Gough Barry M. Historical Dictionary of Canada
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20 • INTRODUCTION
existed: the need to overcome the difficulties of a double government in
the United Province of Canada; requirements to guarantee funding of a
projected intercolonial railway linking Halifax with Montréal; general
Canadian or British American control over local needs in transporta-
tion, finance, and economic regulation. This third point was the signifi-
cant source of much Canadian nationalist feeling.
The National Era, 1867 to 1914
Four colonies made up the newly constituted Dominion of Canada in
1867—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario (the last two
created from the United Province of Canada). The British North Amer-
ica Act (BNA) of 1867, a British statute, allowed for a strong central
government to deal with national matters, but at the same time the con-
stitution was to give expression to local matters. The Confederation of
1867 was not an end but a beginning, a blueprint for national expansion
and consolidation. Section 91 of the BNA Act specified that the federal
structure was for “peace, order, and good government.” The dominion’s
first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, never tired of stressing that the
parliament and the central government were to have a commanding role
in the new system. He and other proponents of confederation sought to
avoid the weaknesses and mistakes of the U.S. federal system by giv-
ing residual powers to the federal government. The Canadian Senate
was established by the BNA Act as a means of protecting the cultural
identity and linguistic interests of a primarily French-speaking Québec
and as a means to represent sectional and regional interests. Also to pro-
mote and secure the national interest, powers of appointing lieutenant-
governors and Supreme Court judges (and also powers of disallowing
provincial legislation) were vested in the federal government.
Uses of the English and French languages were guaranteed in Can-
ada’s parliament and in federal courts. In addition, provincial powers
and controls over education were established, though remedial arrange-
ments could be undertaken by the governor general in Council (the
Privy Council) if necessary. In other words, minority interests were to
be protected, as were denominational affiliations and sectarian interests.
For a number of reasons, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Ed-
ward Island, and British Columbia (all of them existing colonies) did
not join the union at the outset. Reluctant to embrace the new scheme,
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INTRODUCTION • 21
it was only later, when circumstances (mainly fiscal and economic)
required, that they joined the federation. Reluctance to surrender local
colonial power was a factor. So was the fear that direct links to London
would be severed. Some thought confederation a likely failure. Canada
was regarded by opponents as an experiment, as yet unproven. But the
whole project was backed by the might of British bonds for the con-
struction of a railway and canals, and the public credit of Ottawa was
raised on the London stock exchange, backed by Westminster.
The first principal territorial gain for the new Dominion of Canada
was Assiniboia and the old Hudson’s Bay Company territory of Rupert’s
Land. This territory was bought by Britain from the company and then
transferred to the Dominion of Canada, the new Ottawa government pay-
ing the nominal transfer fee. By this arrangement, which ranks among the
largest real estate deals in history, Canada acquired the Northwest Ter-
ritories. Meanwhile, the Métis of Red River rightly objected to Canadian
assumption of control and rebelled against a lieutenant governor sent to
put up the Union Jack for Canada. The Métis leader Louis Riel, a rebel
who was later dubbed ingeniously “the Father of Manitoba,” eventually
agreed to a new arrangement by which Manitoba became a province
with representation in Ottawa. The balance of the Northwest Territories
was administered directly by Ottawa through a nominated, later elected,
council eventually established at Regina. The North West Mounted Po-
lice (later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) was established to patrol
the Canadian prairie and foothills west, to keep American whisky traders
in check, and to support the civil authorities in the regular settlement of
western Canada. “The law marches west” became the stuff of legend.
The military needs of the Dominion of Canada, especially the train-
ing and education of a Canadian officer corps, led to the founding in
1876 of the Royal Military College of Canada, in Kingston, Ontario.
The Canadian Pacific Railway, the Dominion Lands Act, and the Na-
tional Policy for Tariffs all encouraged the opening of “the last, best
west,” which by 1905 consisted of three provinces—Manitoba, Sas-
katchewan, and Alberta. The Northwest Territories and the Yukon ex-
isted in more northerly latitudes under Ottawa’s immediate control. In
1885, the Mounted Police and the Canadian Army (in its first military
operation) put down the Northwest Rebellion in the Upper Saskatch-
ewan River valley, bringing native (including Métis and Indian) resis-
tance to an end. This pacification resulted in the trial and execution of
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22 • INTRODUCTION
Riel and shortly thereafter a general amnesty for Indian chiefs engaged
in the rising. Further railway construction and the building of canals
to encourage waterborne transport had major benefits to the Canadian
infrastructure and to international commerce.
British Columbia emerged from an old North West Company and
Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) background, and the earliest settle-
ments date from the profitable fur trade and missionary era. Heavily
populated by natives, this area was a unique frontier, for its links were
less transcontinental than they were by way of stormy Cape Horn. Until
the railway era, commencing in 1885, British Columbia (as the province
became) had a unique start. In 1849, Vancouver Island was established
as a colony under HBC proprietorship. In 1858 a separate colony called
British Columbia came into existence for entirely different reasons
than the settlement-based Vancouver Island. British Columbia was a
gold colony. Its capital was New Westminster, until a forced union of
the colonies made Victoria the capital of the United Colony of British
Columbia. After colonial union, some minor discussions were held
on the subject of union with the United States but came to nothing.
In 1871, British Columbia entered into terms of union with Canada,
on promises of debt assumption and a regular railway communication
with Canada. A sea-to-sea dominion was thus effected under this bold
stroke, which was a triumph for Macdonald’s government and, in the
background, British imperial policy for the devolution of authority to
the self-governing colonies.
National consolidation followed British Columbia’s union with Can-
ada. In 1873, Prince Edward Island entered confederation under certain
benefits, including the promise of communication across the Strait of
Northumberland and the assumption by Ottawa of the colonial debt.
Meanwhile, the national commercial dream was becoming a reality.
Commerce coursed through Canadian veins. The National Policy en-
couraged east-west transportation links, the industrialization of Ontario
and Québec, the opening of Canadian western lands, the policing of the
prairie west, and the building of the national infrastructure in the face of
steady American encroachments. It encouraged the concept of Canada
among the varied peoples of British North America. The Canadian
Pacific Railway, completed in 1885 to Pacific tidewater, completed
Canada, or made the transcontinental dream a reality.
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INTRODUCTION • 23
Looked at from another perspective, the two decades before 1914
were the period of acute national growing pains. Problems that had
to be faced were the liberalization of Québec politics (and the end of
Roman Catholic dominance in secular affairs), the crisis of French lan-
guage rights in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, the struggle for
control of the Yukon-Alaska border, and the fights between provinces
(mainly Ontario, Manitoba, and Québec) and federal government over
linguistic rights. As mentioned, one major crisis, in 1885, was the Sas-
katchewan rebellion or rising, when Métis and certain natives fought
Canadian police and army and were suppressed at terrible cost.
In the latter part of this era, Christian aid groups emerged that we now
classify under the heading of the Social Gospel. Dedicated to social re-
generation and improvement, agents of the Social Gospel promoted a
Christian cooperative movement that had strong utopian zeal and saw
in Canada the possibilities for an ideal society. The role of Methodists
and Presbyterians was powerful and convincing, especially that of the
larger and more formidable Methodists. Baptists and Congregationalists
were also active in social regeneration and reform. Taken together with
the temperance movement, antinarcotics legislation, home and town
improvements, scouts and guides, mothers unions, home economics,
professional nursing, medically sound psychiatric assessment and care,
and public health funded by voluntary associations, we see from this
period important precursors of the welfare state of the late 20th century.
This era also saw the Canadianization of national institutions, includ-
ing the militia (not a reserve but a standing army), the garrisons at the
Esquimalt and Halifax naval bases, and the statutory establishment of
the Canadian Naval Service (in 1910). Canada sent a contingent to the
Sudan and another, larger one to the South African War (Boer War).
In 1914–18, Canada took gigantic steps and fielded a Canadian Expe-
ditionary Force during World War I, regarded as a remarkable national
effort.
By 1914, Canada was a powerful, self-governing dominion in the
British Empire, regarded by many as the mother dominion. Three na-
tional transcontinental railways had been laid down, assorted canals
had breached certain navigational difficulties, and banks and financial
houses had enlarged the mechanisms for such consolidation. Equally
important, Canada had received countless immigrants, principally from
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24 • INTRODUCTION
Great Britain but also from Germany, Ukraine, and the United States.
A nascent national society was being established, based on earlier co-
lonial identities but now transcontinental in scope and in perspective.
Registered native peoples came under a national Indian Act. Chinese
and Sikhs were in Canada in increasing numbers, many illegally. Blacks
in Nova Scotia, there since the era of the American Revolution, and in
Ontario, there since the days of the Underground Railway, formed con-
spicuous minorities. These were days of national innocence, assured by
the imperial link. Above all else, Canada was Britannic, non-American,
and rather proudly independent. But these were days before “the Guns
of August” brought on an altogether different, more horrific world.
Between 1897 and 1912, some 2,250,000 persons immigrated to
Canada, and a like number would enter the country in subsequent years
down to 1930. Forty percent of these arrivals were of British stock.
Other “new Canadians” came from the United States, Sweden, Finland,
Norway, Iceland, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Holland, and
elsewhere. Ukrainians and Germans came in noteworthy numbers, and
in doing so foreshadowed a multicultural society. Most agricultural
immigrants went to the prairies, where the population increased from
230,000 in 1891 to 1,327,000 in 1911. Alberta and Saskatchewan were
created provinces in 1905, an index and in recognition of their growing
populations. It should be noted that many of the new immigrants were
from industrial backgrounds. In fact, two-thirds of all immigrant males
came from industrial experience. Thus, general laborers or mechanics,
clerks, traders, miners, and navvies working on railway construction
also changed the character of the Canadian population. This was an era
of rapid urbanization. Urban social ills inspired James Shaver Wood-
sworth, a Methodist minister and union advocate among longshoremen,
and many others to develop the Social Gospel for social improvement
of the masses mainly through voluntary services and agencies. Chinese
and Japanese males invariably came as contract labor. Asian immigra-
tion was tightly regulated by Ottawa and even by Victoria, the capital
of British Columbia.
National Consolidation, 1914 to 1945
The themes of this period of Canadian history are intensely national
rather than provincial, for it was during this era that national achieve-
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INTRODUCTION • 25
ments and struggles assumed prominence in the overall history. War
helped forge a nation. The two world wars brought in national mecha-
nisms of control and mobilization, which now may be seen as coercive
and forceful tendencies backed by legislation and regulation to put
national needs first. Even in the interwar period, which is marked by
the Great Depression, federal authority was employed to bring about
the means of minimizing the effect of unemployment and dislocation.
It is true that Canada went to war upon the British declaration of war
in 1914, but it remained Canada’s choice as to the degree of participa-
tion in the war against Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ot-
toman Empire, and their allies. One million Canadians donned uniforms
in what was then called the Great War. The Royal Canadian Navy came
into its own, and Canadians served in numbers in the Royal Flying
Corps. Canada’s 1917 triumph at Vimy Ridge remains legendary. New-
foundland’s sad human losses in other encounters are not forgotten,
especially Beaumont Hamel in 1916, when the Royal Newfoundland
Regiment was virtually annihilated. The Canadian economy, and the
means of organizing it, became strong because of war. Pro-Empire
sentiment superimposed itself on pro-Canadian perspectives, and vice
versa. What sort of postwar world could be created from the European
ashes? Canada was a signatory, under the British Empire delegation, of
the peace treaties. Meanwhile, during the war, Canada had become a
member of the British imperial war cabinet and had taken steps toward
a redefinition of dominion status after the war. In 1931, by the Statute
of Westminster, the autonomy of Canada was assured, as it was for the
other self-governing dominions. But there were other events in which
Canada could have little influence, including the Russian Revolution
and the rise of international communism. Canada sent a military ex-
pedition to Vladivostok to prop up the sagging White Russian, tsarist
regime, but to no lasting effect.
The 1920s were years of stunning economic growth. Trade with the
United States increased dramatically. Canadians became more North
American in outlook. Many shared the pervasive isolation of Ameri-
cans. However, they were not bound by the legal constraints that their
American cousins had imposed on themselves by acts of Congress. At
the same time, the wary Canadians, zealous of their independence and
distrustful of British imperialism, became less anxious than before to
come to the aid of a Europe they thought should be able to look after
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26 • INTRODUCTION
its own affairs and police its own difficulties. Canada became a mem-
ber of the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization
conventions and promoted dominion autonomy in the British Empire.
But Canada feared obligations to the League that might bind it to action
in advance of decision making that must be made in Ottawa. Canada
avoided any organizational links with the Latin American republics,
leaving that to the United States, the Pan American Union, and later
the Organization of American States (which Canada eventually joined).
In a great number of ways, the 1930s marked a significant departure
from the previous decade. High spirits and the carefree nature of a
country swept up in isolationism as it became more North American
(or continental) soon were replaced by poverty, despair, civil strife, and
a menacing threat of war. Unemployment, dust bowls, food kitchens,
work camps, sit-ins, riots, and a protest known as the “On to Ottawa
march (or trek)” highlighted Canadian social and economic affairs.
Old ways of doing politics had to be replaced by new “isms.” New
political parties emerged: the Social Credit and Cooperative Common-
wealth Federation (CCF) being most noteworthy. Even the Conserva-
tive federal government flirted with a 1930s collective response called
the “New Deal,” a watered-down adaptation of what U.S. President
Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats had introduced in the United States.
Meanwhile, the automobile age had come to Canada, establishing na-
scent car and car parts manufacturing industries, notably in Windsor,
St. Catharines, Chatham, and Oshawa, all in Ontario, the latter home of
the McLaughlin Buick. The American Automotive Workers, later the
Canadian Automobile Workers, became a powerful industrial union.
Many large American corporations—Westinghouse, RCA Victor, Gen-
eral Motors, Ford, Chrysler, National Cash Register, Raytheon, and oth-
ers set up branch plants in Canada. Duke Power Company, a forerunner
of Québec Hydro, dominated hydroelectricity in that province.
Canadian national institutions emerged during the interwar period,
including Trans-Canada Airlines (the forerunner of Air Canada), the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), National Film Board
(NFB), and St. Lawrence Seaway. Railway consolidation had already
been effected under the title of Canadian National Railways (now Rail-
way). Unemployment insurance was brought into being, and the Bank
of Canada was established.
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INTRODUCTION • 27
In 1939, Canada declared war on Germany and Italy, and it did like-
wise in 1941 against Japan. For six years during World War II, Canada
fought a major war effort at home and abroad. Japanese Canadians were
interned for two reasons: to protect Canada and to protect the Japanese
from assault by other Canadians. Canada hosted the British Common-
wealth Air Training Plan, assumed major responsibility for convoy
and anti-submarine patrols in the northwestern Atlantic, and became a
major shipbuilding power. In addition, Canadian troops raided Dieppe,
landed at Sicily and Normandy, and liberated Holland. The Royal Ca-
nadian Air Force’s Bomber Command Group 6 engaged in strategic
bombing against German targets. Two Canadian regiments garrisoning
Hong Kong were overrun by Japanese armed forces. Countless Canadi-
ans died in prisoner-of-war camps.
At home, the economic infrastructure of the nation grew by leaps
and bounds, aided by American investment. Newfoundland and Labra-
dor bases came under U.S. control in exchange for financial relief for
Great Britain. Joint boards of defense encouraged Canadian-American
cooperation in armaments and war production. The Alaska Highway
was built by the United States, with Canadian cooperation, for the pur-
pose of supplying their ally the Soviet Union in the war effort against
Germany. The U.S.-funded (though never completed) CANOL pipeline
was built to transport oil north to U.S. forces in Alaska. By the time
peace came in 1945, Canada was very much more continentalized, or
Americanized, than ever before. British financial influence, already
on the decline before 1939, diminished shortly thereafter, a victim of
war debts and postwar rebuilding. Canada, contrary to what the United
States did, wrote off the British war debt of 1939–1945.
The Modern Era
In many respects, the era after 1945 is one of maturation and indepen-
dence. Although some historians see this as an era of crisis, principally
that of Americanization, it is now clear that Canadian institutions ma-
tured and developed to a degree that a Canadian cultural independence
was assured. In the professions, the arts, and in cultural and educational
institutions, sturdy foundations were laid and notable national edifices
erected. Canadian culture came into its own, shook off its colonial past,
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28 • INTRODUCTION
and advanced in new creative ways. These indeed were formative,
exciting years in the emergence of Canadian culture, political identity,
and constitutional self-empowerment. But they were not without inter-
nal clashes, victims, and much sorrow, as discussed in the sections that
follow.
Canada, 1945 to 1982
In the years after 1945, rapid steps were made in the fields of public
administration and government responsibility for welfare, employment,
housing, and education. There was a general broadening of educational
opportunity, with higher percentages of high school completions, more
higher-education applicants, and broadening adult education. Technical
training also expanded. Most influential in all of this was the evolution
of public school systems and curricula, increasingly based on Canadian-
produced learning materials. Canadian colleges and universities edu-
cated all to meet professional requirements for the nation, with links
to Britain, France, and the United States. In the 1960s, the awarding
of Ph.D. degrees became more general in Canada, especially in the
arts and sciences, though only in the more senior, and larger, universi-
ties. As of 1971, Canada had 66 degree-granting institutions of higher
learning. The “baby boom,” the Sputnik era, and growing demand for
public university education all were factors in this sensational growth
of universities and colleges.
Canadian publishing, long considered under siege from Americaniza-
tion or British colonial literature and neglect, entered its classic era, and
even though threats to such independence were seen from time to time,
an indigenous publishing industry existed, especially in Québec, On-
tario, and British Columbia. A national sentiment was encouraged by
the CBC on radio and television. The Canada Council and the National
Film Board, the Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the So-
cial Science Federation made important contributions to identifying Ca-
nadian needs and concerns. All gave opportunities to Canadian talents.
Many institutional changes came in these self-conscious years in
consequence of the Royal Commission on National Development in the
Arts, Letters, and Sciences (1951), better known as the Massey Com-
mission. It announced a cultural principle of “Canada First.” Its recom-
mendations for founding a national institution (the Canada Council,
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INTRODUCTION • 29
1957) and for the national funding of Canadian universities (effected
1957) were followed up by the federal government.
This development was played out against an international backdrop.
Americanization of Canadian universities, both feared and actual, re-
sulted in the founding, by the Association of Universities and Colleges
of Canada, of a Commission on Canadian Studies. Chaired by Trent
University’s founding president, T.H.B. Symons, the report To Know
Ourselves (1975) urged increased attention to all aspects of Canadian
Studies in universities and colleges, at home and abroad. The commis-
sion found general ignorance and, above all, neglect about “Canadian
content” in curricula. To Know Ourselves coincided, quite generally,
with a growing Canadian concern about the Americanization of Ca-
nadian periodical literature, films and television, and publishing. It
also coincided with serious evaluations of the Americanization of the
Canadian economy, which in turn resulted in the 1973 Foreign Invest-
ment Review Act (FIRA). Other reviews of Canadian fiscal dependency
were undertaken, at various times, by Kari Levitt, Walter Gordon, and
Herb Gray.
Institutions or measures to encourage the family, including Fam-
ily Allowance, home economics, and public health administration,
enhanced the well-being of Canadian society. Public health, profes-
sional nurses training, and medical practices encouraged a far healthier
population than that of a century before. Indeed, Canada made mighty
advances in medicine, dentistry, public health, and better foods. Medi-
care, or public medicine, was introduced first in Saskatchewan in 1944.
By measures of other provinces and of the federal government, this
became, by 1966 and the empowering Medical Care Act, a national
responsibility, universally guaranteed and portable. Similarly, Old Age
Assistance and then Canada Pension universal protection were put in
place (Québec established a separate scheme). By 1970, Canada had an
advanced and universal social security network which, for all its faults,
was a model of its kind.
The population of Canada grew dramatically in this same period and,
toward the latter part of the century, particularly beginning in the 1980s,
became more ethnically diverse. In 1945, the population of Canada was
about 11 million; by 1998, the population approximated 29 million.
Whereas the growth immediately after 1945 arose from immigration
by British, Dutch, German, Ukrainian, and other European peoples,
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