Canada

Article Outline

Introduction; Land and Resources; People; Arts; Economy; Government; History; The 21st Century

Indigenous Peoples in 1500

In 1500, on the eve of regular European contact, there may have been 300,000 people living in Canada, although some estimates run much higher. More than half were clustered in two regions, southern Ontario and the Pacific coast. Despite divisions due to distance, language, and culture, trade networks stretched far across the continent, as did diplomatic alliances, rivalries, and warfare. Each nation had its own myths, heroes, and spiritual practices, but they all shared a reverence for nature and a sense of the spiritual presence in all living things.

The societies of the Algonquian language family, the most widespread in North America, extended from the Atlantic coast to the Rockies. Groups on the Atlantic coast made extensive use of fish and coastal marine life. Most Algonquian speakers, however, were hunter-gatherers: They hunted deer and other large animals, and gathered nuts and wild grains. They lived in small bands of related families, in the forest that stretches across Canada from west to east. Some moved into the Great Plains to make their living by hunting bison.

Another language group, the Athapaskan speakers, were also hunter-gatherers. They lived mainly in the northwestern forest, but some groups lived on the plains, along with some Algonquian and Siouan groups. These plains people wintered in sheltered river valleys and followed the bison herds. They planned and executed well-organized drives to stampede bison over cliffs. From the bison they got not only food but also clothing, tools, and many other necessities. These societies began their golden age in the mid-1700s when they got horses, imported to North America via Mexico. With the new mobility that horses provided, mounted bison hunters such as the Blackfoot and Plains Cree flourished on the Great Plains.

On the tundra, the Arctic coast, and Arctic lands lived the Inuit, who developed ingenious inventions to help them survive in one of the world’s most forbidding climates. The Inuit lived in small bands as hunters, with a diet almost wholly of sea animals, although some followed the caribou herds. They spoke a common language, in several dialects, that spread eastward from Alaska to Greenland barely a thousand years ago. It is part of the Eskimo-Aleut language group, which has branches in Siberia and thus is the only indigenous language group with a clearly identified Asian connection.

European Contact: 985-1600

The Viking Voyagers

Viking colonists of Iceland and Greenland were the first Europeans known to have reached North America. They began to visit the northeast coast of Canada about ad 985, when they settled Greenland. Leif Ericson of Greenland sailed west about ad 1000 to a place he called Vinland and built a settlement there. This may have been L’Anse aux Meadows, a place on the island of Newfoundland and Labrador where remains of a Viking village were found in the 1960s. Although the colony did not last long, Viking contact with indigenous people may have been widespread on the northeast coast. This contact seems to have been marked by conflict despite some evidence of trading exchanges. Contact with North America had ceased entirely by the time Europe lost contact with Greenland in 1410.

Search for the Northwest Passage

Later in the 15th century, Europe’s seafarers began extending the range of their voyages. John Cabot, an Italian in the service of England, renewed contact with northern North America when he sailed to Newfoundland in 1497. Cabot sought a Northwest Passage, a westward sea route to the wealthy empires known to exist in Asia. He was soon followed by Portuguese and other explorers who were seeking a water route to Asia through or around North America. In 1576 Martin Frobisher sailed to Baffin Island. In 1585 John Davis found and named Davis Strait. In 1610 Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson Bay. Hudson was marooned there by his mutinous crew, and Sir Thomas Button’s unsuccessful search for him (1612-1613) confirmed that there was no western exit from the bay. Well into the 18th century, however, hopeful explorers looked for navigable rivers that might form a water route if connected by short portages. All of these explorations helped to map Canada and bring its natural resources to the attention of people in Europe.

In 1534 King Francis I of France dispatched explorer Jacques Cartier to seek empires similar to the wealthy ones that Spain had recently conquered in Mexico. Cartier explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but he found no such empires. In 1535 he traveled the St. Lawrence River as far as the Iroquoian town of Hochelaga (the present site of Montréal) and confirmed that the river offered no sea route to Asia. Cartier’s men spent the winter at Stadacona, an Iroquoian village where Québec City now stands. Cartier brought back a name for the country, Canada, which seems to mean “village.” In 1541 he led a larger colonization venture that was also unsuccessful.

First Commercial Ventures

Whale oil, cod, and furs brought a steadier, less publicized stream of European sailors to Canada. From the early 1500s until after 1600, Basques, people from southern France and northern Spain, came each year to Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence to hunt whales. English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese fishers came to catch cod on the shallow, bountiful Grand Banks off the Atlantic coast, often drying the catch on the shores. The fishing industry led to several attempts to start colonies in Newfoundland and elsewhere. Few endured, although the fishing season regularly brought a throng of fishers to some harbors. In 1583 English adventurer Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrived at busy St. John’s Harbour in Newfoundland and found it crowded with boats.

Although Spanish and Portuguese boats shared the harbor with the English, Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for England. In the 1600s, after the Spanish and Portuguese quit fishing in the Grand Banks, permanent English communities grew up around Newfoundland’s Avalon peninsula, and French communities grew up on the island’s south coast. About the same time, whalers and fishers began to develop a trade in furs with indigenous nations they met along the coasts. Europe’s hatters discovered that beaver hair, when shaved and matted into a stiff felt, was the finest hat-making material available. The Canadian fur trade, destined to be the backbone of the economy for some 200 years, was born. See also Fisheries; Whaling.

European-Indigenous Relations

For several hundred years, there were few European settlers across much of Canada, and thus there were few conflicts between them and the indigenous peoples over control of the land. Trading relations, rooted in the fur trade that eventually spread across the continent, were often more important. The fur trade changed indigenous societies by adding new European goods to their way of life, encouraging them to concentrate on trade with the newcomers, and often leading them into new alliances or conflicts based on trade. But trade rarely put the indigenous nations under European domination. Missionaries, who often accompanied the early traders, tried to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity but were frequently disappointed by their lack of success. So long as the indigenous societies remained independent, they rarely showed great enthusiasm for European religions. For centuries after the arrival of Cabot, most of them retained control over their contacts with Europeans.

In these early years, disease was the greatest effect of European contact. The Europeans brought with them diseases that were unknown in North America, and the indigenous people lacked immunity to them. The result was devastating epidemics that ran through the Americas long before any Europeans moved inland to report them. The population began to decline as soon as the Europeans arrived. Some scholars have estimated that the Mi’kmaq lost 90 percent of their population between 1500 and 1600.