Lesson 2: Brief overview of Canada
Canada's History
When moving to a new country, learning about the country's history helps in feeling like part of it. Understanding elements of Canada's history like its topography, government and economy helps to connect the dots when it comes to Canada's governing structure and how its transformed into what it is today. Before confederation (when Canada became a country), European explorers navigated throughout Canada, finding various regions occupied by native peoples. The native people lived off the land, some by hunting and gathering, some by farming, some by purely hunting and some through a combination of all three lifestyles. With the arrival of European traders, missionaries, soldiers and colonists, they changed the native way of life forever. Large numbers of Aboriginals died of European diseases to which they lacked immunity. However, Aboriginals and Europeans formed strong economic, religious and military bonds in the first 200 years of coexistence which laid the foundations of what would become Canada.
Through hundreds of years of exploration from primarily the English and the French, Canada attributes much of its culture to French and English customs. Notable explorers include John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson. John Cabot was the first modern explorer who discovered what became Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada in 1497. Between 1534 and 1542, Jacques Cartier made three voyages across the Atlantic, discovering the St. Lawrence River forming the foundation for present-day Québec City and Montreal. As for Samuel De Champlain, this French explorer founded the eventual province of Quebec in 1608 as well as the Ottawa river and the Eastern Great Lakes which Canada's biggest city of Toronto overlooks. As for Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson, these explorers mapped out the rest of Western and Northern Canada at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, with Mackenzie exploring out to both the pacific and arctic oceans while Thompson developed the model for the North American maps that we see today.
In addition to exploration, Canada also has a deep history in fur trading which formed the basis of Canada's economy for hundreds of years. The first companies in Canada were formed during the French and British regimes and competed for the fur trade. The Hudson’s Bay Company was formed in 1670 with French, British and Aboriginal employees, and came to dominate the trade in the northwest from Winnipeg to Vancouver. Using the fur trade as a foundation, Canada's economy diversified as immigrants from Europe came to populate Canada's emerging cities. It was only until 1867, when Canada formally became a country with the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec formed the Dominion of Canada. Over time, the rest of Canada's 10 provinces and three territories joined Canada which now form the country to this day. Ultimately, the representatives of these provinces became known as the Fathers of Confederation because they outlined the federal and provincial systems, and also allowed for self-governance on matters of education and health that we still have today.
After confederation, Canada's financial institutions opened in the 18th and early 19th centuries with the nation transitioning from a raw materials economic to a more mixed economy with services, manufacturing, energy and raw materials all playing vital roles in the growth of the nation. For centuries Canada’s economy was based mainly on farming and on exporting natural resources such as fur, fish and timber, transported by roads, lakes, rivers and canals but after the 19th century, Canada's economy boomed and led to exponential growth for the next two hundred years allowing Canada to industrialize, participate in both world wars, take on active peacekeeping missions around the world and develop its worldwide reputation of being friendly and cooperative on the world stage.
Canada Today
Postwar Canada experienced great prosperity and material progress. After the second world war and the post-depression era, Canada played an active role in creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now the World Trade Organization (WTO). As Canada began trading internationally, they discovered large oil reserves in Alberta in 1947 which began Canada’s modern energy industry. In 1951, for the first time, a majority of Canadians were able to afford adequate food, shelter and clothing. Between 1945 and 1970, as Canada drew closer to the United States and other trading partners, the country enjoyed one of the strongest economies among industrialized nations. Today, Canadians enjoy one of the world’s highest standards of living—maintained by the hard work of Canadians and by trade with other nations, in particular the United States.
As Canada developed in autonomy gradually, Canada began its role as a peacekeeping nation in the 1950s. Notable examples include Canada's involvement in forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance with the United States and members of western Europe which combatted the Soviet Union and their satellite states during the cold war. Canada also joined international organizations such as the United Nations (UN). It participated in the UN operation defending South Korea in the Korean War (1950–53). Canada has also taken part in numerous UN peacekeeping missions in places as varied as Egypt, Cyprus and Haiti, as well as in other international security operations such as those in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
Canada has also changed socially since the mid 20th century, as Canada became a more flexible and open society. Many took advantage of expanding secondary and postsecondary educational opportunities and a growing number of women entered the professional work force. Canada became a more accepting country, and granted voting rights to all people over 18 in 1960, and continued to build its reputation as a diverse country that's accepting to all races. The idea of multiculturalism, as a result of 19th- and 20th-century immigration, gained a new impetus. By the 1960s, one-third of Canadians had origins that were neither British nor French, and took pride in preserving their distinct culture in the Canadian fabric. Today, diversity enriches Canadians’ lives, particularly in our cities and continues to develop Canada in a unique way that all Canadians are proud of.
Great Canadian Discoveries and Inventions
Canadians have made various discoveries and inventions. Some of the most famous are listed below.
- Alexander Graham Bell — thought of the idea of the telephone at his summer house in Canada.
- Joseph-Armand Bombardier — invented the snowmobile, a light-weight winter vehicle.
- Sir Sandford Fleming — invented the world system of standard time zones.
- Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward — together invented the first electric light bulb and later sold the patent to Thomas Edison who, more famously, commercialized the light bulb.
- Reginald Fessenden — contributed to the invention of radio, sending the first wireless voice message in the world.
- Dr. Wilder Penfield —was a pioneering brain surgeon at McGill University in Montreal, and was known as “the greatest living Canadian.”
- Dr. John A. Hopps — invented the first cardiac pacemaker, used today to save the lives of people with heart disorders.
- SPAR Aerospace / National Research Council — invented the Canadarm, a robotic arm used in outer space.
- Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie — of Research in Motion (RIM) — a wireless communications company known for its most famous invention, the BlackBerry.
Provinces and territories
Canada is the second largest country on earth, covering an area of 10 million square kilometres (3.9 million square miles). Three oceans border Canada: the Pacific Ocean in the west, the Atlantic Ocean in the east, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Altogether, Canada has over 200,000 kilometres (125,000 miles) of coastline. Canada shares two borders with the United States: a very long border in the south and another long frontier in the northwest.
Due to its large size, Canada has many different types of landscape. There are areas with high mountains, different types of forests, prairie grasslands and arctic tundra where the ground is permanently frozen. Canada is also home to many rivers and lakes.
Canada has 10 provinces and three territories, each with its own capital city. These provinces and territories are commonly grouped into five regions.
The population of Canada has a very uneven distribution. Due to factors related to historical settlement, climate and the economy, the majority of people live in southern Ontario and Quebec, southwest British Columbia and Alberta. Much of the north has a very low population density, mostly due to the cold climate.
Official languages
English and French are the two official languages of Canada. Today, there are approximately 18 million Anglophones – people who speak English as a first language – and 7 million Francophones – people who speak French as a first language. Most Francophones live in Quebec. However, one million Francophones live in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, with a smaller presence in other provinces. At the same time, approximately one million Anglophones live in Quebec. A large number of non-official languages are also spoken in Canada. These include Aboriginal languages and a variety of languages spoken within immigrant communities.
By law, the federal government must provide services throughout Canada in both English and French.
Economy
Canada’s free market economy includes three main types of industries.
Service industries provide thousands of different jobs in areas like transportation, education, health care, construction, banking, communications, retail services, tourism and government. More than 75 percent of working Canadians now have jobs in service industries.
Manufacturing industries make products to sell in Canada and around the world. Manufactured products include paper, high technology equipment, aerospace technology, automobiles, machinery, food, clothing and many other goods. Our largest international trading partner is the United States.
Natural resource industries include forestry, fishing, agriculture, mining and energy. These industries have played an important part in the country’s history and development. Today, the economy of many areas of the country still depends on developing natural resources, and a large percentage of Canada’s exports are natural resource commodities like oil, gas and minerals.
Having largely abandoned the country’s agricultural-manufacturing past, today upwards of 75 per cent of Canadians work in what is dubbed the service sector of the economy, while only a small minority still work in farms or factories. The service sector of the Canadian economy is extremely vast and diverse, and basically entails any sort of (mostly) non-physical work that deals with helping people, rather than making or growing things. Most Canadians who live in large cities like Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal work in the service sector.
Within the service sector, the largest sub-sector is the trades, which are highly specialized, skill-based professions like electrician, carpenter, or computer repairman. Other large sub-sectors include health care, which includes doctors, nurses and surgeons, plus their clerks and assistants; finance, which includes bankers, stock brokers, and real-estate agents; education, which includes teachers, professors, librarians and administrators; and food and retail, which covers cooks, store clerks, and cashiers in places like shopping malls, restaurants, grocery stores, and other shops. Writers, artists, journalists, and entertainers, like actors or musicians, are all considered service workers, too. Government or bureaucratic work has also become quite popular in recent decades, with the Canadian federal government now said to be the single largest employer in the country.
Canada’s few remaining farmers reside primarily in the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, where they continue to grow crops such as wheat, corn, and oilseed, as well as raise cattle and pigs for meat and dairy, just like their forefathers before them. In many parts of the country, a renewed interest in organic food is helping provide some Canadian farmers, particularly fruit and vegetable farmers, with a mini boom, but overall, Canadian agriculture remains very much an industry in decline.
Canadian manufacturing remains only slightly more lucrative, and still employs about two million workers, or about 13 per cent of the country’s total labour force. Like agriculture, it’s another industry highly concentrated in one part of the country, in this case the so-called “central Canadian region” of Ontario and Quebec, which together house more than 75 per cent of all Canadian manufacturing jobs. The most famous of these remain centred around Canada’s automotive sector, historically one of the leading symbols of Canada’s postwar economic boom, but now in steady decline as outsourcing and robotics lower the need for Canadian workers in this sector. In forest-rich British Columbia, the production of lumber and paper still dominates provincial manufacturing, while the production of food, chemicals, electronics, and other miscellaneous bits of machinery dominate in small communities elsewhere. As is the case with most western nations, much of what Canadians still manufacture in their own country consists of specialty products that are either too expensive or impractical to build overseas.
Structure of government
There are three levels of government in Canada:
- federal
- provincial or territorial
- municipal
Each level has different areas of responsibility, which can be identified based on geography and types of services. The federal government creates laws and manages programs and services that tend to affect the whole country, the provincial and territorial governments have powers to make decisions relating to areas of law that affect their province or territory directly, and the municipal governments are responsible for establishing by-laws and services that are administered in a specific city, town or village. Both the federal and provincial/territorial areas of responsibility are listed in the Constitution Act, 1867.
Check below for examples of the laws and services established by each level of government.
Federal Responsibilities
- national defence
- foreign affairs
- employment insurance
- banking
- federal taxes
- the post office
- copyright law
- criminal law
Provincial Responsibilities
- provincial taxes
- hospitals
- prisons
- education
- marriage
- property and civil rights
- rules of the road
- age of majority
Municipal Responsibilities
- building permits and zoning
- city parks
- public transportation
- collection of garbage and recycling
- water and sewer services
- fire prevention
- city roads and sidewalks
- licensing and control of pets
More information can be found here.