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Canada has a rich and varied history that spans thousands of years, from the First Nations who inhabited the land long before European settlement, to the arrival of French and British colonizers in the 16th and 17th centuries. One of the most significant figures in Canadian history is Sir John A. Macdonald, who was the first Prime Minister of Canada and played a key role in the country's Confederation in 1867. Another important figure is Terry Fox, a Canadian athlete who lost his leg to cancer and embarked on a cross-country run to raise awareness and funds for cancer research. Viola Desmond is a pivotal figure in Canadian civil rights history. She was a black Nova Scotian businesswoman who challenged racial segregation in a movie theatre in 1946, a decade before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in the United States.
The provinces and territories of Canada
Canada is the second-largest country in the world by land area and is divided into 10 provinces and 3 territories:
Provinces:
Territories:
Canadian history
Canada is one of the oldest centers of human settlement in the Americas. The first humans to cross the frozen Bering land bridge tens of thousands of years ago were largely confined to Alaska and the Yukon for thousands of years as the route further south was blocked by ice. When this melted from approximately 15000 BCE onwards it allowed for migration across the region covering much of modern-day Canada and some of the oldest archaeological sites on the continent are found in the country. Thereafter over a period of thousands of years successive cultures of increasing levels of sophistication such as the Woodland Culture and the Hopewell Culture flourished here, particularly in the far east and south around the northern edges of the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River. By the time the Vikings were making their explorations along the Newfoundland and Vinland region the Iroquoian Indians and other native peoples were dominant in a wide arc of land stretching from eastern Canada south into the East Coast region of the continental United States.[1]
Eastern Canada and in particular Newfoundland was one of the most intensively explored regions of North America in the sixteenth century, with French and English crown voyages being sent here and the Newfoundland fishery being visited annually by fishermen from all over Western Europe, but it was not until the French began to settle what they called New France around the mouth of the St Lawrence River in the early seventeenth century that the region first experienced sustained European colonization. For the next century and a half there was a struggle for supremacy between the British and the French here and in many ways Canada emerged as a nation out of the French colonies to the north and the United States out of the English colonies further south.[2]
France lost control of New France to the British at the end of the Seven Years' War (1756–63). By that time the British colonies further south had developed their own identity and in 1776 they declared their independence from Britain and soon became the United States of America.[3] Yet Britain retained control of its more northerly colony, which came to be known as Canada in the 1790s after an Iroquoian word Kanata for ‘settlement’ or ‘village’.[4] A dual culture also developed here, partly French in line with the region’s position as a former French colony and partly British, with Quebec in particular being a Francophone and Francophile province, having been most intensively settled by the French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Canada was granted increasing amounts of self-government from the passage of the British North America Act in 1867 onwards, though different provinces had different levels of self-determination for decades to come. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885 opened the west of the country up to much greater settlement, while the Yukon gold rush at the end of the nineteenth century brought many people to the barren north-west. With the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 Canada might be said to have become a fully autonomous nation, though it has remained one of the most stalwart members of the British Commonwealth and was a major contributor to the Allied war effort during the Second World War.[5]
See also: Canadian history
Canadian geography
Canada is the second largest country in the world by sheer geographical space occupied. But like the largest country in the world, Russia, much of its territory is frozen and is tt is thinly pop,ulated and until recently was also economically unproductive. Additionally, Canada has the largest collection of fresh water lakes found anywhere in the world. The more temperate and habitable parts of the country are in the south and along the coasts of the North Pacific and North Atlantic. Unsurprisingly, it is here where the major population centers are, especially so in the east, which first experienced French and then British colonization in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The major cities of Quebec, Montreal and Toronto are found here and along the northern shores of the Great Lakes, though Vancouver on the other side of the US border from Seattle is a major settlement in the west and inland cities such as Calgary and Winnipeg are growing in size.[6] Global climate change will most likely lead to new parts of Canada, which are thinly populated at present, becoming more densely settled in the course of the twenty-first century.
See also: Canadian geography
Researching family history in Canada
The Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa is the national archive and library of Canada and is where much of the research material for the study of family history and genealogy in Canada is located.[7] It is the fifth largest library in the world, eclipsed only by the British Library in London, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., Shanghai Library and New York Public Library. This contains voluminous records for family history and genealogical research. Censuses were carried out every ten years in Canada from 1851 onwards and the records of these are fully digitized and searchable online.[8] Because of its colonial past, many records which are pertinent to the study of family history in Canada are to be found in the National Archives of the United Kingdom at Kew in London amongst the Colonial class of documents and in the Archives Nationales in France.[9]
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Canadian ethnicity
Canada is a diverse country with a wide range of ethnicities represented among its population. According to the 2021 Census, the largest ethnic groups in Canada are English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, East Indian, and Filipino. Other significant ethnic groups include Indigenous peoples, Black Canadians, and those of Ukrainian, Polish, and Dutch descent. Immigration has played a major role in shaping Canada's ethnic diversity, with over 20% of the population being foreign-born.
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Canadian surnames
Surnames are an important component of researching family history in Canada, as they can provide valuable clues to an individual's ancestry and cultural background. Canadian surnames reflect the country's diverse history and immigration patterns, with many families tracing their roots back to countries such as France (e.g. Tremblay), the United Kingdom (e.g. Smith), Germany (e.g. Schmidt), Italy (e.g. Rossi), and China (e.g. Wong), among others. Some surnames are more common in certain regions of Canada, while others are more prevalent among specific ethnic or cultural groups.
See also:
Explore more about Canada
- Canadian Historical Record Collections on MyHeritage
- Canadian Webinar Series on Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/iroquois
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/new-france
- ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/seven-years-war
- ↑ https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/origin-name-canada.html
- ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16841165
- ↑ https://thecanadaguide.com/places/geography/
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/national-archives-of-canada
- ↑ https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/Pages/census.aspx
- ↑ https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4233