History of Canada

The Great Lakes are estimated to have been formed at the end of the last glacial period (about 10,000 years ago), when the Laurentide Ice Sheet receded.

Archeological and Indigenous genetic evidence indicate that North and South America were the last continents into which humans migrated.[1] During the Wisconsin glaciation, 50,000–17,000 years ago, falling sea levels allowed people to move gradually across the Bering land bridge (Beringia), from Siberia into northwest North America.[2] At that point, they were blocked by the Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered most of Canada, confining them to Alaska and the Yukon for thousands of years.[3] The exact dates and routes of the peopling of the Americas are the subject of an ongoing debate.[4][5]

By 16,000 years ago the glacial melt allowed people to move by land south and east out of Beringia, and into Canada.[6] The Haida Gwaii islands, Old Crow Flats, and the Bluefish Caves contain some of the earliest Paleo-Indian archeological sites in Canada.[7][8][9] Ice Age hunter-gatherers of this period left lithic flake fluted stone tools and the remains of large butchered mammals.

The North American climate stabilized around 8000 BCE (10,000 years ago). Climatic conditions were similar to modern patterns; however, the receding glacial ice sheets still covered large portions of the land, creating lakes of meltwater.[10] Most population groups during the Archaic periods were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers.[11] However, individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally; thus with the passage of time, there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization (i.e.: Paleo-Arctic, Plano and Maritime Archaic traditions).[11]

The Woodland cultural period dates from about 2000 BCE to 1000 CE and is applied to the Ontario, Quebec, and Maritime regions.[12] The introduction of pottery distinguishes the Woodland culture from the previous Archaic-stage inhabitants. The Laurentian-related people of Ontario manufactured the oldest pottery excavated to date in Canada.[13]

PP

S

L

Great Lakes area of the Hopewell interaction area
PP=Point Peninsula complex   S=Saugeen complex   L=Laurel complex

The Hopewell tradition is an Indigenous culture that flourished along American rivers from 300 BCE to 500 CE. At its greatest extent, the Hopewell Exchange System connected cultures and societies to the peoples on the Canadian shores of Lake Ontario.[14] Canadian expression of the Hopewellian peoples encompasses the Point Peninsula, Saugeen, and Laurel complexes.[15]

The eastern woodland areas of what became Canada were home to the Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples. The Algonquian language is believed to have originated in the western plateau of Idaho or the plains of Montana and moved with migrants eastward,[16] eventually extending in various manifestations all the way from Hudson Bay to what is today Nova Scotia in the east and as far south as the Tidewater region of Virginia.[17]

Speakers of eastern Algonquian languages included the Mi'kmaq and Abenaki of the Maritime region of Canada and likely the extinct Beothuk of Newfoundland.[18][19] The Ojibwa and other Anishinaabe speakers of the central Algonquian languages retain an oral tradition of having moved to their lands around the western and central Great Lakes from the sea, likely the Atlantic coast.[20] According to oral tradition, the Ojibwa formed the Council of Three Fires in 796 CE with the Odawa and the Potawatomi.[21]

The Five Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) were centred from at least 1000 CE in northern New York, but their influence extended into what is now southern Ontario and the Montreal area of modern Quebec. They spoke varieties of Iroquoian languages.[22] The Iroquois Confederacy, according to oral tradition, was formed in 1142 CE.[23][24] In addition, there were other Iroquoian-speaking peoples in the area, including the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, the Erie, and others.

Pre-Columbian distribution of Algonquian languages in North America.

Pre-Columbian distribution of Na-Dene languages in North America.

On the Great Plains, the Cree or Nēhilawē (who spoke a closely related Central Algonquian language, the plains Cree language) depended on the vast herds of bison to supply food and many of their other needs.[25] To the northwest were the peoples of the Na-Dene languages, which include the Athapaskan-speaking peoples and the Tlingit, who lived on the islands of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. The Na-Dene language group is believed to be linked to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia.[26] The Dene of the western Arctic may represent a distinct wave of migration from Asia to North America.[26]

The Interior of British Columbia was home to the Salishan language groups such as the Shuswap (Secwepemc), Okanagan and southern Athabaskan language groups, primarily the Dakelh (Carrier) and the Tsilhqot'in.[27] The inlets and valleys of the British Columbia Coast sheltered large, distinctive populations, such as the Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, sustained by the region's abundant salmon and shellfish.[27] These peoples developed complex cultures dependent on the western red cedar that included wooden houses, seagoing whaling and war canoes and elaborately carved potlatch items and totem poles.[27]

In the Arctic archipelago, the distinctive Paleo-Eskimos known as Dorset peoples, whose culture has been traced back to around 500 BCE, were replaced by the ancestors of today's Inuit by 1500 CE.[28] This transition is supported by archeological records and Inuit mythology that tells of having driven off the Tuniit or 'first inhabitants'.[29] Inuit traditional laws are anthropologically different from Western law. Customary law was non-existent in Inuit society before the introduction of the Canadian legal system.[30]

L'Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland, site of a small Norse settlement built around 1000 CE

The Norse, who had settled Greenland and Iceland, arrived around 1000 CE and built a small settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland (carbon dating estimate 990 – 1050 CE).[31] L'Anse aux Meadows, the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside of Greenland, is also notable for its connection with the attempted settlement of Vinland by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with Norse exploration of the Americas.[31][32]

A 1947 commemorative stamp of John Cabot's voyage in 1497

Under letters patent from King Henry VII of England, the Italian John Cabot became the first European known to have landed in Canada after the Viking Age. Records indicate that on June 24, 1497 he sighted land at a northern location believed to be somewhere in the Atlantic provinces.[33] Official tradition deemed the first landing site to be at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, although other locations are possible.[34] After 1497 Cabot and his son Sebastian Cabot continued to make other voyages to find the Northwest Passage, and other explorers continued to sail out of England to the New World, although the details of these voyages are not well recorded.[35]

Based on the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish Crown claimed it had territorial rights in the area visited by John Cabot in 1497 and 1498 CE.[36] However, Portuguese explorers like João Fernandes Lavrador would continue to visit the north Atlantic coast, which accounts for the appearance of "Labrador" on maps of the period.[37] In 1501 and 1502 the Corte-Real brothers explored Newfoundland (Terra Nova) and Labrador claiming these lands as part of the Portuguese Empire.[37][38] In 1506, King Manuel I of Portugal created taxes for the cod fisheries in Newfoundland waters.[39] João Álvares Fagundes and Pêro de Barcelos established fishing outposts in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia around 1521 CE; however, these were later abandoned, with the Portuguese colonizers focusing their efforts on South America.[40] The extent and nature of Portuguese activity on the Canadian mainland during the 16th century remains unclear and controversial.[41][42]

Map of North America in 1702 showing forts, towns and areas occupied by European settlements

By the early 1700s the New France settlers were well established along the shores of the Saint Lawrence River and parts of Nova Scotia, with a population around 16,000.[75] However, new arrivals stopped coming from France in the proceeding decades,[76][77][78] meaning that the English and Scottish settlers in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the southern Thirteen Colonies outnumbered the French population approximately ten to one by the 1750s.[70][79]

From 1670, through the Hudson's Bay Company, the English also laid claim to Hudson Bay and its drainage basin, known as Rupert's Land, establishing new trading posts and forts, while continuing to operate fishing settlements in Newfoundland.[80] French expansion along the Canadian canoe routes challenged the Hudson's Bay Company claims, and in 1686, Pierre Troyes led an overland expedition from Montreal to the shore of the bay, where they managed to capture a handful of outposts.[81] La Salle's explorations gave France a claim to the Mississippi River Valley, where fur trappers and a few settlers set up scattered forts and settlements.[82]

There were four French and Indian Wars and two additional wars in Acadia and Nova Scotia between the Thirteen American Colonies and New France from 1688 to 1763. During King William's War (1688 to 1697), military conflicts in Acadia included the Battle of Port Royal (1690); a naval battle in the Bay of Fundy (Action of July 14, 1696); and the Raid on Chignecto (1696).[83] The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 ended the war between the two colonial powers of England and France for a brief time.[84] During Queen Anne's War (1702 to 1713), the British Conquest of Acadia occurred in 1710,[85] resulting in Nova Scotia (other than Cape Breton) being officially ceded to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht, including Rupert's Land, which France had conquered in the late 17th century (Battle of Hudson's Bay).[86] As an immediate result of this setback, France founded the powerful Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island.[87]

A View of the Plundering and Burning of the City of Grimross by Thomas Davies, 1758. It is the only contemporaneous image of the St. John River Campaign, and the expulsion of the Acadians.

Louisbourg was intended to serve as a year-round military and naval base for France's remaining North American empire and to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River. Father Rale's War resulted in both the fall of New France's influence in present-day Maine and the British recognition that it would have to negotiate with the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia. During King George's War (1744 to 1748), an army of New Englanders led by William Pepperrell mounted an expedition of 90 vessels and 4,000 men against Louisbourg in 1745.[88] Within three months the fortress surrendered. The return of Louisbourg to French control by the peace treaty prompted the British to found Halifax in 1749 under Edward Cornwallis.[89] Despite the official cessation of war between the British and French empires with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the conflict in Acadia and Nova Scotia continued as Father Le Loutre's War.[90]

The British ordered the Acadians expelled from their lands in 1755 during the French and Indian War, an event called the Expulsion of the Acadians or le Grand Dérangement.[91] The "expulsion" resulted in approximately 12,000 Acadians being shipped to destinations throughout Britain's North America and to France, Quebec and the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue.[92] The first wave of the expulsion of the Acadians began with the Bay of Fundy Campaign (1755) and the second wave began after the final Siege of Louisbourg (1758). Many of the Acadians settled in southern Louisiana, creating the Cajun culture there.[93] Some Acadians managed to hide and others eventually returned to Nova Scotia, but they were far outnumbered by a new migration of New England Planters who settled on the former lands of the Acadians and transformed Nova Scotia from a colony of occupation for the British to a settled colony with stronger ties to New England.[93] Britain eventually gained control of Quebec City after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Battle of Fort Niagara in 1759, and finally captured Montreal in 1760.[94]

British soldiers and the Canadian militia repel an American column during the Battle of Quebec

During the American Revolution, there was some sympathy for the American cause among the Acadians and the New Englanders in Nova Scotia.[99] Neither party joined the rebels, although several hundred individuals joined the revolutionary cause.[99][100] An invasion of Quebec by the Continental Army in 1775, with a goal to take Quebec from British control, was halted at the Battle of Quebec by Guy Carleton, with the assistance of local militias. The defeat of the British army during the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781 signalled the end of Great Britain's struggle to suppress the American Revolution.[101]

A Black Loyalist wood cutter in Shelburne, Nova Scotia in 1788. After the American Revolutionary War, the remaining colonies of British North America saw an influx of loyalist migrants.

When the British evacuated New York City in 1783, they took many Loyalist refugees to Nova Scotia, while other Loyalists went to southwestern Quebec. So many Loyalists arrived on the shores of the St. John River that a separate colony—New Brunswick—was created in 1784;[102] followed in 1791 by the division of Quebec into the largely French-speaking Lower Canada (French Canada) along the St. Lawrence River and Gaspé Peninsula and an anglophone Loyalist Upper Canada, with its capital settled by 1796 in York (present-day Toronto).[103] After 1790 most of the new settlers were American farmers searching for new lands; although generally favourable to republicanism, they were relatively non-political and stayed neutral in the War of 1812.[104] In 1785, Saint John, New Brunswick became the first incorporated city in what would later become Canada.[54]

The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the war. Great Britain made several concessions to the US at the expense of the North American colonies.[105] Notably, the borders between Canada and the United States were officially demarcated;[105] all land south of the Great Lakes, which was formerly a part of the Province of Quebec and included modern-day Michigan, Illinois and Ohio, was ceded to the Americans. Fishing rights were also granted to the United States in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the coast of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks.[105] The British ignored part of the treaty and maintained their military outposts in the Great Lakes areas it had ceded to the U.S., and they continued to supply their native allies with munitions. The British evacuated the outposts with the Jay Treaty of 1795, but the continued supply of munitions irritated the Americans in the run-up to the War of 1812.[106]

Canadian historians have had mixed views on the long-term impact of the American Revolution. Arthur Lower in the 1950s provided the long-standard historical interpretation that for English Canada the results were counter-revolutionary:

[English Canada] inherited, not the benefits, but the bitterness of the Revolution…. English Canada started its life with as powerful a nostalgic shove backward into the past as the Conquest had given to French Canada: two little peoples officially devoted to counter-revolution, to lost causes, to the tawdry ideals of a society of men and masters, and not to the self-reliant freedom alongside of them.[107]

Recently Michel Ducharme has agreed that Canada did indeed oppose "republican liberty", as exemplified by the United States and France. However, he says it did find a different path forward when it fought against British rulers after 1837 to secure "modern liberty". That form of liberty focused not on the virtues of citizens but on protecting their rights from infringement by the state.[108][109]

Loyalist Laura Secord warning the British Lieutenant James FitzGibbon and First Nations of an impending American attack at Beaver Dams, June 1813

The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and the British, with the British North American colonies being heavily involved.[110] Greatly outgunned by the British Royal Navy, the American war plans focused on an invasion of Canada (especially what is today eastern and western Ontario). The American frontier states voted for war to suppress the First Nations raids that frustrated settlement of the frontier.[110] The war on the border with the United States was characterized by a series of multiple failed invasions and fiascos on both sides. American forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, driving the British out of western Ontario, killing the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, and breaking the military power of his confederacy.[111] The war was overseen by British army officers like Isaac Brock and Charles de Salaberry with the assistance of First Nations and loyalist informants, most notably Laura Secord.[112]

The War ended with no boundary changes thanks to the Treaty of Ghent of 1814, and the Rush–Bagot Treaty of 1817.[110] A demographic result was the shifting of the destination of American migration from Upper Canada to Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, without fear of Indigenous attacks.[110] After the war, supporters of Britain tried to repress the republicanism that was common among American immigrants to Canada.[110] The troubling memory of the war and the American invasions etched itself into the consciousness of Canadians as a distrust of the intentions of the United States towards the British presence in North America.[113]^{pp. 254–255}

Leaders of the Patriote movement and their followers during the Assembly of the Six Counties in 1837.

The rebellions of 1837 against the British colonial government took place in both Upper and Lower Canada. In Upper Canada, a band of Reformers under the leadership of William Lyon Mackenzie took up arms in a disorganized and ultimately unsuccessful series of small-scale skirmishes around Toronto, London, and Hamilton.[114]

In Lower Canada, a more substantial rebellion occurred against British rule. Both English- and French-Canadian rebels, sometimes using bases in the neutral United States, fought several skirmishes against the authorities. The towns of Chambly and Sorel were taken by the rebels, and Quebec City was isolated from the rest of the colony. Montreal rebel leader Robert Nelson read the "Declaration of Independence of Lower Canada" to a crowd assembled at the town of Napierville in 1838.[115] The rebellion of the Patriote movement was defeated after battles across Quebec. Hundreds were arrested, and several villages were burnt in reprisal.[115]

The burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal in 1849. Painting by Joseph Légaré, c. 1849.

The British government then sent Lord Durham to examine the situation; he stayed in Canada five months before returning to Britain and brought with him his Durham Report, which strongly recommended responsible government.[116] A less well-received recommendation was the amalgamation of Upper and Lower Canada for the deliberate assimilation of the French-speaking population. The Canadas were merged into a single colony, the United Province of Canada, by the 1840 Act of Union, and responsible government was achieved in 1848, a few months after it was accomplished in Nova Scotia.[116] The parliament of United Canada in Montreal was set on fire by a mob of Tories in 1849 after the passing of an indemnity bill for the people who suffered losses during the rebellion in Lower Canada.[117]

Between the Napoleonic Wars and 1850, some 800,000 immigrants came to the colonies of British North America, mainly from the British Isles, as part of the great migration of Canada.[118] These included Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots displaced by the Highland Clearances to Nova Scotia and Scottish and English settlers to the Canadas, particularly Upper Canada. The Irish Famine of the 1840s significantly increased the pace of Irish Catholic immigration to British North America, with over 35,000 distressed Irish landing in Toronto alone in 1847 and 1848.[119]

Map of the Columbia District, also referred to as Oregon Country. The region was disputed territory between the UK and the US until 1846, with the signing of the Oregon Treaty.

Spanish explorers had taken the lead in the Pacific Northwest coast, with the voyages of Juan José Pérez Hernández in 1774 and 1775.[120] By the time the Spanish determined to build a fort on Vancouver Island, the British navigator James Cook had visited Nootka Sound and charted the coast as far as Alaska, while British and American maritime fur traders had begun a busy era of commerce with the coastal peoples to satisfy the brisk market for sea otter pelts in China, thereby launching what became known as the China Trade.[121] In 1789 war threatened between Britain and Spain on their respective rights; the Nootka Crisis was resolved peacefully largely in favour of Britain, the much stronger naval power at the time. In 1793 Alexander MacKenzie, a Scotsman working for the North West Company, crossed the continent and with his Aboriginal guides and French-Canadian crew, reached the mouth of the Bella Coola River, completing the first continental crossing north of Mexico, missing George Vancouver's charting expedition to the region by only a few weeks.[122] In 1821, the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company merged, with a combined trading territory that was extended by a licence to the North-Western Territory and the Columbia and New Caledonia fur districts, which reached the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the west.[123]

The Colony of Vancouver Island was chartered in 1849, with the trading post at Fort Victoria as the capital. This was followed by the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1853, and by the creation of the Colony of British Columbia in 1858 and the Stikine Territory in 1861, with the latter three being founded expressly to keep those regions from being overrun and annexed by American gold miners.[124] The Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands and most of the Stikine Territory were merged into the Colony of British Columbia in 1863 (the remainder, north of the 60th Parallel, became part of the North-Western Territory).[124]

Using the lure of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a transcontinental line that would unite the nation, Ottawa attracted support in the Maritimes and in British Columbia. In 1866, the Colony of British Columbia and the Colony of Vancouver Island merged into a single Colony of British Columbia. After Rupert's Land was transferred to Canada by Britain in 1870, connecting to the eastern provinces, British Columbia joined Canada in 1871. In 1873, Prince Edward Island joined. Newfoundland—which had no use for a transcontinental railway—voted no in 1869, and did not join Canada until 1949.[132]

The Battle of Fish Creek was a Métis victory over the Canadian Militia during the North-West Rebellion

In 1873, John A. Macdonald (First Prime Minister of Canada) created the North-West Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to help police the Northwest Territories.[133] Specifically the Mounties were to assert Canadian sovereignty to prevent possible American encroachments into the area.[133] The Mounties' first large-scale mission was to suppress the second independence movement by Manitoba's Métis, a mixed-blood people of joint First Nations and European descent, who originated in the mid-17th century.[134] The desire for independence erupted in the Red River Rebellion in 1869 and the later North-West Rebellion in 1885 led by Louis Riel.[133][135] Suppressing the Rebellion was Canada's first independent military action and demonstrated the need to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway. It guaranteed Anglophone control of the Prairies, and demonstrated the national government was capable of decisive action. However, it lost the Conservative Party most of their support in Quebec and led to permanent distrust of the Anglophone community on the part of the Francophones.[136]

As Canada expanded, the Canadian government rather than the British Crown negotiated treaties with the resident First Nations' peoples, beginning with Treaty 1 in 1871.[137] The treaties extinguished aboriginal title on traditional territories, created reserves for the indigenous peoples' exclusive use, and opened up the rest of the territory for settlement. Indigenous people were induced to move to these new reserves, sometimes forcibly.[138] The government imposed the Indian Act in 1876 to govern the relations between the federal government and the Indigenous peoples and govern the relations between the new settlers and the Indigenous peoples.[139] Under the Indian Act, the government started the Residential School System to integrate the Indigenous peoples and "civilize" them.[140][141][142]

A photochrome postcard showing downtown Montreal, c. 1910. Canada's population became urbanized during the 20th century.

In the 1890s, legal experts codified a framework of criminal law, culminating in the Criminal Code, 1892.[143] This solidified the liberal ideal of "equality before the law" in a way that made an abstract principle into a tangible reality for every adult Canadian.[144] Wilfrid Laurier who served 1896–1911 as the Seventh Prime Minister of Canada felt Canada was on the verge of becoming a world power, and declared that the 20th century would "belong to Canada"[145]

The Alaska boundary dispute, simmering since the Alaska Purchase of 1867, became critical when gold was discovered in the Yukon during the late 1890s, with the U.S. controlling all the possible ports of entry. Canada argued its boundary included the port of Skagway. The dispute went to arbitration in 1903, but the British delegate sided with the Americans, angering Canadians who felt the British had betrayed Canadian interests to curry favour with the U.S.[146]

In 1905, Saskatchewan and Alberta were admitted as provinces. They were growing rapidly thanks to abundant wheat crops that attracted immigration to the plains by Ukrainians and Northern and Central Europeans and by settlers from the United States, Britain and eastern Canada.[147][148]

Laurier signed a reciprocity treaty with the U.S. that would lower tariffs in both directions. Conservatives under Robert Borden denounced it, saying it would integrate Canada's economy into that of the U.S. and loosen ties with Britain. The Conservative party won the 1911 Canadian federal election.[149]

A train filled with soldiers departs from Toronto's Union Station shortly after the First World War began in 1914

The Canadian Forces and civilian participation in the First World War helped to foster a sense of British-Canadian nationhood. The highpoints of Canadian military achievement during the First World War came during the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele battles and what later became known as "Canada's Hundred Days".[150] The reputation Canadian troops earned, along with the success of Canadian flying aces including William George Barker and Billy Bishop, helped to give the nation a new sense of identity.[151] The War Office in 1922 reported approximately 67,000 killed and 173,000 wounded during the war.[152] This excludes civilian deaths in war-time incidents like the Halifax Explosion.[152]

Support for Great Britain during the First World War caused a major political crisis over conscription, with Francophones, mainly from Quebec, rejecting national policies.[153] During the crisis, large numbers of enemy aliens (especially Ukrainians and Germans) were put under government controls.[154] The Liberal party was deeply split, with most of its Anglophone leaders joining the unionist government headed by Prime Minister Robert Borden, the leader of the Conservative party.[155] The Liberals regained their influence after the war under the leadership of William Lyon Mackenzie King, who served as prime minister with three separate terms between 1921 and 1949.[156]

On September 20, 1917, women gained a limited right to vote. The nursing sisters at the Canadian hospital in France during World War I were among the first women to vote in any general election

When Canada was founded, women could not vote in federal elections. Women did have a local vote in some provinces, as in Canada West from 1850, where women owning land could vote for school trustees. By 1900 other provinces adopted similar provisions, and in 1916 Manitoba took the lead in extending full women's suffrage.[157] Simultaneously suffragists gave strong support to the prohibition movement, especially in Ontario and the Western provinces.[158][159]

The Military Voters Act of 1917 gave the vote to British women who were war widows or had sons or husbands serving overseas. Unionists Prime Minister Borden pledged himself during the 1917 campaign to equal suffrage for women. After his landslide victory, he introduced a bill in 1918 for extending the franchise to women. This passed without division, but did not apply to Quebec provincial and municipal elections. The women of Quebec gained full suffrage in 1940. The first woman elected to Parliament was Agnes Macphail of Ontario in 1921.[160]

The German delegate is portrayed signing the peace treaties at the Paris Peace Conference, surrounded by Allied delegates. The Canadian delegate, George Foster is visible in the back row (fourth from the left)

Convinced that Canada had proven itself on the battlefields of Europe, Prime Minister Robert Borden demanded that it have a separate seat at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. This was initially opposed not only by Britain but also by the United States, which saw such a delegation as an extra British vote. Borden responded by pointing out that since Canada had lost nearly 60,000 men, a far larger proportion of its men, its right to equal status as a nation had been consecrated on the battlefield. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George eventually relented, and convinced the reluctant Americans to accept the presence of delegations from Canada, India, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South Africa. These also received their own seats in the League of Nations.[161] Canada asked for neither reparations nor mandates. It played only a modest role at Paris, but just having a seat was a matter of pride. It was cautiously optimistic about the new League of Nations, in which it played an active and independent role.[162]

In 1922 British Prime Minister David Lloyd George appealed repeatedly for Canadian support in the Chanak crisis, in which a war threatened between Britain and Turkey. Canada refused, leading to the fall of Lloyd George.[163] The Department of External Affairs, which had been founded in 1909, was expanded and promoted Canadian autonomy as Canada reduced its reliance on British diplomats and used its own foreign service.[164] Thus began the careers of such important diplomats as Norman Robertson and Hume Wrong, and future prime minister Lester Pearson.[165]

I'm Alone, a Canadian ship used to smuggle alcohol across the border during the alcohol prohibition era in the United States

In the 1920s, Canada set up a successful wheat marketing "pool" to keep prices high. Canada negotiated with the United States, Australia, and the Soviet Union to expand the pool, but the effort failed when the Great Depression caused distrust and low prices.[166]

With prohibition underway in the United States, smugglers bought large quantities of Canadian liquor. Both the Canadian distillers and the U.S. State Department put heavy pressure on the Customs and Excise Department to loosen or tighten border controls. Liquor interests paid off corrupt Canadian border officials until the U.S. finally ended prohibition in 1933.[167]

In 1921 to 1926, William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal government pursued a conservative domestic policy with the object of lowering wartime taxes and, especially, cooling wartime ethnic tensions, as well as defusing postwar labour conflicts. The Progressives refused to join the government but did help the Liberals defeat non-confidence motions. King faced a delicate balancing act of reducing tariffs enough to please the Prairie-based Progressives, but not too much to alienate his vital support in industrial Ontario and Quebec, which needed tariffs to compete with American imports. King and Conservative leader Arthur Meighen sparred constantly and bitterly in Commons debates.[168] The Progressives gradually weakened. Their effective and passionate leader, Thomas Crerar, resigned to return to his grain business, and was replaced by the more placid Robert Forke. The socialist reformer J. S. Woodsworth gradually gained influence and power among the Progressives, and he reached an accommodation with King on policy matters.[169]

In 1926 Prime Minister Mackenzie King advised the Governor General, Lord Byng, to dissolve Parliament and call another election, but Byng refused, the only time that the Governor General has exercised such a power. Instead, Byng called upon Meighen, the Conservative Party leader, to form a government.[170] Meighen attempted to do so, but was unable to obtain a majority in the Commons and he, too, advised dissolution, which this time was accepted. The episode, the King–Byng Affair, marks a constitutional crisis that was resolved by a new tradition of complete non-interference in Canadian political affairs on the part of the British government.[171]

Unemployed men march in Toronto, c. 1930

Canada was hit hard by the worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929. Between 1929 and 1933, the gross national product dropped 40% (compared to 37% in the US). Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933.[172] Many businesses closed, as corporate profits of $396 million in 1929 turned into losses of $98 million in 1933. Canadian exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to 1933. Construction all but stopped (down 82%, 1929–33), and wholesale prices dropped 30%. Wheat prices plunged from 78c per bushel (1928 crop) to 29c in 1932.[172]

Urban unemployment nationwide was 19%; Toronto's rate was 17%, according to the census of 1931. Farmers who stayed on their farms were not considered unemployed.[173] By 1933, 30% of the labour force was out of work, and one-fifth of the population became dependent on government assistance. Wages fell as did prices. Worst hit were areas dependent on primary industries such as farming, mining and logging, as prices fell and there were few alternative jobs. Most families had moderate losses and little hardship, though they too became pessimistic and their debts became heavier as prices fell. Some families saw most or all of their assets disappear, and suffered severely.[174][175]

In 1930, in the first stage of the long depression, Prime Minister Mackenzie King believed that the crisis was a temporary swing of the business cycle and that the economy would soon recover without government intervention. He refused to provide unemployment relief or federal aid to the provinces, saying that if Conservative provincial governments demanded federal dollars, he would not give them "a five cent piece."[176] The main issue was the rapid deterioration in the economy and whether the prime minister was out of touch with the hardships of ordinary people.[177][178] The winner of the 1930 election was Richard Bedford Bennett and the Conservatives. Bennett had promised high tariffs and large-scale spending, but as deficits increased, he became wary and cut back severely on Federal spending. With falling support and the depression getting only worse, Bennett attempted to introduce policies based on the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in the United States, but he got little passed. Bennett's government became a focus of popular discontent. For example, auto owners saved on gasoline by using horses to pull their cars, dubbing them Bennett Buggies. The Conservative failure to restore prosperity led to the return of Mackenzie King's Liberals in the 1935 election.[179]

Strikers from unemployment relief camps climbing on boxcars in Kamloops, British Columbia, 1935

In 1935, the Liberals used the slogan "King or Chaos" to win a landslide in the 1935 election.[180] Promising a much-desired trade treaty with the U.S., the Mackenzie King government passed the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement. It marked the turning point in Canadian-American economic relations, reversing the disastrous trade war of 1930–31, lowering tariffs and yielding a dramatic increase in trade.[181]

The worst of the Depression had passed by 1935, as Ottawa launched relief programs such as the National Housing Act and National Employment Commission. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation became a crown corporation in 1936. Trans-Canada Airlines (the precursor to Air Canada) was formed in 1937, as was the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. In 1938, Parliament transformed the Bank of Canada from a private entity to a crown corporation.[182]

One political response was a highly restrictive immigration policy and a rise in nativism.[183]

Times were especially hard in western Canada, where a full recovery did not occur until the Second World War began in 1939. One response was the creation of new political parties such as the Social Credit movement and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, as well as popular protest in the form of the On-to-Ottawa Trek.[184]

Following the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster in 1931 which acknowledged Canada as coequal with the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. It was a crucial step in the development of Canada as a separate state in that it provided for nearly complete legislative autonomy from the Parliament of the United Kingdom.[185] Although the United Kingdom retained formal authority over certain Canadian constitutional changes, it relinquished this authority with the passing of the Canada Act 1982 which was the final step in achieving full sovereignty.

A convoy from Halifax en route to the UK, taken from HMCS Assiniboine in 1940

Canada's involvement in the Second World War began when Canada declared war on Nazi Germany on September 10, 1939, delaying it one week after Britain acted to symbolically demonstrate independence. Canada played a major role in supplying food, raw materials, munitions and money to the hard-pressed British economy, training airmen for the Commonwealth, guarding the western half of the North Atlantic Ocean against German U-boats, and providing combat troops for the invasions of Italy, France and Germany in 1943–45.

Of a population of approximately 11.5 million, 1.1 million Canadians served in the armed forces in the Second World War.[186] Many thousands more served with the Canadian Merchant Navy.[187] In all, more than 45,000 died, and another 55,000 were wounded.[188][189] Building up the Royal Canadian Air Force was a high priority; it was kept separate from Britain's Royal Air Force. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan Agreement, signed in December 1939, bound Canada, Britain, New Zealand, and Australia to a program that eventually trained half the airmen from those four nations in the Second World War.[190]

The Battle of the Atlantic began immediately, and from 1943 to 1945 was led by Leonard W. Murray, from Nova Scotia. German U-boats operated in Canadian and Newfoundland waters throughout the war, sinking many naval and merchant vessels.[191] The Canadian army was involved in the failed defence of Hong Kong, the unsuccessful Dieppe Raid in August 1942, the Allied invasion of Italy, and the highly successful invasion of France and the Netherlands in 1944–45.[192]

Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King voting on a plebiscite to introduce conscription for overseas service in 1942

On the political side, Mackenzie King rejected any notion of a government of national unity.[193] The 1940 federal election was held as normally scheduled, producing another majority for the Liberals. The Conscription Crisis of 1944 greatly affected unity between French and English-speaking Canadians, though was not as politically intrusive as that of the First World War.[194] During the war, Canada became more closely linked to the U.S. The Americans took virtual control of Yukon in order to build the Alaska Highway, and were a major presence in the British colony of Newfoundland with major airbases.[195] After the start of the war with Japan in December 1941, the government, in cooperation with the U.S., began the Japanese-Canadian internment, which sent 22,000 British Columbia residents of Japanese descent to relocation camps far from the coast. The reason was intense public demand for removal and fears of espionage or sabotage.[196] The government ignored reports from the RCMP and Canadian military that most of the Japanese were law-abiding and not a threat.[197]