History of Canada

Our closest neighbors to the north, Canada. You can hardly study the history of the United States without learning something about Canada. We share the Rocky Mountains, the Interior Plains, the Great Lakes, the Appalachian Highlands, and many rivers. And even though we're independent nations and achieved our independence by different paths, our beginnings are a lot alike.

As outlined under the History of Norway, the earliest discovery of the New World was made by Norse seafarers known as Vikings. In 1000 AD Leif Ericson became the first European to land in North America. They established a colony, called Vinland, on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. But it didn't last. They left and history would have to wait almost 500 years for Europeans to return.

In 1497 an Italian named Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) started looking for that elusive western trade route to China for the King of England. Alas, no new trade route but he did re-discover the eastern shores of Canada. And like Columbus, Cabot was sure that he had found his seaway to Asia. Although wrong, the Cabot voyages gave England a claim by right of discovery to an indefinite area of eastern North America, including the rich fishing waters off the coasts.

Viking site at L'Anse aux Meadows

Newfoundland

Jacques Cartier

painted around 1844

In spite of their disappointment over the lost trade route to Asia, explorers were soon checking out the new, wild, unexplored world. Spanish and Portuguese adventurers brought home gold and solver from the Caribbean. In 1524 King Francis I of France sent a Florentine navigator, Giovanni da Verrazano to check things out. he explored the eastern coastline of North America from North Carolina to Newfoundland. So now France had some claim to the continent by right of discovery.

Ten years later Jacques Cartier sailed into what is today the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The next year, in three small vessels, he reached what is today Quebec but was occupied by the Indian village of Stadacona. He continued on 150 miles to the present city of Montreal, occupied by another Indian village called Hochelaga. Many of his party died that winter from cold and scurvy and the next spring he set sail for France.

In 1541 Cartier led another expedition to the St. Lawrence. He established a headquarters a few miles upstream from Stadacona. The next spring, when Cartier set sail for home, he was met by a party of colonists in St. John's Newfoundland in three ships. The colony failed and France quit the experiment for almost 60 years.

But during this time fur trading continued and fishing never quit off the eastern shores of Canada. In 1598 Troilus de Mesgouez set out for Canada with a royal monopoly which gave him the exclusive right to trade in furs. he established a small colony which was a dismal failure. Other colonies followed. Finally in 1604 the fur monopoly was granted to Pierre du Guast, sieur de Monts. He led the first colonizing expedition to an island located near the mouth of the St. Croix River. This in time was to mark the international boundary between the province of New Brunswick and the state of Maine. With him was a geographer named Samuel de Champlain, who explored the northeastern coastline of the United States.

They established a colony on the shore of the Annapolis Basin, an inlet in western Nova Scotia. The land came to be known as Acadia. It was 1605. In 1608 France's first permanent Canadian colony was finally established at Quebec, at the foot of a great rocky cape on the north shore, on the great River St. Lawrence, by Champlain. He called it New France.

Samuel de Champlain

1612 map of New France drawn by Champlain

In 1629 Champlain had to surrender his almost starving colony to an English fleet and he was taken prisoner to England. Luckily for him peace was declared between England and France and New France was restored to the French. Champlain returned and became governor of New France in 1633.

New France grew slowly. In 1642 Montreal was founded by Paul de Chomedy as a mission post, part of a large Canadian missionary movement based in France. Unfortunately, in 1648 the Iroquois Indians launched an attack and several brave Jesuit priests died as martyrs. The Iroquois were a constant menace and were a great obstacle to the expansion of settlement. The history of New France contains many accounts of heroism on the part of soldiers, settlers, and missionaries during their long guerrilla warfare with the Indians.

New France was not a democracy. The senior official was the governor, appointed by the king of France. The French also established the office of Indendant, whose chief duties concerned finance and administration of justice. Unfortunately the jobs overlapped and the two office holders didn't cooperate due to jealousy.

Jean Talon came to New France as Intendant in 1665 and took a census of New France in 1666. It showed a population of 3,215. They were far outnumbered by the ten English colonies to the south.

England realized that fur trading was one of the ways to riches in the New World and began capturing forts to their north. In 1670 the English founded the Hudson Bay Company to back up their claims north of the colonies. The English dominated the Hudson Bay and that threatened the French. In 1702 France and England went to war. When they finally re-established peace in 1713, France had to surrender some of their territory, including Newfoundland and Acadia.

To counter, the French set up a fortress on Capt Breton Island. The English and French went back and forth for years, taking land, losing land. The English, in 1749, began the construction of the city of Halifax to counter the French threat. In 1755 in Acadia, the Acadian French who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the English King were herded aboard transports and shipped to the English colonies to the south. They ended up in New Orleans and are known as Cajun.

England decided to overrun New France, seize Quebec, and end the conflict. The French won victories yet in 1759 a fleet of 140 ships, carrying 9,000 British troops sailed up the St. Lawrence and laid siege to the capital of New France. The troops, commanded by General James Wolfe, tried all summer to find a weakness to the natural defenses of Quebec. Finally, late in the season, he used a night landing and won what is now called the battle of the Plains of Abraham.

Both Wolfe and Montcalm, the French commander, were mortally wounded in the fighting. Montreal was cut off and fell to the British. In 1763, the British flag waved over almost the whole eastern North America.

The British now had two problems: first, they had more than 60,000 new, French-speaking subjects. Second, the Indians. Let by a clever and treacherous Ottawa chieftain, the Indians suddenly rose up and began massacring the soldiers in the forts. By the middle of 1763 the only British soldiers left west of Lake Erie were in Fort Detroit. Finally fresh troops were rushed in and the Indian uprising was subdued.

In 1774 the English Parliament passed the Quebec Act. Under its terms the boundaries of Quebec were extended as far as the Ohio River Valley and the Roman Catholic Church was recognized. French civil law to govern the relations of Canadian subjects was established. British criminal law was imposed in all matters having to do with public law and order. There was no elected assembly. Within a year, the rebelling 13 Atlantic colonies to the south went north to capture the "fourteenth colony." Sir Guy Carleton, the British governor of Canada, narrowly escaped capture when one of these armies, under Richard Montgomery, took Montreal. Carleton reached Quebec in time to organize a small garrison against the forces of General Benedict Arnold who began a siege of the fortress. Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded. This was the only American Revolutionary War fighting that happened in Canada. Perhaps if Montgomery and Arnold had been successful we would be one country.

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, many thousands of American Loyalists, who were called Tories, left the United States and went to Canada. This marked the first major wave of immigration by English-speaking settlers since the days of New France. It's believed at least 40,000 of these Loyalist immigrants settled in Canada. This caused a major shift in thinking in Canada, since these newcomers would not be satisfied with the limited rights and French laws established by the Quebec Act. In 1791 the British Parliament enacted the Constitutional Act, splitting Quebec into two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Finally, Canada had an elected government.

1700 map of Quebec City

The Death of General Wolfe in the Battle of the Plaines of Abraham

The only information we have on immigration from Canada to America is from the United States Census Bureau and where they say the foreign born population come from or their country of origin. Starting in 1850 the bureau recorded 147,711 Canadians in the United States. The next year that number increased by a little over 100,000 and by 1880 a little over 717,000 Canadian Americans were on the census. 1890 is the first year that the United States Census Bureau started keeping track whether or not the Canadians were of French origin. In that year 302,496 French Canadians were listed, 678,442 Other Canadians. By 1900 both numbers had increased by significant amounts. In 1910 the bureau started tracking Newfoundland as a separate number. That year the numbers were 385,083 French Canadian, 819,554 Other Canadian and 5,090 Newfoundland. 1930 had the highest amount of Canadians listed in this country with a total of 1,310,369. French Canadians accounted for 370,852 of those, Other Canadian 915,537 and Newfoundland 23,980. The Census Bureau no longer counts Canadians as either French, Newfoundland or Other. In 1990, the last year available, there were 753,917 Canadians listed on the census.