Foreign affairs
The most significant outcome of World War II for Canada in its foreign relations was the relative decline of Britain and the emergence of the United States as the world’s foremost economic and military power. Canada’s relations with Britain became increasingly distant, while those with the United States became closer. The creation of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense in 1940 was a significant indicator of that shift. For the first time in its history, Canada coordinated its defense planning with the United States.

Canada’s shift in orientation from Britain to the United States did not come all at once and did not progress without hitches. In early 1948, for example, King balked at concluding a free trade agreement with the Americans, but Britain’s growing economic, political, and military weakness and the rise of the United States to superpower status led King to forge closer ties with the United States. Canadian leaders, who shared to a considerable degree the U.S. view of the postwar world, struggled to reconcile the goals of safeguarding Canadian sovereignty and integrating Canada into the U.S. economic, diplomatic, and military spheres of influence.

Multilateral commitments
One answer to the problem of U.S. domination was to avoid bilateral arrangements with the Americans where possible and to involve Canada in multilateral organizations (e.g., the Commonwealth or United Nations), where U.S. influence would be somewhat diffused. Most Canadians welcomed the UN, which the Canadian government took a vigorous part in creating. But King, mindful of his own lifetime battle to remove Canada from the trammels of British imperialism, was dubious of a world to be dominated by the Great Powers. King’s advisers, wanting to find some way for Canada to play a significant role in the world, advanced the concept of the “middle power”—that is, a state strong economically though perhaps not militarily. The idea in practice meant that Canada should concern itself primarily with economic policy in world affairs and with aid to developing countries. Canada decided to use its considerable knowledge of nuclear fission not for military purposes but exclusively for peaceful and economic ones.

Although the Cold War was born in Europe, Canada was involved from the start. In September 1945 Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet cipher clerk who defected to Canada, revealed extensive Soviet spying operations in Canada and the United States. These revelations, combined with Soviet intransigence at the UN and Soviet aggressiveness in central and eastern Europe—particularly the communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade—convinced Canadian leaders of the malevolent nature of Soviet communism.

As the Cold War intensified, there was significant support for the establishment of a regional agreement for the defense of western Europe against Soviet pressure or attack. Devoted supporters of the UN in Canada as elsewhere were dismayed, regarding that such regional agreements militated against the global purposes of the general organization. However, the Canadian government believed that the Soviet veto rendered the UN ineffective as a collective security organization and thus supported the U.S. proposal for an alliance of North Atlantic powers. Yet Canada insisted that the alliance should not be purely military, and Pearson, who was then minister of external affairs, pressed strongly for adopting that principle. It was accepted in Article 2 of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, sometimes referred to as the “Canadian article,” though with little notable effect. As a member of NATO, Canada for the first time in its history assumed serious peacetime military commitments, maintaining an infantry brigade and air squadrons and contributing ships to NATO’s naval forces. Canada’s other major Cold War military commitment was to the North American Air (later Aerospace) Defense Command (NORAD), a joint U.S.-Canadian organization established in 1958 that pooled Canadian and U.S. radar and fighter resources to detect and intercept a Soviet nuclear attack; though NORAD headquarters was located in the United States, the deputy commander of NORAD was a Canadian.

Just as NATO was a test of Canada’s seriousness in entering world affairs, so, too, was the Korean War (1950–53), which tested Canada’s relationship with the United States. Although some Canadians were reluctant to join the effort to assist South Korea in resisting the North Korean invasion, Saint Laurent’s government decided to commit Canadian military and naval contingents to serve with the U.S. and UN forces in what was called a “police action.”

Small numbers of Canadian military personnel served on two UN missions in the late 1940s (in Palestine and along the India-Pakistan border), but Canada’s real involvement with peacekeeping began in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. As external affairs minister, Pearson proposed to the UN General Assembly that a UN peacekeeping force be established to occupy areas of the Suez Canal that had been seized by Anglo-French forces and to patrol the Egypt-Israel border following an Israeli withdrawal from the areas its troops had occupied after its attack on Egypt. The UN General Assembly accepted the proposal, thus creating the first true UN peacekeeping force. Canada offered a substantial contribution, sending a contingent of troops and supplies to Egypt.

In 1957 Pearson was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his initiative, and since then Canada has played a continuing role in peacekeeping operations both inside and outside the UN. Canada’s major peacekeeping commitments have included the Sinai (1956 and 1973), the Congo (1960), Cyprus (1964), Iran and Iraq (1988), Croatia (1992), Somalia (1992), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1993). On two other occasions during the 1990s, Canada and its allies took a more aggressive approach, in what was termed “peacemaking” rather than peacekeeping. During the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), Canada sent warships to join the international fleet gathered to reverse Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, and Canadian ground troops subsequently participated in the allied strike force. Later, Canadian forces participated in NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia that were intended to counter Serbia’s policies against ethnic Albanians living in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Yugoslav forces later withdrew from the area under UN supervision, again with Canadian involvement. Canada supported the United States when the latter spearheaded the 2001 invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan by sending a contingent of troops in 2002. However, it did not participate in the U.S.-led Iraq War that invaded and occupied that country, instead resuming its military involvement in Afghanistan.

U.S.-Canadian relations
The policy of the Liberal government (in power since 1935), wartime cooperation, and the close economic interconnections between Canada and the United States had brought the two neighbours into a more intimate relationship than ever before. After World War II Canada’s special relations with the United States continued and expanded. Two new trends proved significant. One was the growth of “continentalism,” a special relationship that challenged the theory of national independence. The second was the unequal rate of economic and technological development, especially after 1950. The United States, the world leader in industrial capacity and technology, was nearing the limits to which it could exploit some of its natural resources. Canada, within the inner defense orbit of the United States, had many such resources undeveloped and available. The interest of the United States was, therefore, to have assured access to these resources as they were developed, largely with U.S. capital. This U.S. policy, however, tended to keep Canada a producer of primary commodities and a country of relatively low income. Canada’s national development—as well as its hope of educational and cultural development—required the continued growth, under Canadian control, of its manufacturing industries. Yet its provinces—owners of the natural resources of the country, except for those controlled by the Northwest Territories, and driven by the need to secure revenue and to satisfy the popular demand for development—were eager to sell their resources to foreign, usually U.S., investors. This disparity of aim made U.S.-Canadian relations, if much better diplomatically than in the days of territorial expansion and boundary settlements, much more subtle and complicated than ever before.

Still, the special relationship with the United States continued, rooted in geography and common interest. Ties between the two countries were tested, however, by the September 11 attacks of 2001. Quickly visible was a tightening of security along the U.S.-Canadian border. Perhaps the greatest challenge came with Canada’s refusal to support the United States in Iraq, which brought to the surface strains in relations that had actually existed for some time.

Canada and the Commonwealth
If the special ties with the United States waxed during the postwar years, the historic ones with Great Britain waned further. However, the traditional ties between Canada and Great Britain remained: the common crown; the parliamentary system of government; the desire for much the same kind of world; and the same pragmatic, unideological temperament and outlook. Cordial relations between the two governments continued, but the rise of the United States in economic and military affairs meant that the British phase of Canadian history was coming to a close. Canada exported more to Britain and imported more from the United States, while Britain exported less to Canada. Canada’s relations with Britain and the former British Empire during the 1950s and ’60s took place largely in the context of the Commonwealth.

As one of the principal creators of the Commonwealth in the early 1930s, Canada had a special interest in it. With most British colonies gaining independence after World War II, a process of which Canadians in general approved, many newly independent countries applied for membership in the Commonwealth. However, some of the newly independent nations, such as India, were republics, which raised the issue of whether a republic could be part of an association bound together by allegiance to a common crown. Suddenly the Commonwealth was seen as an association that might bridge the differences of ethnicity and culture in freedom as the empire had done by power. It was agreed among the members of the Commonwealth that republics could be members if they chose to accept the sovereign as “head” of the Commonwealth. Canadians, as members of a republican hemisphere, readily accepted the new organizing principle, seeing Canada in the role of intermediary between the old members of the Commonwealth and the new, developing countries.

Canada’s potential to play a role as intermediary within the Commonwealth was revealed by the Suez Crisis, a great strain for the Commonwealth as well as for world peace. Australia and New Zealand, for example, were disposed to sympathize with the strategic concern of the United Kingdom, while India was dismayed and angered by what it saw as an act of concerted aggression. Canada, led by Lester Pearson, was able to intervene between the United Kingdom and India, enabling both parties to save face and preserving the integrity of the Commonwealth.

Canada also played the role of disinterested friend in the crisis precipitated by South Africa’s apartheid policy. To a multiethnic association such as the Commonwealth, South Africa was not only an anomaly but a reproach. Yet a basic rule of the Commonwealth was that of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of members. The issue came to a head in the Commonwealth Conference of 1960, when several members sought to have South Africa expelled. The United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand deplored this violation of the rule of nonintervention. Canada again tried to play the role of impartial intermediary but, when that failed, voted for expulsion. Within the Commonwealth, Canada generally supported the aspirations of nonwhite member states (e.g., it endorsed economic sanctions against the white minority regime in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]), though its policies often provoked tensions with the United Kingdom.

In the early 1960s the United Kingdom began considering entry in the European Common Market. Fearing that it would mean the diminution of the imperial preferences that since 1932 had given the Commonwealth a material as well as a sentimental basis, Canada strongly opposed Britain’s entry. By the time Britain finally entered in 1973, however, Canada, then under a Liberal government, accepted Britain’s decision and focused on boosting Canadian trade with the Common Market as best it could. But Britain’s entry meant that the Commonwealth would be less and less a matter of material ties and more and more one of tradition and sentiment.

Franco-Canadian affairs
European countries regarded Canada as both on its own and as an economic, if not a military, dependency of the United States, a view revealed by the course of Franco-Canadian relations in the 1960s. France had not taken an active role in Canadian affairs since the cession of New France in 1763, and the French Revolution (1789)—particularly the revolutionary attack on the Roman Catholic church—caused further friction between France and French Canadians. Thus, since the 18th century the French influence generally had been private and literary. There had been readers of the philosophes in New France, and in Quebec French books and ideas always found at least a small audience.

France did nothing formally or officially to cultivate its relations with French Canada until the 1850s, during the Catholic and expansive Second Empire of Napoleon III. The frigate La Capricieuse visited Quebec in 1855, and four years later a French consul general was appointed to Quebec. Little more came of this rapprochement, however, as French Canada’s true ties abroad were with the Catholic church in Rome rather than with the French government in Paris.

France’s interest in Canada increased during the 1960s, after the “Quiet Revolution” began in the province of Quebec with the election of a Liberal government led by Jean Lesage. French Canada was suddenly drawn to French history, French ideas, and the place of France and the French language in the world. French Canadian students attended universities in France, teachers were exchanged, and some liaison developed between the press of the two countries, all of which were encouraged by Canada’s Department of External Affairs.

Both Quebec and France desired more than simply a warming of established relations. The flourishing French culture and spirit in Quebec was seen not as a matter of diplomacy or of commerce but as an issue of cultural affairs, for which Quebec had already set up a government ministry. The Québécois (the French-speaking residents of Quebec), profoundly dissatisfied with the way the Canadian embassy in France dealt with such matters, began to establish quasi-diplomatic relations with France. Indeed, Quebec had constitutional grounds for thinking it might do so, claiming that cultural affairs were educational and therefore a provincial matter. Quebec believed it should be free to develop its own cultural relations with France and other Francophone countries, a claim which has remained an issue of continuing concern in the province.

French President Charles de Gaulle encouraged the informal and then formal relations between France and Quebec. He saw in Quebec a means to raise French prestige in the world and a chance to separate Canada from what he regarded as American domination. De Gaulle visited Quebec during Expo ’67 (the World’s Fair) and received an extraordinarily emotional reception. In an apparently calculated move, De Gaulle encouraged Quebec separatism and created a furor by repeating the slogan of French separatists: “Vive le Québec libre!” (“Long live free Quebec!”) De Gaulle was rebuked by the Canadian government, but his visit contributed to and reflected the growing separatist movement in Quebec.

Quebec separatism
French Canadian nationalists favoured some form of enhanced status for Quebec: special status within confederation, a new form of association on the basis of equality with English Canada, or complete independence as a sovereign country. During the late 1960s the movement was motivated primarily by the belief, shared by many Quebec intellectuals and labour leaders, that the economic difficulties of Quebec were caused by English Canadian domination of the confederation and could only be ended by altering—or terminating—the ties with other provinces and the central government. By the late 20th century, economic conditions had begun to improve, and cultural and linguistic differences became the primary motivation for the resurgence of Quebec separatist sentiment in the 1990s. Quebec separatism was deeply rooted in Canadian history: some Québécois maintained a perennial desire to have their own state, which in a sense they had possessed from 1791 to 1841, and many French Canadians had long felt a sense of minority grievance, stimulated by the execution of Louis Riel, given substance by the Manitoba Schools Question, and given voice in the nationalism of journalists such as Jules-Paul Tardivel and Henri Bourassa.

French Canadian nationalism was also the outcome of profound economic and social changes that had taken place in Quebec since about 1890. Until that time French Canadians had lived by agriculture and seasonal work in the timber trade. The middle-class French of Quebec and Montreal acted as intermediaries between the working-class French and the English industrial and commercial leaders. The growth of hydroelectric power and the wood pulp industry helped to create manufacturing plants in Quebec and Ontario and brought French Canadian workers into the cities, particularly Montreal. The rate of growth of the French Canadian population and the lack of good workable land outside the narrow St. Lawrence and Richelieu valleys contributed to the rush to low-paying jobs in urban industries and to the growth of urban slums, especially in Montreal. By 1921 Quebec was the most urbanized and industrialized of all Canadian provinces, including Ontario, which remained the most populous and the wealthiest. The Quebec government, devoted to the 19th-century policy of laissez-faire economics, recklessly encouraged industry and did little to check its worst excesses. With few exceptions the new enterprises were owned and directed by English Canadians or U.S. businesses.

At the same time, industrialization destroyed the myths by which French Canada had survived: that of the Roman Catholic mission to the New World and the cult of agriculture as the basis of virtuous life. The clash of the traditional and the new came to a head in the last years of the regime of Premier Maurice Duplessis, an economic conservative and Quebec nationalist who led Quebec in 1936–39 and 1944–59. As leader of the Union Nationale party—a party he had helped to create—Duplessis’s first term in office ended when he lost the 1939 election after challenging Ottawa’s right to intervene in provincial jurisdictions during wartime. Reelected in 1944, Duplessis refused to cooperate with most of the new social and educational initiatives launched by the King and Saint Laurent governments. Duplessis favoured foreign investment, supported the Roman Catholic church as Quebec’s chief agency of social welfare and education, and strongly opposed trade unionism.

Quebec society was changing dramatically in the late 1940s and ’50s. Montreal and other urban centres grew rapidly after the war, and a burgeoning French-speaking urban middle class was entering business and other white-collar professions. Increasing numbers of students completed high school and entered Canadian colleges and universities. A prolonged and bitter strike by asbestos workers began a period of labour conflict and gave young idealists—one of them Pierre Trudeau, future prime minister of Canada—a chance to combine with labour in a struggle for a free society of balanced interests. A new Quebec was emerging, despite Duplessis’s best efforts to keep it Catholic, agrarian, and conservative. At the time of his death in 1959, the province was ready for major political changes.

In June 1960 the Quebec Liberal Party, under Jean Lesage, gained power in Quebec. Lesage launched several new legislative initiatives aimed at reforming the corruption that had become widespread during the Duplessis years, transforming and improving the social and educational infrastructure, removing the Roman Catholic church from most secular activities, and involving the provincial government directly in economic development. The Quebec government nationalized the province’s private power companies and consolidated them into one government-owned company. It also established a new provincial pension plan, creating a large pool of investment capital. Much was done quickly in this period of Liberal activism that became known as the “Quiet Revolution.”

After the Liberals were defeated by the Union Nationale in 1966, the range of extremes widened in Quebec. The Liberal Party was federalist, holding that the reforms needed in Quebec could be obtained within the federal system. The Union Nationale also remained fundamentally federalist, but it stressed the importance of remaining Québécois and of obtaining greater provincial power. To the left of the traditional parties, however, opinion ranged from a demand for a special status for Quebec to support for separation and independence. An active minority of leftist Montrealers broke with the Liberals and began advocating independence as a first step to social change. Their efforts resulted in the establishment of the Parti Québécois, which advocated secession from the confederation. Under René Lévesque, a former Liberal, the Parti Québécois won 24 percent of the popular vote in the election of 1970, but the Liberals still secured 72 of the assembly’s 95 seats.

Other social revolutionaries, inspired by refugees from Algeria and by events in Cuba at that time, began to practice terrorism. Bombings began in 1963 and continued sporadically. Most French and English Canadians considered these actions “un-Canadian,” but they illustrated both the social ills of Quebec and the ties of the French intellectuals with the world outside Canada. In October 1970 a terrorist group, the Front de Libération du Québec (Quebec Liberation Front), kidnapped the British trade commissioner, James Cross, and Quebec’s labour minister, Pierre Laporte, who was subsequently murdered. Quebec’s government asked for federal intervention, prompting enactment of the War Measures Act, which suspended the usual civil liberties. Subsequently some 500 people were arrested, and troops were moved into Quebec. The Canadian public generally approved of the act, but few convictions followed, except of those accused of the murder of Laporte.

William Lewis Morton
David J. Bercuson
Roger D. Hall

 

The Trudeau years, 1968–84
First premiership
Domestic policies
Pierre Trudeau, a strong federalist and a member of Pearson’s cabinet, was elected leader of the Liberals after Pearson and led the party to a decisive victory in Canada and Quebec. Trudeau’s rule was highly personal, his ideas clear, precise, and inflexible. Never before had Canada been governed by a prime minister of personal assurance bordering on the arrogant and flavoured by the autocratic. Nevertheless, Trudeau dominated the political history of Canada through most of the period from 1968 until the early 1980s.

Trudeau’s influence on Canada arose from two circumstances: the uncertainty introduced into Canadian politics by the rise of separatist feeling in Quebec and the national feeling that Canada needed to remake its constitution to fit the circumstances of the late 20th century. Trudeau, a constitutional lawyer flatly opposed to separatism, seemed superbly equipped to handle Canada’s chief issues. At the same time, he was impeccably French, the answer to the need of the Liberal Party for a French leader and to that of Canada for a French champion of the federal union. As such, Trudeau was free to complete Pearson’s work in providing for a bilingual and bicultural Canada. In 1968, with the support of all parties, the Liberal government introduced the Official Languages Bill, which prepared the way for a bilingual federal civil service and for the encouragement of the French language and culture in Canada. (Similar encouragement was given to other ethnic cultures.) The foremost legislation of Trudeau’s early years in office, the bill was designed to begin a new relationship between the English and French in Canada.

Trudeau was chiefly concerned with maintaining the unity of Canada and the good relations of English and French Canadians, which became the specialty of the Liberal Party in Quebec, both federal and provincial. Under a new leader, Robert Bourassa, the provincial Liberal Party, strongly committed to maintaining the federal system and to demonstrating the benefits of that system for Quebec, swept back into office in 1970. The electoral success and energetic policy of large investment and rapid development of Quebec’s Liberals drove the separatist Parti Québécois into the background of provincial politics, though the Bourassa government was at the same time strongly provincial and determined to campaign energetically for Quebec’s interests. Thus, in 1971 at the constitutional conference held at Victoria, British Columbia, Bourassa claimed a special position for Quebec. Despite broad agreement, Quebec at the last moment withdrew its assent to a revised formula regarding proposed federal control over social security, and the path of constitutional reform was blocked.

At the same time, the province and the city of Montreal began to commit enormous public expenditures for building projects and amassed a huge public debt. This increasingly alarmed the populace and augured ill for the future of the federalist party of Quebec. The Olympic Games of 1976, the most visible example of the new expenditures, were enormously expensive. In grandiose expenditure, however, Quebec did no more than lead the way. The Trudeau government, following a policy of heavy public expenditure initiated by Pearson (and emulated by all the provinces), pursued economic growth based on government direction and spending. The result was a high tax burden and frequent budget deficits.

During the Trudeau years, however, the Canadian economy came of age, sometimes despite the government’s policies. Canada continued to be a major supplier of foodstuffs and raw materials to the world during the boom decade of the 1970s, but the proportion of people employed in manufacturing and the value of industry’s exports surpassed those for primary products. The west benefited greatly during the boom years. Minerals, on which the economy of British Columbia depended, found ready markets at high prices in the United States and the Pacific Rim countries. Roberts Bank, one of the world’s largest ocean coal depots, was built near Vancouver to expedite the shipment of British Columbian coal to Japan. Saskatchewan’s potash and uranium commanded premium prices during those years, and international demand for wheat, beef, and other farm products brought prosperity that matched the inflation-generated increase in land values. No province benefited more than Alberta, where escalating world petroleum prices brought wealth previously unimaginable and a tremendous land and construction boom—along with runaway inflation—in Edmonton and Calgary.

The increase in the oil and natural gas prices sparked exploration in frontier areas such as the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Archipelago. Some of this exploration was aided by a variety of federal grant incentive programs and carried out by Panarctic Oils Ltd., a consortium jointly funded by the federal government and private sources. Fearing that foreign capital would permanently dominate the Canadian oil industry, the Trudeau government created the integrated, crown-owned Petro-Canada in 1975.

Prosperity kept pace in Central Canada. The Canada–United States Automotive Products Agreement (Autopact), concluded in 1965, finally began to pay dividends as U.S.-owned carmakers built new assembly plants in Ontario and Quebec. Tens of thousands of new jobs were created in the automobile and auto parts industries, and Toronto quickly passed Montreal as Canada’s financial capital. Although much of Atlantic Canada was underperforming, it, too, experienced some prosperity as foreign auto and tire manufacturers began to establish plants there.

Canada’s economic growth was accompanied by high inflation, and by the mid-1970s the government was preoccupied with the fight against rising prices and the wage increases that usually followed. In 1975 the federal government created the Anti-Inflation Board and imposed wage and price controls for a three-year period. The move was supported by business but incensed the labour movement, which called for a one-day national general strike in October 1976.

Foreign affairs
In 1970 the Trudeau government unveiled a foreign policy that focused on three aims: preserving Canada as an independent political entity, maintaining its expanding prosperity, and constructively contributing to human needs. In 1970–72 Canada scaled back its contribution to NATO, reducing the number of its military and civilian personnel and military bases in Europe. Trudeau’s government also established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in October 1970, and by 1973 the two countries had negotiated most-favoured-nation trading arrangements. Trudeau’s attitude toward the Cold War and the Soviet Union was decidedly ambiguous. Initially he improved relations with the Soviets, believing that closer ties would restore balance to Canada’s international position and deemphasize Canada’s role as a partisan of the West, but Trudeau did not contest fundamental U.S. policy regarding the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and even American involvement in the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia. Despite Trudeau’s cautious and skeptical view of the United States, he ultimately respected the realities of American power. Canada also sought closer relations with the EEC and played a more active role in the UN. During the 1970s Canada extended its fishing rights and reaffirmed Canadian sovereignty in its Arctic islands and their icebound waters.

The goal of protecting Canada’s economy led to adjustments in relations with the United States. In 1970 Canada increased the price of petroleum and natural gas sold to the United States, and in 1974 a plan was announced that would gradually reduce those sales and end them by 1982. This action was taken to protect domestic supplies of fossil fuels in the face of increasing prices of imported oil used in the eastern provinces. In 1978 Canada initiated purchases of new airplanes and other military equipment to better defend its borders and fulfill its international commitments.

In attempting to contribute to human needs across the globe, Trudeau’s government expanded the country’s foreign aid efforts and pursued a policy promoting the international control of nuclear weaponry. Canada undertook efforts to reduce pollution in its coastal waters, signing with the United States in 1972 the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to control pollution of the lakes.

Indian affairs
In consultations with the government in 1968–69, Canada’s Indians sought special rights and settlement of their outstanding treaty claims. However, the Trudeau government rejected most of the Indian demands and sought instead to abolish the Indian Act and eliminate Indian status. Indian groups strongly protested the new policy and forced the government to withdraw its proposals; the protest led to a sharp increase in Indian political activism during the 1970s. Provincial and territorial Indian organizations flourished. At the national level, Indians were represented by the National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations), while Métis and nonstatus Indians were represented by the Native Council of Canada. These and other organizations advocated policies including aboriginal rights (recognized in the Constitution Act [Canada Act] of 1982), improved education, and economic development. In 1983 a government report recommended the establishment of new forms of self-government, and since that time efforts to increase Indian autonomy have continued. In 1992 the Inuit approved a land-claim settlement that by 1999 would create the new territory of Nunavut (“Our Land”) out of the eastern two-thirds of the Northwest Territories.

The interregnum: Progressive Conservative government, 1979–80
By the late 1970s the glamour of the Trudeau regime was wearing off, and his policies were falling into confusion. The bilingual initiative was pushed beyond the brink of tolerance in English Canada and was hastily truncated before even the federal civil service was completely remodeled. A victory by the Parti Québécois in Quebec provincial elections in November 1976 revived the question of Quebec separatism. Although the Parti Québécois’s victory was largely attributable to the corruption and mismanagement of the Bourassa government, it took advantage of its position by pushing for separation, at least in the form of limited independence known as sovereignty-association—an arrangement in which Quebec would keep the economic advantages of federation with Canada (e.g., a common currency, central bank, and free-trade zone) but also have the cultural and social benefits of political independence.

The reasons for this slow but powerful reversal of much that Trudeau had stood for could be found in the enormous expansion of skill and power in provincial governments. There had been a steady widening of provincial jurisdiction (especially in the field of welfare), an expansion of revenues and expenditures, and a growing sense of local importance partly nurtured in the constitutional device of the federal-provincial conference. In 1975 the provinces for the first time together spent more of the gross national product than the federal government did. The federal government had now become less powerful than the provinces acting collectively, as more and more were inclined to do, and by 1979 all but one of the provinces had elected Conservative or opposition governments.

Trudeau had secured a solid majority in the 1968 federal election, but thereafter much of his power base in western Canada, Ontario, and the Atlantic Provinces began to dissolve. His popularity was eroded by his almost constant preoccupation with Quebec and Quebec-related issues, combined with his apparent lack of sympathy for regional concerns. In 1972 the Liberals were reelected with a minority government, and Trudeau was forced to rely on the support of the social democratic New Democratic Party. Although he was able to refashion a majority in 1974, his victory was as much a result of dissatisfaction with the Progressive Conservative opposition as it was an indication of his popularity. In fact, the next five years constituted a time of drastic decline in Liberal support. Trudeau’s wage and price controls alienated organized labour; his advocacy of greater government intervention in the economy angered business; and his constant efforts to impose Ottawa’s will on the provincial governments disturbed voters in Atlantic Canada and the west. In May 1979 Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark took power with a minority government.

Not quite 40 years old when elected, Clark was the youngest-ever Canadian prime minister. His youthful inexperience showed in foreign policy missteps, and his domestic agenda—which included budget austerity and privatizing of Petro-Canada—failed to gain broad support. Perhaps his most serious mistake, however, was his attempt to increase the federal gasoline tax as a means of increasing Ottawa’s share of the windfall oil profits that had flowed from the rise in energy prices and as a means of promoting conservation of gasoline. When Clark’s budget containing the tax was voted down in December 1979, his government was defeated.

Second premiership
Although Trudeau had contemplated stepping down as Liberal leader after his electoral defeat in May 1979, he once again became prime minister in February 1980. His continued opposition to separatism was evident when he campaigned actively in Quebec against separation in a May 1980 referendum, which the Parti Québécois government called in an attempt to secure a provincial mandate to negotiate sovereignty-association with the rest of Canada. Trudeau’s intervention helped tilt the balance against the pro-separatism forces, and sovereignty-association ultimately received the support of only two-fifths of Quebec voters.

After the referendum the Trudeau government renewed its efforts to secure constitution reform. The issue centred on the revision and patriation of the British North America Act of 1867, which could be amended only by the British Parliament on Canada’s behalf. The debate was complicated by the need to adopt an amending process acceptable to the federal government as well as to the 10 provinces. On December 2, 1981, an amending process and a bill of rights (Charter of Rights and Freedoms) were accepted by all the provinces except Quebec. Nevertheless, on March 25, 1982, the British Parliament approved the resolution, and on April 17 Queen Elizabeth II issued a proclamation making Canada fully independent and recognizing the new Constitution Act (Canada Act). The patriation of the constitution and the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a political triumph for Trudeau and the culmination of a career-long campaign to place civil rights and liberties above the reach of the federal or provincial legislatures.

Canada’s economic performance during Trudeau’s last years in power was less successful. The country suffered greatly in the worldwide recession of 1981–82, but the impact was made worse by Ottawa’s failure to control its spending and its miscalculation in anticipating that future increases in energy prices would help pay its bills. That expectation was the basis of the National Energy Program (NEP), introduced in the fall of 1980, which was designed to speed up the “Canadianization” of the energy industry and vastly increase Ottawa’s share of energy revenues. The NEP created a fierce conflict between the central government and the energy-producing provinces (particularly Alberta), chased private investment capital out of Canada, and drastically reduced exploration for oil and gas. When oil prices declined, NEP policies made the recession even deeper in Alberta.

In foreign policy, Trudeau’s approach to the Americans and the Cold War changed little after the Clark interregnum, as he maintained his professed disdain for the U.S. preoccupation with the Cold War. Nonetheless, in 1983 Trudeau’s government—over the strenuous objections of peace groups and environmentalists—granted the United States permission to test cruise missile guidance systems in the Canadian North. Perhaps to balance his decision on the cruise missiles, Trudeau later that year mounted a well-publicized global peace mission to the capitals of countries possessing nuclear weapons to press for greater international cooperation on nuclear arms control and reduction. His trip gained little, and his initiative clearly annoyed U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries
The administration of Brian Mulroney, 1984–93
In February 1984 Trudeau resigned and was succeeded as head of the Liberal Party and as prime minister by John Turner. In federal elections held in September, the Progressive Conservative Party won a landslide victory, and its leader, Brian Mulroney, a prominent labour lawyer from Quebec, became prime minister. Mulroney’s approach to government differed greatly from that of Trudeau. In federal-provincial relations he sought to avoid the bitterness and rancour that had marked Trudeau’s dealings with the provincial premiers. Accords were negotiated with Newfoundland and Alberta that ended the crisis over federal energy policy and dismantled the NEP. In November 1984 Mulroney’s finance minister, Michael Wilson, announced that the government would adopt a new approach to economic and fiscal matters to encourage private, including foreign, investment, to bring down the national debt, to review social programs, and to privatize crown corporations.

Two major initiatives marked the government’s first period in office: the Meech Lake Accord and the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. The Meech Lake Accord, a constitutional agreement with all 10 provinces that was designed to bring Quebec’s approval of the Constitution Act of 1982, was concluded in the spring of 1987, but the refusal of Newfoundland and Manitoba to ratify the accord by the June 1990 deadline was a severe blow to Mulroney and created a new crisis on the issue of Quebec separatism.

Mulroney was more successful with the free trade agreement. Negotiated with the United States over a period of two years, it was signed by Mulroney and Reagan in January 1988. The agreement easily passed the U.S. Congress but was the object of bitter debate in Canada. In the federal general election of November 1988, free trade was virtually the only issue. Although his mandate was reduced, Mulroney survived with his majority intact, and on January 1, 1989, the free trade agreement went into effect. Mulroney next abolished a manufacturer’s sales tax hidden in the commercial price structure (i.e., the cost of an item) and replaced it with a highly unpopular (and visible) tax on goods and services (GST). In December 1992 Canada signed the multilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Mexico.

Also in 1992 the government tried again to bring constitutional agreement. The federal and provincial governments and Indian groups forged an accord at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, which provided enhanced autonomy for aboriginal groups and Quebec, but it was defeated in a national referendum in October. This defeat, the GST, the recession of 1990–92, and increasing restiveness among the Indian population (e.g., a Mohawk band confronted the armed forces over a land dispute at Oka, Quebec, in 1990) undermined Mulroney’s popularity. He resigned in June 1993 and was replaced by Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female prime minister. In the general election that October, the Progressive Conservatives suffered a resounding defeat, reduced to just two seats in the House of Commons. Jean Chrétien, a veteran politician who had held a number of cabinet posts in the Trudeau government, led the Liberal Party to a majority government and became prime minister. The western-based Reform Party, a conservative, populist party formed in 1987, obtained 52 seats, and the Quebec separatist Bloc Québécois, which had informal ties with the Parti Québécois, became the official opposition with 54 seats.

David J. Bercuson
Roger D. Hall

Canada since 1993
The new Liberal government faced several challenges, including an ongoing recession, political fragmentation along regional lines, and a resurgence of the independence movement in Quebec. In early 1995 Canada’s self-image was tarnished when the government disbanded the Canadian Airborne Regiment, which had been tainted by charges of torture and murder while serving in Somalia. Shortly thereafter Canada became involved in a dispute with Spain over Spanish commercial fishing in Canadian waters off Newfoundland. A Spanish fishing boat was seized, and tensions mounted between the two countries before an international agreement was negotiated to govern access and assure that depleted stocks would not be overfished.

In October 1995 the country came closer than ever before to political partition. Quebec held another referendum on secession, and this time the separatists were only narrowly defeated, by a margin of 50.6 to 49.4 percent. The independence movement benefited from the charismatic personality of federal representative Lucien Bouchard, who took over the leadership of the Parti Québécois and became premier of Quebec in 1996. As prosperity returned to the country, enthusiasm for independence in Quebec waned, and Bouchard became more pragmatic in his dealings with the federal government and his fellow provincial premiers. The goal remained the same, but, unless secession actually seemed likely, confrontation was to be avoided. In the meantime the federal government attempted to mollify Quebec by pursuing a policy of “distinct status” for the province but assuring, through legislation called the Clarity Bill, that any future referendum would require federal approval and involvement.

A new generation of Canadians—both inside and outside Quebec—seemed less concerned with the sovereignty issue and more interested in the opportunities that had emerged with NAFTA and its resultant prosperity. Economic growth—and the tax bounty that accompanied it—permitted provincial governments and the federal government to secure their fiscal position, though not without considerable rancour. Payments from Ottawa to the provinces were reduced as Chrétien was determined to balance the federal budget; in similar fashion, provincial governments shifted costs to municipal governments and individual citizens, who frequently found themselves without services they had come to expect or, in some cases, paying for those services with increased or new taxes and user fees. Prosperity camouflaged many problems encountered by the middle and upper classes, but working-class and unemployed Canadians found themselves without support. In some provinces, particularly Alberta and Ontario, both under the leadership of Progressive Conservatives, the cost cutting was ideological, deep, and divisive. Tax cuts in these provinces, particularly for wealthier citizens, were viewed as a panacea for Canada’s economic and social ills.

Although opposition parties enjoyed electoral success at the provincial level, they rarely won nationally. The Liberal Party, seen by many Canadians as the natural governing party, secured its position through its accommodating positions and its strength, particularly in the ridings (districts) of Ontario. Chrétien’s leadership was not dynamic, but it appeared competent and satisfactory, especially because his term was accompanied by a buoyant economy. In 1997 the Liberals were reelected. Although they won fewer than two-fifths of the vote, they captured 101 of Ontario’s 103 seats in the House of Commons and secured a governing majority. The Reform Party, which won 57 of the 74 ridings in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, supplanted the Bloc Québécois to become the official opposition party. Chrétien’s popularity began to wane in the late 1990s; by 2000, efforts to unite Canada’s conservatives bore some fruit with the creation of the Canadian Alliance, which elected as its leader Alberta’s former provincial treasurer Stockwell Day, who became the leader of the opposition in Ottawa. Nonetheless, the opposition was still split, consisting of parties as disparate as the conservative Canadian Alliance, the nationalist Bloc Québécois, and the socialist New Democratic Party, and in the 2000 election the Liberals were able to achieve a comfortable majority in the House of Commons, securing a third term for Chrétien—Canada’s first prime minister to win three successive majorities since 1945.

Chrétien stepped down as leader in 2003 to be replaced by his former finance minister, Paul Martin. Almost immediately, a series of financial scandals broke regarding massive government largesse to certain advertising firms in Quebec, notably at the time of and following the 1995 referendum. In addition, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives joined forces as the Conservative Party of Canada, forming a more unified opposition to the Liberals. The Liberals, however, won a fourth consecutive electoral victory in 2004, though Martin was denied an overall majority.

Martin’s Liberal minority government struggled to maintain power, but it nevertheless pursued major reforms of health care policy and legalized same-sex marriage. Hanging over the government, however, was the financial scandal in Quebec. A report on it from the Gomery Commission in November 2005 confirmed that the Liberals and their supporters had received excessive payments and was critical of Chrétien, though Martin himself was personally exonerated. Later that month the Liberals lost a vote-of-confidence motion in the House of Commons, and in the subsequent election in January 2006 the Conservatives were elected to oversee a minority government; their leader, Stephen Harper, became prime minister.

Roger D. Hall

Harper’s government enacted an accountability act on June 21, 2006, that established new procedures for the conduct of government business predicated on “fairness, openness, and transparency”; however, the prime minister’s boldest legislative move came in November when he introduced a motion in the House of Commons declaring that the Québécois formed a nation “within a united Canada.” In so doing, Harper not only beat to the punch separatists who were preparing to push a similar motion without the “within a united Canada” qualifier but also curried the favour of many within Quebec who previously had seen the nationalist Bloc Québécois as their only advocate. The prospect of shifting the balance of power in Quebec’s representation in the House of Commons away from the Liberals and the Bloc contributed to Harper’s attempts to force a vote of confidence that would necessitate a new federal election, but the Liberals, not ready to go to the polls, avoided confrontation with the government, even when Harper announced his intention not to adhere to Canada’s commitment to greenhouse-gas reduction targets set out under the Kyoto Protocol. In the meantime the Canadian economy continued to perform well, and the value of the Canadian dollar soared, reaching parity with the U.S. dollar in September 2007 for the first time since November 1976.

In September 2008—sensing that chances of winning a parliamentary majority were good, while at the same time fearing that this fortuitous moment might pass quickly if the economic crisis that had befallen the United States spread to Canada—Harper went against an earlier promise to hold regularly scheduled elections, dissolved parliament, and called federal elections for October 14. Led by Stéphane Dion, the Liberals proposed a Green Shift agenda that called for a tax on carbon emissions. They looked as if they might mount a serious challenge to the Conservatives, particularly as the Canadian economy began to falter and as Harper seemed insensitive to many by suggesting that the economic downturn provided a good opportunity to buy stock cheaply. In the end, however, the Conservatives triumphed, capturing more than 37 percent of the popular vote and adding 19 seats to reach of total of 143 seats—still short of majority rule—while the Liberal Party lost 27 seats from its total representation, dropping to a total of 76 as it registered its lowest percentage of the national popular vote (26 percent) in the party’s history. In the meantime the New Democratic Party, led by Jack Layton, tallied just over 18 percent of the vote, adding 7 seats to its total for the 2006 election to reach 37 seats, and the Gilles Duceppe-led Bloc Québécois basically held steady, making up for some losses in by-elections to return to a total of 50 seats, one shy of its total in the 2006 results, as it claimed 10 percent of the popular vote.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Canada continued to struggle with the set of issues that had been at the centre of Canadian existence for centuries: French-English relations, the British governmental inheritance, a powerful and occasionally overwhelming U.S. shadow, and tendentious relations with its Indian population. Still, Canada entered the 21st century with considerable wealth and prosperity, and the country, which had become a magnet for immigrants from throughout the world, had established its own distinctive cultural, economic, and political identity.

Ed.