Showing All of 153 results for "Historical"

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Fenian Raids

Between 1866 and 1871, the Fenian Brotherhood, an independent and armed force of Irish American Civil War veterans, raided Canadian territory from New Brunswick to Manitoba.

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Confederation, 1867

Canada wasn’t born out of revolution or a sweeping outburst of nationalism.

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Women's Suffrage in Manitoba

Women in Manitoba were the first in Canada to win the right to vote

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Exhibit Eh: Canadian Film History in 10 Easy Steps

A chronological tour through the history of Canadian cinema.

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Act of Union

The Act of Union was proclaimed by the British Parliament on 10 February 1841, uniting the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada under one government and creating the Province of Canada.

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New France

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Women's Suffrage in Canada

Women’s suffrage (or franchise) is the right of women to vote in political elections; campaigns for this right generally included demand for the right to run for public office. The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long struggle intended to address fundamental issues of equity and justice and to improve the lives of Canadians.
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Confederation

The Dominion of Canada wasn't born out of revolution, or a sweeping outburst of nationalism. Rather, it was created in a series of conferences and orderly negotiations, culminating in the terms of Confederation on 1 July 1867. This Collection brings together content related to the creation of Canada.
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Disasters

Historic Canadian disasters include those caused by both humans and nature. Some, such as the Halifax Explosion, are rare, tragic accidents now etched in the country’s history. Others, such as forest fires and avalanches, are annual, natural occurrences that sometimes wreak havoc. This collection gathers survey articles on different types of disasters, as well as content on individual, historic events.

New Brunswick Schools Question

In May 1871, the government of New Brunswick, under George Luther Hatheway, passed the Common Schools Act. This statute provided for free standardized education throughout the province, the establishment of new school districts, the construction of schools, and stricter requirements regarding teaching certificates. This law also made all schools non-denominational, so that the teaching of the Roman Catholic catechism was prohibited.

Great Depression

The worldwide Great Depression of the early 1930s was a social and economic shock that left millions of Canadians unemployed, hungry and often homeless. Few countries were affected as severely as Canada during what became known as the Dirty Thirties, due to Canada’s heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with a crippling Prairies drought.
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The Deportation of the Acadians

Soldiers rounding up terrified civilians, expelling them from their land, burning their homes and crops ‒ it sounds like a 20th century nightmare in one of the world's trouble spots, but it describes a scene from Canada's early history, the Deportation of the Acadians.

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The British Home Children: Victims of Britain’s Child Emigration Scheme

On 24 February 2010, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, officially apologized for a program that the British government put in place in the 19th century to send large numbers of children as emigrants to various British colonies, including Canada. Media reports of this apology took many people in Britain and Canada by surprise. They had no idea that such an event had taken place in their two countries’ histories.

United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada

The United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada (UELAC) is a national organization that brings together descendants of United Empire Loyalists and promotes their memory and history through conferences, research, the maintenance of plaques and monuments and other such works.

Chloe Cooley and the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada

Although little is known about Chloe Cooley, an enslaved woman in Upper Canada, her struggles against her “owner,” Sergeant Adam Vrooman, precipitated the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada, 1793 — the first legislation in the British colonies to restrict the slave trade.

Black Enslavement in Canada

In early Canada, the enslavement of African peoples was a legal instrument that helped fuel colonial economic enterprise. Enslavement was introduced by French colonists in New France in the early 1600s, and lasted until it was abolished throughout British North America in 1834.
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Gold Rush Sparked American Interest in BC

The year 1858 is the single most important year in British Columbia’s history. It was on 2 August of that year that an imperial act established the mainland colony of BC under the authority of Governor James Douglas.

The Discovery of Insulin

For many years scientists believed that some kind of internal secretion of the pancreas was the key to preventing diabetes and controlling normal metabolism. No one could find it, until in the summer of 1921 a team at the University of Toronto began trying a new experimental approach suggested by Dr. Frederick Banting.

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Maroons of Nova Scotia

​The ancestors of the Maroons of Jamaica were enslaved Africans who had been brought there by the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries, and later the British (who captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655), to work its lucrative sugar plantations.

Canadian Response to "Boat People" Refugee Crisis

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Caroline Affair

After the failed Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada, its leader, William Lyon Mackenzie, retreated to Navy Island, in the Niagara River, accompanied by some 200 followers. The Caroline, an American ship based at Fort Schlosser in New York State, was chartered to bring supplies to the rebels. On 29 December 1837, a force of the Upper Canada militia led by Commander Andrew Drew of the Royal Navy found the Caroline moored at Schlosser. In the quick skirmish that followed, an American was killed. The Caroline, set on fire and adrift, capsized before reaching the falls and sank. The incident aggravated the already tense relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Canada and the Holocaust

The Holocaust is defined as the systematic persecution and murder of 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews, including Roma and Sinti, Poles, political opponents, LGBT people and Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Jews were the only group targeted for complete destruction because Nazi racial ideology considered them subhuman.
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Let's call it...Efisga

Naming a country is no small task. The name should evoke feelings of pride and strength and reflect the character of the land and its people.
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George Brown: 1865 Speech in Favour of Confederation

George Brown played an instrumental role in establishing Confederation. As leader of the Clear Grits (forerunner of the Liberal Party) in Canada West, he set aside political differences and allied with his Conservative rivals John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier in 1864, with whom he pitched Confederation to the Atlantic colonies at the Charlottetown and Québec Conferences. From 3 February to 13 March 1865, politicians in the Province of Canada debated the terms of Confederation, offering some of the most compelling defences and critiques of the union of British North American colonies. In the following speech, delivered before the legislature of the Province of Canada on 8 February 1865, Brown explains his reasons for supporting Confederation.
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The No. 2 Construction Battalion and the Fight to Fight

The No. 2 Construction Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) — also known as the Black Battalion — was a segregated non-combatant unit during the First World War. It was the first and only all-Black battalion in Canadian military history. This is their story.

Chinese Head Tax in Canada

The Chinese head tax was levied on Chinese immigration to Canada between 1885 and 1923, under the Chinese Immigration Act (1885). With few exceptions, Chinese people had to pay $50 (later raised to $100, and then $500) to come to Canada.

Cambodian Canadians

Immigration of Cambodians to Canada is relatively recent. From 1980 to 1992, Canada welcomed more than 18,000 Cambodia refugees who were fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime. They settled in Canada’s major urban areas. In the 2011 National Household Survey, 34,340 people reported being of Cambodian ethnic origin. Over the years since Cambodians began immigrating to Canada, many Cambodian Canadians have become distinguished in their fields; examples include actress Ellen Wong, journalist Chan Tep and graffiti artist FONKi.

History Since Confederation

The story of Canada since 1867 is, in many ways, a successful one.

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Southeast Asian Canadians

Southeast Asia has been, and continues to be, both a way station and a port of call for traders from throughout Asia and Africa, and later from Europe and parts of the New World.

Canada Day

Canada Day, observed on July 1st, is a national holiday marking the anniversary of Confederation in 1867, when the British North America Act came into effect. It was originally known as Dominion Day until it was renamed in 1982.

Sixties Scoop

The “Sixties Scoop” refers to the large-scale removal or “scooping” of Indigenous children from their homes, communities and families of birth through the 1960s, and their subsequent adoption into predominantly non-Indigenous, middle-class families across the United States and Canada. This experience left many adoptees with a lost sense of cultural identity. The physical and emotional separation from their birth families continues to affect adult adoptees and Indigenous communities to this day.

Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste

The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste (SSJB), founded in Montréal in 1834 by Ludger Duvernay, is the oldest patriotic association in French North America. With branches at one time located throughout the continent, it has long been engaged in fighting the linguistic and identity battles of francophones in North America. Since the 1960s, the SSJB network has played a crucial role in developing and defining contemporary Québec nationalism.

Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of abolitionists who helped African Americans escape from enslavement in the American South to free Northern states or to Canada. It was the largest anti-slavery freedom movement in North America, having brought between 30,000 and 40,000 fugitives to British North America (Canada).

Vietnamese Canadians

The settlement of Vietnamese nationals in Canada is relatively recent. It resulted from two waves of immigration in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The first wave consisted mostly of middle- class people who were welcomed to Canada for their professional skills after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Because Vietnam had been part of the French colony of Indochina until 1954, these immigrants generally spoke French, if not English. The second wave of immigration consisted of refugees from the former South Vietnam, seeking to escape the harsh living conditions and deteriorating human-rights situation following the reunification of the two Vietnams into a single country. These refugees were widely referred to in the media as “boat people.” Moved by the desperate plight of the hundreds of thousands who, to escape the Communist regime, took to the high seas in makeshift boats that threatened to sink at any moment, many Canadians offered to sponsor their journey to Canada. In July 1979, the Government of Canada committed to accept 50,000 refugees from Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) by the end of the year. In April 1980, the government revised the target number of refugees it would admit and announced that Canada would accept 10,000 more. This brought the number of refugees to 60,000 for the year 1979–80.