Canada. A self-governing dominion since 1867, much of Canada was earlier colonized by the British and the French. British interest in the area initially focused not on the land but on the sea. Ships leaving the west country probably located the Grand Banks fisheries even before John
Cabot's explorations of 1497. Despite official discouragement of settlement,
Newfoundland became
de facto the first overseas British colony, a status it relinquished later than other parts of what would become Canada.
In 17th- and 18th-cent. usage, the name Canada referred primarily to the St Lawrence lowlands. Here the British involvement is usually dated from
Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham (1759), but this was not the first British attempt to capture the French colony. In 1629 the Kirke brothers seized the small fort at Quebec. The colony was returned to the French three years later. Subsequent large-scale but unsuccessful attacks took place in 1690 and 1711.
From 1670, through the royally chartered
Hudson's Bay Company, England claimed sovereignty over Rupert's Land, an area including much of the central plains and northern Canada. The control the Hudson's Bay Company exercised was largely at the sufferance of the native peoples of the area, but the expanding fur trade eventually led the company to set up posts in the far north and on the west coast, establishing British claims to this contested region.
In the long-running 18th-cent. conflict with France, the British definitively acquired Acadia, renamed
Nova Scotia, in 1713. For some forty years, the British laid few claims to the area. Unable to secure a pledge of allegiance from the Acadian population, British authorities dispossessed and deported them. Nova Scotia was then available for Anglo-American settlement.
With the fall of Quebec in 1759, and the 1763 treaty of
Paris, British control over the northern half of North America was unrivalled. The attempt to integrate the French, catholic population of the St Lawrence valley into the British empire formed a large part of the political agenda for the next century. A series of constitutions was enacted to address the evolving relationship. The
Quebec Act (1774) guaranteed religious freedoms and legal customs, providing greater privileges to the Canadians than catholics enjoyed in Britain. In doing so, it heightened tensions between Britain and its colonies to the south.
When conflict between Britain and its other North American colonies broke out, Nova Scotia, though populated in large part by recent arrivals from Massachusetts, obeyed the military garrison at Halifax. Quebec maintained its allegiance, not necessarily out of love for the British rulers, but for fear of the more radical protestants of the rebel colonies. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, loyalist refugees streamed north to the colonies that had refused to join the rebels.
The arrival of the Anglo-American refugees created new exigencies. Nova Scotia was divided into two colonies,
New Brunswick and peninsular Nova Scotia.
Prince Edward Island had already acquired a separate administration from Nova Scotia in 1769, and
Cape Breton Island enjoyed a separate status as a refuge for loyalists for 40 years. In 1791, Quebec was divided essentially along the Ottawa river to create Upper and Lower Canada. Henceforth, Upper Canada contained primarily an English-speaking population.
The North American colonies were often more of strategic than economic importance to the British. With the fisheries secured, the colonies served two other main purposes. They provided other primary resources, such as wheat, timber, and minerals. Also, they offered a place for British emigrants. Until the 1810s, relatively few made the rough transatlantic voyage to settle in the British North American colonies. But after 1815, Highland Scots and northern Irish flocked to Canada. These huge influxes of population exacerbated tensions between colonial politicians and the mother country and were important factors in the rebellions of 1837–8 in Lower Canada. In turn, these rebellions suggested to the British government that the attempt to integrate the French-Canadian population into the empire had not been successful.
A third constitution, the Union Act, tried to address the problems, uniting the two Canadas, in the hope of swamping the French-speaking population. However, brilliant French-Canadian politicians made alliances with reformist English-speaking colleagues to defeat the attempts. The fourth constitution, the British North America Act of 1867, essentially rejected the assimilationist policy, by separating again Upper and Lower Canada, and joining them with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, much to the dismay of many people in the latter two colonies. The four provinces received important degrees of autonomy, within a federal system. This constitution, the longest lasting of all the attempts, has proved the most malleable, and despite increasing tensions since the 1960s, the most successful. But Quebec separatism, as demonstrated by the referendum of 1995, remains strong.
With the BNA Act, the name Canada extended to take in the provinces involved. Other provinces and territories were either annexed or joined the federation subsequently: the Northwest Territories through purchase from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870; Manitoba (1870); British Columbia (1871); Prince Edward Island (1873); the Arctic Islands (1880), Yukon (1898); Alberta and Saskatchewan (1905); Newfoundland (1949). Canada was a self-governing dominion, the ‘eldest daughter’ of the empire. Constitutionally equal in status to Britain according to the statute of
Westminster (1931), until 1949 the final court of appeal remained the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, and until 1982 any amendments to the constitution had to be requested of the Westminster Parliament.
Due to further waves of migration, Canada retained and extended its British character. Between 1902 and 1912 alone, over 1.5 million British emigrants left for Canada. A similarly large proportion of immigrants arrived following the Second World War. In part because of these continuing migrations, cultural and emotional links to Britain in English-speaking Canada remained strong until relatively recently and Canada contributed greatly to the allied war effort in both world wars. However, following the Second World War, Canadian politicians and diplomats have attempted to carve out a separate space in world affairs. For instance, Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel peace prize for negotiating an end to the
Suez crisis in 1956 despite British consternation at Canada's role in the matter.
By 1994 Canada's population was nearing 30 million. Economically, Canada has at times relied heavily on British markets and investment. Though in slow decline for a long period, since the Second World War trade between Canada and Britain has levelled out at a lower, but not inconsequential, level. As the economic clout of the USA expanded in the 20th cent., so did its influence over Canada. The passage of the Free Trade Agreement in 1989 (and later the North American Free Trade Agreement) recognized and indeed enhanced Canada's continental orientation.
Colin M. Coates
Bibliography
Conrad, M., et al. , History of the Canadian Peoples (2 vols., Toronto, 1993);
Francis, R. D., et al. , Origins: Canadian History to Confederation (Toronto, 1992);
—— et al., Destinies: Canadian History since Confederation (Toronto, 1992).
