Canada Citizenship Test- Important Points Part 1

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Canada’s History

  • The Huron-Wendat of the Great Lakes region, like the Iroquois, were farmers and hunters.
  • The Cree and Dene of the Northwest were hunter-gatherers.
  • The Sioux were nomadic, following the bison (buffalo) herd.
  • The Inuit lived off Arctic wildlife.
  • West Coast natives preserved fish by drying and smoking.
  • The Vikings from Iceland who colonized Greenland 1,000 years ago also reached Labrador and the island of Newfoundland.  The remains of their settlement, l’Anse aux Meadows, are a World Heritage site.
  • European exploration began in earnest in 1497 with the expedition of John Cabot, who was the first to draw a map of Canada’s East Coast.
  • Between 1534 and 1542, Jacques Cartier made three voyages across the Atlantic, claiming the land for King Francis I of France.
  • Cartier heard two captured guides speak the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning “village.”
  • By the 1550s, the name of Canada began appearing on maps
  • Outstanding leaders like Jean Talon, Bishop Laval, and Count Frontenac built a French Empire in North America that reached from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.
  • The Frenchspeaking Catholic people, known as habitants or Canadiens,
  • In 1670, King Charles II of England granted the Hudson’s Bay Company exclusive trading rights over the watershed draining into Hudson Bay
  • Count Frontenac refused to surrender Quebec to the English in 1690, saying: “My only reply will be from the mouths of my cannons!”
  • Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, was a great hero of New France, winning many victories over the English, from James Bay in the north to Nevis in the Caribbean, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries
  • In 1759, the British defeated the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at Québec City — marking the end of France’s empire in America.
  • Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester), as Governor of Quebec, defended the rights of the Canadiens, defeated an American military invasion of Quebec in 1775, and supervised the Loyalist migration to Nova Scotia and Quebec in 1782–83
  • British Parliament passed the Quebec Act of 1774
  • Joseph Brant led thousands of Loyalist Mohawk Indians into Canada. (Aroun 1776)
  • The first representative assembly was elected in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1758. Prince Edward Island followed in 1773, New Brunswick in 1785.
  • The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the Province of Quebec into Upper Canada (later Ontario), which was mainly Loyalist, Protestant and English-speaking, and Lower Canada (later Quebec), heavily Catholic and French-speaking.
  • The name Canada also became official at this time and has been used ever since.
  • The Atlantic colonies and the two Canadas were known collectively as British North America.
  • General Sir Arthur Currie, Canada’s greatest soldier
  • Colonel John McCrae composed the poem “In Flanders Fields” in 1915
  • In the visual arts, Canada is historically perhaps best known for the Group of Seven, founded in 1920, who developed a style of painting to capture the rugged wilderness landscapes.
  • Emily Carr painted the forests and Aboriginal artifacts of the West Coast.
  • Les Automatistes of Quebec were pioneers of modern abstract art in the 1950s, most notably Jean-Paul Riopelle.
  • Quebec’s Louis-Philippe Hébert was a celebrated sculptor of historical figures.
  • Kenojuak Ashevak pioneered modern Inuit art with etchings, prints and soapstone sculptures.
  • The films of Denys Arcand have been popular in Quebec and across the country, and have won international awards
  • Other noteworthy Canadian filmmakers include Norman Jewison and Atom Egoyan
  • Men and women of letters included Stephen Leacock, Louis Hémon, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Pauline Johnson, Émile Nelligan, Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence and Mordecai Richler
  • Musicians such as Sir Ernest MacMillan and Healey Willan won renown in Canada and abroad
  • Writers such as Joy Kogawa, Michael Ondaatje and Rohinton Mistry have diversified Canada’s literary experience.

Some General Notes

  • Word “Inuit” mean- People
  • Iroquoian word “kanata“, meaning “village”
  • The Canada Health Act ensures common elements and a basic standard of coverage.
  • Unemployment insurance (now called “employment insurance”) was introduced by the federal government in 1940.
  • Old Age Security was devised as early as 1927,
  • Canada and Quebec Pension Plans in 1965.
  • Publicly funded education is provided by the provinces and territories.
  • Quebec experienced an era of rapid change in the 1960s known as the Quiet Revolution.

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