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May 10, 1534
New France
On April 20, 1534, Cartier set sail under a commission from the king, hoping to discover a western passage to the wealthy markets of Asia. In the words of the commission, he was to "discover certain islands and lands where it is said that a great quantity of gold and other precious things are to be found". It took him twenty days to sail across the ocean. Starting on May 10 of that year, he explored parts of Newfoundland, the areas now the Canadian Atlantic provinces and the Gulf of St. -
Fur trade
In 1604, a North American fur trade monopoly was granted to Pierre Dugua Sieur de Monts.The fur trade became one of the main economic ventures in North America. -
Foundation of Quebec
Quebec City was founded by the French explorer and navigator Samuel de Champlain in 1608, commencing a string of French colonies along the St. Lawrence River, creating a region named "le Canada". -
Early 1700s
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. However new arrivals stopped coming from France in the proceeding decades, resulting in the English and Scottish settlers in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the southern Thirteen Colonies to vastly outnumber the French population approximately ten to one by the 1750s. -
Acadians expelled
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.The "expulsion" resulted in approximately 12,000 Acadians being shipped to destinations throughout Britain's North American and to France, Quebec and the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue.The first wave of the expulsion of the Acadians began with the Bay of Fundy Campaign (1755) and the second wave began after -
Pacific Colonies and the China Trade
Spanish explorers had taken the lead in the Pacific Northwest coast, with the voyages of Juan José Pérez Hernández in 1774 and 1775.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. -
American Revolution
In 1775, American revolutionaries (Patriots) attempted to push their insurrection into Quebec.The Patriots laid siege to Fort Saint-Jean, capturing it and Montreal in November 1775. They then marched on Quebec City, where an attempt to take the city on December 31, 1775, failed. Following an ineffectual siege, the arrival of British troops in May 1776 sent the Patriots into retreat back toward Montreal. An attempt against British troops at Trois-Rivières failed, and the Patriots were driven from -
War of 1812
In the War of 1812, the Canadas were once again a battleground, this time between the British and the relatively young United States.During the war, unsuccessful attempts were made by the Americans to invade Upper Canada, after overestimating the amount of support they would receive from Canadian colonists. -
Rebellions
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. -
Confederation
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Klondike gold rush
In August 1896, a party led by Skookum Jim Mason discovered gold on a tributary of the Klondike River. After the discovery was publicised in 1897, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people braved numerous hardships to reach the Klondike gold fields in the winter and spring of 1897-98. -
North-west Rebellion
In 1884, Louis Riel returned from exile, and in the spring of 1885, he led the Métis and other natives against the North-West Mounted Police starting the North-West Rebellion. -
World War 1
On August 4 8:55 P.M., Canada got the news that Britain was at war with Germany.Canada was then automatically at war, as she did not yet have control over her foreign policy. -
Suffrage
During the war, the woman's suffrage movement gained support. The provinces began extending voting rights to women in 1916, and women were finally allowed to vote in federal elections in 1918. -
Radio
Radio first appeared in Canada in the 1920s, but most Canadian-owned stations had weak signals compared with American stations. A decade later, the country had 60 different radio stations but 40% of Canadians could only tune in American stations.[ -
Great Depression
Canada was hard hit by the worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929. Between 1929 and 1933, the gross national product dropped 40% Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933. -
World War 2
When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Mackenzie King was finally convinced that military action would be necessary, but advised George VI, King of Canada, to wait until September 10, after parliament had debated the matter, to declare war (unlike World War I, when Canada was automatically at war as soon as Britain was).Ultimately, more than one million Canadians served in armed forces -
Oil
In Alberta, there was an economic boom due to the discovery of new oil fields in 1947. -
Status Indians get to vote
In 1960, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's government decided to permit all Status Indians to vote in federal elections. Since 1950, Status Indians had been allowed vote on the condition that they gave up their treaty rights and Indian status, defined in the Indian Act as "enfranchisement", or if they had fought in the First or Second World Wars. The Inuit and Métis were already able to vote at the time. -
Marathon of Hope
Three years after losing his right leg to cancer at age 18, Terry Fox decided to run from coast to coast in order to raise money for cancer research. In creating the Marathon of Hope, his goal was to raise $1.00 from every Canadian citizen. The young athlete began by dipping his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980. He aimed to dip it again in the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver, British Columbia.
