Gough Barry M. Historical Dictionary of Canada

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160 • ECONOMY

is significant, as is the entertainment industry. Tourism is of ever

increasing importance but fluctuates in value according to the value

of the Canadian dollar and international concerns about terrorism or

other worries of instability.

Because the Canadian economy is so closely linked to that of the

United States, the special ties that have developed between the two

countries help ensure the common trading relationship. The United

States is Canada’s largest agricultural export market. Most forest

products, including pulp and paper and newsprint, find their ways to

the United States. Disputes exist, and bilateral consultative forums or

referral to the World Trade Organization or North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA) dispute resolution solve problems.

Some fisheries matters are resolved by action of the International

Court of Justice (the Georges Bank case, 1984, demarked the territo-

rial sea boundary). The 1985 Pacific Salmon Treaty and the Pacific

Salmon Agreement of 1999 allow for settling differences on catch

limits and seasons for fishing. The U.S.-Canada Fisheries Enforce-

ment Agreement deters illegal fishing activity and serves to reduce

the risk of injury during fisheries enforcement incidents. The United

States has claimed for years that Canada unfairly subsidizes its forest

industry, but this is not sustained in the court rulings. Canadian and

U.S. Customs work hand in hand on cross-border trade, including

mail-order business. The United States is Canada’s largest foreign in-

vestor, about 72 percent of all foreign direct investment. By contrast,

Canada is the third largest investor in the United States; this is con-

centrated in manufacturing, wholesale trade, real estate, petroleum,

finance, and insurance and other services.

Canada has signed free trade agreements with the United States

(1987), superseded by NAFTA (1994), which includes Mexico;

Israel (1997); Chile (1997); Costa Rica (2002); and European Free

Trade Association (2008). Canada has also been negotiating free

trade agreements with Jordan, South Korea, Dominican Republic,

and Singapore.

In terms of public finances, Canada has earned solid, if not top, rat-

ings. Canada’s public debt is less than its revenues by a 5–4 margin.

Its expenses are showing a steady surplus. Economic aid is less than

1 percent GDP. Regulated oversight by the Bank of Canada has pro-

vided remarkable stability against economic pressures and interna-

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EDUCATION • 161

tional fiscal difficulties such as the recession that commenced in the

United States in September 2008. See also TRANSPORTATION.

EDMONTON, ALBERTA. The capital of Alberta, Edmonton is the

province’s largest metropolitan center. Edmonton lies at historic

crossroads of the continent. It began as a fur trading post in the

1700s, a key supply point for Rocky Mountain House, key to the

cordilleran trade. It was a vital trade center for various Plains tribes.

In 1830, Fort Edmonton was erected on a high bluff above the North

Saskatchewan River, where the Legislative Assembly now stands.

John Rowand, chief factor of Edmonton House, was a prominent

trader there. Edmonton grew with the business attracted and devel-

oped by prospectors going to the Klondike gold fields during the

late 1800s.

The main business of Edmonton is government administration. It

became capital of the newly proclaimed Province of Alberta in 1905.

The University of Alberta is a major center of higher learning, as is

Grant McEwan College. Many local industries flourish here, notably

because of the city’s northern location: it is a gateway to the Peace

River country, the Mackenzie River watershed, and the western Arc-

tic. It is on the Yellowhead Highway and is served by two railways,

the Canadian National Railway and the Canadian Pacific Rail-

way. World War II had a noted impact on Edmonton, for its airport

was very busy, especially with U.S. military aircraft flying to and

from Alaska and the Pacific theater. Manufacturing and industrial de-

velopment reflect transportation needs and petrochemical extraction.

Recent growth is connected to the exploitation of the Athabasca oil

(tar) sands near Fort McMurray. Edmonton is prominent in sports,

particularly Canadian football and hockey. In 1978, it hosted the

Commonwealth Games. In the same year, its light rail system went

into service. The population in 2009 was 782,439.

EDUCATION. The history of education in Canada is a main theme

in Canada’s political, social, and economic development. During

the French occupation in Canada, the process of educating was inte-

grated into everyday life. The family was the basic unit in the social

organization. Educational learning was conducted within this fam-

ily unit. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a family depended on each

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162 • EDUCATION

individual to make an economic contribution to the family. There-

fore, skills such as farming and gardening were taught to children.

In New France, a large portion of the rural population could not

read or write. However, many towns and villages in New France

developed formal education. The Jesuits, Recollets, Ursulines,

Congregation of Notre Dame, and other religious orders provided

elementary instruction in catechism, reading, writing, and mathemat-

ics. In the 1660s, Bishop François-Xavier de Montmorency Laval

founded seminaries in Québec, which later became Laval University,

Canada’s first.

After 1759–60, the British began to develop a school system

that was outside the influence of religion, especially in Québec. All

British schools were then private. The British viewed education as

a tool of gradual but not enforced cultural change. As immigration

increased in British North America, British political leaders in Can-

ada increased efforts to assimilate immigrants and natives through

education. The introduction of public education followed British and

American examples. By the 1840s, the foundations for present-day

Canada’s school system were being laid. Upper Canada College was

founded in 1829. It remains a prominent independent school for boys.

The industrialization of Canadian society impacted the education

system. Commercial and manufacturing developments spurred large

increases in urban growth. Social promoters saw idle working-class

children as a breeding ground for crime. They viewed education as a

tool to teach social skills and argued that free schools would greatly

benefit children by placing them in a setting that was conducive to

social harmony. Schooling was intended to teach the shared values

and mores of society. The creation of the public school system

encouraged the development of the standardization of textbooks,

teacher training, classroom organization, and curriculum. Technical

and secretarial schools came in the late 19th century and remain a

feature to the present day.

With introduction of public schooling in the mid-19th century,

paid for through taxation, the number of students acquiring an edu-

cation increased. Many children received educational training to the

age of 16. The public school system devised by school reformers

such as Egerton Ryerson became the foundation of present-day

English Canada’s school system. Curricula are determined by provin-

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ENVIRONMENT • 163

cial departments of education, not by local school boards. See also

UNIVERSITIES.

ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, EARL OF (JAMES BRUCE) (1811–

1863). The governor general of Canada from 1847 to 1854, Lord

Elgin had British instructions to implement responsible government

in Canada. He achieved this and sought to ensure a workable and

equitable government by the inclusion of French Canadians in both

government and civil appointments. But he faced two major crises

while governor general. The first was the riot that followed the pas-

sage of the Rebellions Losses Bill for Lower Canada in 1848. This

riot resulted in the burning of the parliament buildings in Montréal.

The second crisis occurred in 1848 when a group of discontented

Montréal business leaders drafted the Annexation Manifesto, which

proposed annexation to the United States as the cure for the political

and economic ills of the colony. A number of Tory members signed

the document. Lord Elgin required those who held commissions from

the crown to abjure the manifesto or resign their offices. He also saw

the legislated abolition of both clergy reserves and seigneurial tenure,

as well as the successful negotiation of the Reciprocity Treaty of

1854. See also RECIPROCITY.

ENVIRONMENT. Evaluations of the environment of Canada have

been subject to incremental knowledge accretion, so vast and so

diverse are the land, seas, and waterways. Significant empirical data

were accumulated by the Hudson’s Bay Company and by individual

fur traders such as Alexander Mackenzie. More often than not, it

was the British Admiralty that sponsored most exploring expeditions

of the Arctic Islands and passages, such as that of Sir John Franklin.

Not until the Geological Survey of Canada was a systematic at-

tempt made to “read the rocks” and to get a more comprehensive and

scientific appreciation of the land and its resources. But it should be

noted that evaluations of and knowledge about the environment were

invariably the result of the quest for resources. Coupled with this was

naturally the enhancement of the means of access or the building of

railways, roads, and bridges to enable the processes of development

to advance to financially viable levels. The story of, for example, the

Canadian Pacific Railway is one such story. It also involved the

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164 • ENVIRONMENT

expansion of agriculture and the necessary growth of immigration

by the selling of land or the occupation of land by homesteaders. Not

until the 20th century did individual travelers explore the northern

environments and write stories about cabin fever and great rivers.

The arrival of the float plane brought the possibilities of visual

surveillance and aerial surveying, leading to knowledge of many of

Canada’s great watersheds.

The industrialization of the world in the past 200 years has

placed great stress on the biosphere and on the surface of the earth,

consisting of the atmosphere, water, minerals, and organisms. One-

seventh of Canada’s land area consists of waters and waterways.

Early environmental warnings came with water pollution, notably

in urban areas. Air pollution brought health problems to the human

population. Clean air legislation was a feature of the late 20th cen-

tury. Knowledge of air standards became necessarily widespread. In

particular, the burning of fossil fuels has increased the carbon dioxide

content of air over the South Pole. The general movement of air in

the Northern Hemisphere is from west to east. Fronting on the Pacific

Ocean, Canada has a great distance between itself and the burgeoning

industrial giants of India and China, and thus air quality is high on

the outer islands. But cities such as Vancouver create their own toxic

gasses. In Windsor or Sarnia, Ontario, local production of air pollut-

ants is added to by cross-border arrival of pollution from American

cities such as Detroit or Flint, Michigan.

Similarly, the poor quality of water in Ontario lakes and the

eradication of a large commercial fishery have been attributable to

pollutants from the United States and Ontario. In this regard, the

existence of acid rain was noteworthy in the 1970s and 1980s, and

ameliorative steps have been taken in Canada and the United States

to control future despoliation. In other lakes, mercury poisoning

ruined fish habitats and poisoned the fish. Indian communities in

northern Ontario are still suffering the physical (and mental) effects

of mercury pollution of fish habitats. Political jurisdictions that share

the Great Lakes (Canada has seven U.S. states as water neighbors)

are in constant communication about water quality issues, mindful of

the general reduction of the fish habitats in those waters and the wor-

rying introduction of invasive species such as zebra mussels.

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ENVIRONMENT • 165

These alarming scenarios developed against the tendency known

as global warming or climate change. In 1972, the United Nations

Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm. This

conference, chaired by Maurice Strong, a Canadian, provided an in-

ternational forum for discussion of global environmental problems.

United Nations agencies began to target environmental questions as

matters for public policy concern. In 1980, the World Conservation

Strategy was issued, with support from the World Wildlife Fund.

Sustainable development often found itself at loggerheads with con-

servationists. The Kyoto accords and Copenhagen resolutions helped

maintain the initiatives for multinational cooperation, but compliance

and universal agreement continue elusive.

In Canada, the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Of-

fice (FEARO) was established to report to the minister of the en-

vironment. Its work is evaluative and, in some cases, brings forth

legal challenges and court cases, with penalties. This development

matches the rise of public interest in and concerns about environmen-

tal issues. University departments and faculties now address these

concerns. Fisheries and Oceans Canada monitors water habitats and

studies fish migrations and numbers.

The control of natural resources comes within provincial jurisdic-

tion, with overlays by national legislation and, sometimes, inter-

national treaties. The cutting, or harvesting, of British Columbia

forests has sparked environmental concerns and led to the founding

of such interest groups as the Western Canada Wilderness Committee

and other political action to draw attention to public environmental

concerns. Strands of primeval forest are hard to find; second, third,

or fourth growth forests are now the objects for timber companies. To

protect old growth forests, successive governments have responded

by designating wilderness areas as parks, provincial or national, and

have also established forest reserves, bird refuges, and watershed

reserves. There exists a large docket of legislation and regulation for

the protection of the natural world. This is driven by the incessant

human challenges to the landscape and the rapacious desire to extract

resources and get them to market.

One great area of concern is environmental degradation in the

lower Athabasca River area. Here the oil (tar) sands have become

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166 • ESPIONAGE

the focal point of an environmental horror story. The side effects of

extracting useable grades of oil are the immense volumes of water

employed in the process and the equally important use of hydrocar-

bons as energy sources in the processes of mining and extraction. The

settling ponds, for the cleaning and intended reusing of water, also

require vast space. In the Mackenzie District of the Yukon and the

Northwest Territories, the extraction of known natural gas reserves

continues, and there are large-scale plans to transport natural gas

from expanded fields in the Arctic southward by way of pipelines,

reflecting the insatiable consumer demands of North America, nota-

bly in the United States.

Global warming has already changed the Arctic shoreline of

Canada (and of other circumpolar nations). The effect on polar bear

habitat is increasingly clear. Moreover, as the Arctic shoreline faces

a rising mean annual temperature, methane gas is released from the

tundra, another problem of global warming. The fight to protect

the northern habitat against the construction of oil and natural gas

pipelines is an ongoing battle in which science is invariably at odds

with public policy, and aboriginal interests are almost certain to be

involved at the very outset. In southern latitudes, the treatment of the

nation’s daily garbage and other wastes continues as a pressing mat-

ter of public policy and public will. The move toward wind power has

been demonstrated to have beneficial effects, but even proponents ac-

cept the fact that only 15 percent of electrical supply can be thus pro-

vided. In Ontario and Alberta, the use of coal to produce electricity

has been a hot-button issue. For this reason, plus the increasing needs

for electricity, nuclear power seems a resurgent possibility for meet-

ing future needs. Natural gas remains the preferred source of energy

for the making of electricity when hydroelectricity by the damming

of rivers and lakes can bring no further yields. It is generally under-

stood that the further damming of lakes and rivers for hydroelectrical

production is politically unacceptable. In the 2006 election, the Green

Party made a favorable showing and received much public attention,

though it did not elect a single MP. All political parties in Canada at

the same time adopted policy platforms dealing with environmental

issues.

ESPIONAGE. See SECRET SERVICE.

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EXPLORATION • 167

ESQUIMALT. Now a municipality part of the Capital Regional

District of Victoria, it is the primary Canadian Pacific naval base,

located in British Columbia. Esquimalt was discovered in the 1840s

and was first used by ships of the Royal Navy. It served as headquar-

ters of British warships in the eastern Pacific (c. 1862–1905) and had

a graving dock (built 1887) and supply and repair facilities. It had

immense military value in the two world wars, the Korean conflict,

and the Cold War. Its infrastructure was rejuvenated in the 1990s.

See also CANADIAN NAVY.

EVANGELINE. A character of fiction, Evangeline is the heroine of

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline. She epitomizes

Acadians in exile, expelled from Canada by the British as security

risks in 1755.

EXPLORATION. Native peoples aided Europeans in the exploration

of Canada. Much of the exploration was initially undertaken by mari-

ners in sailing ships. This was true for the exploration of the Atlantic,

Arctic, and Pacific coasts of Canada, and it was also true for the

discovery of the Great Lakes. The interior was mainly explored by

way of the canoe, and when necessary, overland in winter by snow-

shoe. Aboriginal technology and knowledge of techniques of winter

survival aided Europeans in their explorations.

European exploration may be said to have begun with the Norse,

who visited the eastern seaboard about 1000 CE and left behind,

upon their withdrawal, the remnant of a settlement at L’Anse aux

Meadows. St. Brendan might have reached America, and Prince

Modoc may have done likewise, but these Irish and Welsh claims

to priority of discovery have not been substantiated in the written or

archaeological record or in any ethnological records. The Norse may

be said to have left, in their sagas, the first record of exploration, but

their literary legacy is wildly unscientific. Christopher Columbus is

not known to have sailed in Canadian waters.

The first mariner to discover Canada in the early modern era and

to have left a record of achievement was John Cabot. In 1497,

sailing for merchant adventurers of Bristol, backed by Henry VII

of England, he made a landfall most likely at Cape Bonavista. He

discovered what he called “New Founde Lande,” hence the name

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168 • EXPLORATION

Newfoundland. From this discovery dates the first English claim

to sovereignty in North America. Follow-on discoveries by his son

Sebastian were made. The discovery of cod on the Grand Banks was

the greatest find of the Cabots.

In 1534, Jacques Cartier, an experienced mariner who had

sailed to Brazil and the Caribbean, made the first of three voyages

to North America. He discovered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Antico-

sti Island, Québec (or Stadacona), and Montréal (or Hochelaga).

His three expeditions (1534, 1535–36, 1541) rank as splendid

achievements of the Age of Discovery; they placed Acadia and

Canada on the maps of the world, and they showed the great river

leading to the continental interior and perhaps to Asia. Cabot, Cart-

ier, John Davis, Martin Frobisher, and many others hoped to find

a route to Cathay and Cipangu. In 1610, Henry Hudson, searching

for the elusive waterway, discovered Hudson Bay. In 1619, Jens

Munck, sailing for Denmark, found the mouth of the Churchill

River, Hudson Bay, and wintered with 66 men. Only Munck and

three others returned to Europe the next summer. They and many

others like them had to be disappointed in the profits of exploration.

They found an empire totally different from that of China and Ja-

pan, though one of potentially equal if not greater wealth and power

for the future. The dream of finding a Northwest Passage continued

well into the 19th century.

French exploration of the continental interior is highlighted by

Étienne Brûlé, who explored Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, and Lake

Huron; and by Samuel de Champlain, who followed Brûlé into

Georgian Bay (“the Sweetwater sea,” he called it) via the Ottawa

and French rivers. René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who explored

the Mississippi River and claimed Louisiana for France, sailed the

Great Lakes in his Griffon, which was lost at sea in 1679, perhaps on

Manitoulin Island. Jean Nicolet and Daniel Duluth are two French

explorers who went to the western shores of the Great Lakes. Father

Albanel, a Jesuit, traveled overland from the St. Lawrence River to

Hudson Bay. Fur Trader Pierre La Vérèndrye explored the heartland

of the continent, the Red and Assiniboine waterways, and built fur

posts in southern Manitoba.

Fur traders Pierre Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers,

in the 1650s and 1660s, had discovered the fur-bearing resources of

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EXPLORATION • 169

the lands between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay, sparking off the

founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1670. The HBC,

by its charter, was obliged to prosecute further discoveries but tended

to ignore this obligation. In the 1690s, however, it sent explorer

Henry Kelsey into the continental interior to draw off Indians for

the northern trade on Hudson Bay. Kelsey was the first European to

see the Great Plains. But until La Vérèndrye pushed French trade and

discoveries into the Red/Assiniboine area, the continental interior

west of Lake Superior was unknown to the outside world.

The giants of Northwest discovery are Peter Pond, who crossed

Methye Portage into the upper reaches of the Athabasca River water-

shed (and who drew speculative maps); Sir Alexander Mackenzie,

who explored the Great River, later known as the Mackenzie River,

and four years later went overland from Peace River to Dean Chan-

nel; and David Thompson, the remarkable mapmaker and surveyor

who discovered the headwaters of the Saskatchewan and Columbia

Rivers. In 1806, Simon Fraser explored the river that bears his

name. Samuel Black made discoveries on the Finlay and Yukon

River areas. Many other “Nor’Westers” and HBC traders delineated

the water systems of the West and North. These included, for the

Arctic coast east of the Mackenzie River, Thomas Simpson and War-

ren Dease.

The search for the Northwest Passage continued. In 1778, Capt.

James Cook explored Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island, and

Alaska but left yawning gaps on the chart. In 1792–94, Capt. George

Vancouver surveyed the Northwest Coast, filling in the details on

scientific charts. Spanish explorers Juan Pérez, Bruno de Hezeta,

Jacinto Caamaño, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, Alcala

Galiano, Alejandro Malaspina, and others did likewise for Spain but

(unlike the British) did not choose to make public their charts and

other findings.

Maritime fur traders such as John Meares, Nathaniel Portlock,

George Dixon, and Charles Barkley explored parts of the coast;

Meares left unreliable data based on his own dubious claims to

primacy of discovery. Boston traders explored the Queen Charlotte

Islands (Haida Gwaii). Hydrographical surveying (first discovered by

Pérez) by the Royal Navy in the 19th century completed most of the

details of the Pacific coast of British Columbia.

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