A Brief History of Canada

During the 1995 referendum campaign, I personally could find only one sustained reference to the reality of our past …

As for the language used by Daniel Johnson, Jean Charest and Jean Chrétien, it was as if the country had popped out of an egg the day before fully formed […] Lucien Bouchard’s repeated reference to the past referred only as far back as 1982.

Our future was debated and decided as if we had no past. No experience. Therefore no reality. And yet Canada is not a new country. In legal terms it is one of the oldest in the world. In constitutional terms it is one a tiny handful of stable, long-lasting democracies.

John Ralston Saul, Reflections of Siamese Twin

It is the winter of 1534. Jacques Cartier and his band of explorers are slowly dying from scurvy. In a show of compassion, a common trait of the local inhabitants, they give Cartier the cure for the disease and the little band of brave men from France are rescued from certain death.

The next two hundred and twenty-nine years are marked by conflict as the French and English bring their never-ending wars to the New World and the Natives choose sides. The exception being the western interior which for most of the eighteenth century remains in relative peace thanks, in part, to that great Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendry who, between 1730 and 1749 negotiates a series of treaties with the local inhabitants. One of these would be an alliance with the Cree-Assiniboine-Ojibwa against the Dakota to the south thereby preserving the great plains for the future country of Canada.

In 1763, France decides that its colony is not worth the trouble and abandons it to the British. Guy Carleton, the second Governor of the former French colony, convinces the British government to allow the inhabitants "the Canadians" to practice their religion and keep their language.

When the American war of independence begins in 1775, most of the Iroquois Nations under the great Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) fight the Americans denying them the land that would become the province of Ontario.

When the Americans under Benedict Arnold try to wrest Quebec and the entire St. Lawrence River valley from the British, they erroneously assume that tens of thousands of French-Canadians will gladly join the thirteen colonies in rebellion. He meets his Waterloo in front of the city of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham on cold snowy December night.

In the war of 1812, the British, French-Canadians or simply Canadians as they are called at the time and Natives again join together to preserve the integrity of the territory that will become Canada. Tecumseh, the famous Shawnee warrior and leader and the Iroquois nations are again instrumental in denying the Americans the land that would become the Province of Ontario. The Canadians deny the Americans the land that would become the Province of Quebec.

Following the war, Natives surrender most of their lands in Upper Canada to the British Crown in formal treaties. Further bloodless surrender of native lands will follow as the European settlers move west. For this extremely generous act, the British Government guarantees in writing that it will always look after their needs it terms of food, shelter and general well-being.

In 1851, it’s the Métis who fight and defend the territory that would become the country’s breadbasket. In the Battle of Grand Coteau, the Métis defeat the Sioux from further south for the control of key buffalo hunting grounds. For close to a century the Métis defend, dominate, settle and farm the prairies.

In 1867, the former French colony and the remaining English colonies put their differences aside and join together for the greater good and security of all in a Confederation.

In 1878, John A. MacDonald and the Conservatives are re-elected to continue in their nation building ways. During the election campaign MacDonald promises to protect the country’s fledging economy from being completely dominated by its southern neighbour by the adoption of a national economic policy or as it was called the National Policy to, in MacDonald’s own words "benefit the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing and other interest of the Dominion". The National Policy is a success.

1896, it’s the Liberals turn to continue the nation building process. Under the Leadership of Wilfrid Laurier, the first French-Canadian Prime Minister the prairies are opened up to massive immigration thereby creating a new generation of Canadians and ensuring that the West will remain Canadian. At Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in the summer of 1897 he rebuffs Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain proposal to bring the former colonies into a proposed imperial, military, economic, and political federation thereby setting the stage for the creation of the Commonwealth and Canada achieving full independence.

The next eighty or so years are an exercise in strengthening the union and continuing the co-operation among the three founding races while promoting everyone’s welfare and creating a country spanning a continent and bordering three of the world’s five oceans. Its southern neighbour fought a revolutionary war and a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve what Canada did with little loss of life.

This new country’s attitude to nation building, such as looking for the stuff that unites as opposed to that other stuff, leads it to create laws that would make all its citizens feel at home anywhere in the vastness of Canada, culminating in the Official Languages Act.

In looking for the stuff that unites, the government became more involved in the welfare of the less fortunate leading to universal and equal access to medical care and the elimination of the morally repugnant practice where one group in society could profit from the pain and suffering of another. In looking for the stuff that unites, it embarks on ambitious projects alone and with the private sector that test the metal of the young country.

In looking for the stuff that unites, it creates national institutions to provide equal service to Canadians, whether they be in the city or labouring somewhere in the vast hinterland.

In looking for the stuff that unites, it accomplishes incredible feats of engineering and organization that are even more impressive when you consider the size of the country and its small population:

1. At 9:22 am on November 7, 1885 at Craigallachie, British Columbia, Donald Smith hammers the last spike that completes the Canadian Pacific Railway. With a population of less than 5 million souls, Canada has built a transcontinental railway.

2. During the First World War Canada, with a population approaching nine million souls, raises and equips an army of over 500,000 men and women and sends them to fight and achieve victory an ocean away.

3. On November 2, 1936, Canada creates the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. For the first time all Canadians will be able to share in the Canadian experience delivered to them by their own Canadian broadcasting network.

4. On April 10, 1937, a bill is passed in Parliament to create Trans-Canada Air Lines. The airline initially created to provide even remote communities with air access would become Air Canada, an international carrier with a world wide reputation for good service and safety. The government purchased the aircraft, hired and paid the employees and grew the airline that would become Canada’s premier domestic and international carrier until its bankruptcy 50 years later and at the hands of its American management.

5. During the Second World War, with a population of slightly more than thirteen million people at its outset, Canada again rises to the challenge and then some. Not only does it provide for its own fighting men and women but it supplies so much war material to its allies in the struggle that it earns the distinction Arsenal of Democracy. To get the war material and supplies to the battle fields, it creates the second largest merchant marine in the world.

6. On August 10^th 1949, the Avro C-102 jet transport, designed and built in Malton, Ontario, better known as the Jetliner, makes its first flight. It’s the first passenger jet flight in North America, and follows the first in the world, which was the Comet flight in the UK, by only 13 days.

7. During the 1950’s Canada builds the Avro Arrow Supersonic Interceptor, the most advance fighter/interceptor of its time. Population of Canada, 1956 census: 16,801,000.

8. In 1962, Canada introduces nationalized health care. Every Canadian will have accessed to quality health care no matter what their social status or income level.

9. February 15, 1965, the country gets it own flag.

10. In 1967, which author Pierre Berton referred to in a novel of the same name as The Last Good Year, Canada holds a grandiose, majestic, inspiring world fair.

Just when the country was finally getting it all together a change happens. Instead of looking for the stuff that unites, the government begins looking for that other stuff.

Rather than acknowledge the contribution of its founding partners, it minimizes them. Rather than continue building symbols to the can-do attitude of the country, it starts demolishing them by putting profits ahead of nation building.

Influenced by the barbaric practices of its southern neighbour when it comes to caring for the sick and the poor, it starts condoning the practice of profiting from the pain and suffering of your fellow man and begins rationing medical care for the poor and those of modest means.

The former Arsenal of Democracy can not even provide for its own defence.

Canada has no merchant marine to speak of; Canadian National Railway Co. has removed the word "Canadian" from everyday company use, re-branding itself CN as if it were ashamed of its history; Air Canada is Canadian in name only; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is suffering the death of a thousand cuts; a foreign country sets the price at which Canada must sell it its oil and gas and the price it must sell these strategic non-renewable resources to Canadians (for how this happened read the Diane Smith interview). Canada has allowed American commercial interest to control and make a mockery of its national sport; ...

Where will it end?

Are the baby boomers and their offspring dumber and less capable than preceding generations which is why Canada has gone from a can do to a can't do nation?

Canada Today (2010+)