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Canada

Introduction

Origin and history of the name

The name Canada comes from a First Nations word, kanata, meaning “village” or “settlement”. In 1535, inhabitants of the area near present-day Québec City used the word to direct Jacques Cartier towards the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word ?Canada? to refer to not only that village, but the entire area subject to Donnacona, Chief at Stadacona; by 1547, maps began referring to this and the surrounding area as Canada.

The French colony of Canada, New France, was set up along the Saint Lawrence River and the northern shores of the Great Lakes. Later, it was split into two British colonies, called Upper Canada and Lower Canada until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, the name Canada was officially adopted for the new dominion, which was referred to as the Dominion of Canada until the 1950s. As Canada increasingly acquired political authority and autonomy from Britain, the federal government increasingly simply used Canada on state documents and treaties. The Canada Act 1982 refers only to “Canada” and, as such, is currently the only legal (and bilingual) name. This was reflected again in 1982 with the renaming of the national holiday from Dominion Day to Canada Day. Geography

Canada is the world?s second-largest country by total area, occupying most of

northern North America. Extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, Canada shares land borders with the United States to the south and to the northwest.

Inhabited first by Aboriginal peoples, Canada was founded as a union of British and former French colonies. Canada gained independence from the United Kingdom in an incremental process that began in 1867 and ended in 1982.

Canada is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy.

Comprising ten provinces and three territories, Canada is a bilingual and multicultural nation, with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. The ten provinces are Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Québec, and

Saskatchewan. The three territories are the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon Territory. The provinces have a large degree of autonomy from the federal government, the territories somewhat less. Each has its own provincial or territorial symbols.

The population density of 3.5 people per square kilometre is among the lowest in the world. The most densely populated part of the country is the Québec City-Windsor Corridor along the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River in the southeast. To the north of this region is the broad Canadian Shield, an area of rock scoured clean by the last ice age, thinly soiled, rich in minerals, and dotted with lakes and rivers—Canada by far has more lakes than any other country in the world and has a large amount of the world?s freshwater.

In eastern Canada, the Saint Lawrence River widens into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the world?s largest estuary; the island of Newfoundland lies at its mouth. South of the Gulf, the Canadian Maritimes protrude eastward from the Gaspé Peninsula of Québec. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are divided by the Bay of Fundy, which experiences the world?s largest tidal variations. Ontario and Hudson Bay dominate central Canada. West of Ontario, the broad, flat Canadian Prairies spread toward the Rocky Mountains, which separate them from British Columbia.

Canada is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). History

简介 | 地理 | 历史 | 政治 | 经济 | 教育 | 外交 | 文学 | 其他

Aboriginal tradition holds that the First Peoples inhabited parts of Canada for a very long time, and some archaeological studies support human presence in northern Yukon to 26,500 years ago, and in southern Ontario to 9,500 years ago.

Europeans first arrived when the Vikings settled briefly at L?Anse aux Meadows circa AD 1000. The next Europeans to explore Canada?s Atlantic coast included John

Cabot in 1497 and Martin Frobisher in 1576, for England; and Jacques Cartier in 1534 and Samuel de Champlain in 1603, for France. The first permanent European settlements were established by the French at Port Royal in 1605 and Québec City in 1608, and by the English in Newfoundland, around 1610. European explorers and trappers unwittingly brought diseases that spread rapidly through native trade routes and decimated the Aboriginal population.

For much of the 17th century, the English and French colonies in North America were able to develop in relative isolation from each other. French colonists extensively settled the St. Lawrence River valley, while English colonists largely settled in the Thirteen Colonies to the south. However, as competition for territory, naval bases, furs and fish escalated, several wars broke out between the French, English and Native tribes. The French and Iroquois Wars erupted between the Iroquois

Confederation and the Algonquin, with their French allies, over control of the fur trade. A series of four French and Indian Wars were fought between 1689 and 1763; these culminated with a complete British victory in the Seven Years? War. By the terms of Treaty of Paris in 1763, Britain gained control of all of France?s North American territory east of the Mississippi River, except for the remote islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

Following the war, the British found themselves in possession of a mostly

French-speaking, Roman Catholic territory, whose inhabitants had recently taken up arms against Britain. To avert conflict, Britain passed the Québec Act of 1774, re-establishing the French language, Catholic faith, and French civil law in Québec. The act had unforseen consequences for Britain, however, as it angered many residents of the Thirteen Colonies, helping to fuel the American Revolution. Following the independence of the United States, approximately 50,000 United Empire Loyalists moved to Québec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and

Newfoundland. As they were unwelcome in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick was carved out of that colony for them in 1784. To accommodate the English-speaking Loyalists in Québec, the province was divided into francophone Lower Canada and anglophone Upper Canada under the Constitutional Act in 1791.

Canada was a major front in the War of 1812 between the United States and British Empire and its successful defence had important long-term effects on Canada, including the building of a sense of unity and nationalism among British North Americans. Large-scale immigration to Canada began in 1815 from Britain and Ireland. A series of agreements led to long-term peace between Canada and the United States, interrupted only briefly by raids made by political insurgents such as the Hunters? Lodges and the Fenian Brotherhood.

Following the failed Rebellions of 1837, which demanded responsible government, colonial officials studied the political situation and issued the Durham Report in 1839. One goal—which proved unacceptable for the alliance of anglophone and

francophone reformers that had rebelled in 1837—was to assimilate the French

Canadians into British culture. The Canadas were merged into a single, quasi-federal colony, the United Province of Canada, with the Act of Union (1840). The signing of the Oregon Treaty by Britain and the United States in 1846 ended the Oregon

boundary dispute, extending the border westward along the 49th parallel and ending joint occupation of the Oregon Country/Columbia District. This led to the creation of the colony of Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849 and, with the outbreak of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, the colony of British Columbia in 1858, but both were entirely separate from the United Province of Canada. By the late 1850s, leaders in Canada launched a series of western exploratory expeditions, with the intention of assuming control of Rupert?s Land and the Arctic region. The Canadian population grew rapidly because of high birth rates; high European immigration was offset by

emigration to the United States, especially by French Canadians moving to New England.

Following the Great Coalition, the Charlottetown Conference, the Québec Conference of 1864, and the London Conference of 1866, the three colonies—Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—undertook the process of Confederation. The British North America Act created “one dominion under the name of Canada”, with four provinces: Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. After Canada

assumed control of Rupert?s Land and the North-Western Territory, which together formed the Northwest Territories in 1870, inattention to the Métis led to the Red River Rebellion and ultimately to the creation of the province of Manitoba and its entry into Confederation in July 1870. British Columbia and Vancouver Island (which had united in 1866) and the colony of Prince Edward Island joined the Confederation in 1871 and 1873, respectively. To connect the union and assert authority over the western provinces, Canada constructed three trans-continental railways, most notably the Canadian Pacific Railway, encouraged immigrants to develop the prairies with the Dominion Lands Act, and established the North West Mounted Police. As settlers went to the prairies on the railway and the population grew, regions of the Northwest Territories were given provincial status forming Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905.

Canada automatically entered the First World War in 1914 with Britain?s declaration of war, and sent formed divisions, composed almost entirely of volunteers, to the Western Front to fight as a national contingent. Casualties were so high that Prime Minister Robert Borden was forced to bring in conscription in 1917; this move was extremely unpopular in Québec, resulting in his Conservative party losing support in that province. Although the Liberals were deeply divided over conscription, they became the dominant political party.

In 1919, Canada joined the League of Nations in its own right, and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster confirmed that no act of the British Parliament would extend to Canada without its consent. At the same time, the worldwide Great Depression of 1929 affected Canadians of every class; the rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Alberta and Saskatchewan presaged a welfare state as pioneered by Tommy Douglas in the 1940s and 1950s. After supporting appeasement of Germany in the late 1930s, Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King secured Parliament?s approval for entry into the Second World War in September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland. The first Canadian Army units arrived in Britain in December 1939. The economy boomed during the war mainly due to the amount of military materiel being produced for Canada, Britain, China and the Soviet Union. Canada finished the war with one of the largest militaries in the world. In 1949, the formerly independent Dominion of Newfoundland joined the Confederation as Canada?s 10th province.

By Canada?s centennial in 1967, heavy post-war immigration from various

war-ravaged European countries had changed the country?s demographics. In addition, throughout the Vietnam War, thousands of American draft dodgers fled to and settled in various parts of Canada. Increased immigration, combined with the baby boom, an economic strength parallelling that of the 1960s United States, and reaction to the Quiet Revolution in Québec, initiated a new type of Canadian nationalism.

At a meeting of First Ministers in November 1981, the federal and provincial governments agreed to the patriation of the constitution, with procedures for amending it. Despite the fact that the Québec government did not agree to the changes, on 17 April 1982, Canada, by Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II, patriated its

Constitution from Britain, thereby making Canada wholly sovereign, though the two countries continue to share the same monarch.

After Québec underwent profound social and economic changes during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, some Québécois began pressing for greater provincial autonomy, or partial or complete independence from Canada. Alienation between English-speaking Canadians and the Québécois over the language, cultural and social divide had been exacerbated by many events, including the Conscription Crisis of 1944. While a referendum on sovereignty-association in 1980 was rejected by a solid majority of the population, a second referendum in 1995 was rejected by a margin of just 50.6% to 49.4%. In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional; Québec?s sovereignty movement has continued nonetheless. Government

Canada is a constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada as head of state, and a parliamentary democracy with a federal system of parliamentary government and strong democratic traditions.

Canada?s constitution governs the legal framework of the country and consists of written text and unwritten traditions and conventions. The Constitution includes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees basic rights and

freedoms for Canadians that, generally, cannot be overridden by legislation of any level of government in Canada. It contains, however, a “notwithstanding clause”, which allows the federal parliament and the provincial legislatures the power to override some other sections of the Charter temporarily, for a period of five years.

The position of Prime Minister, Canada?s head of government, belongs to the leader of the political party that can obtain the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and their Cabinet are formally appointed by the Governor General (who is the Monarch?s representative in Canada). However, the Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet, and by convention, the Governor General respects the Prime Minister?s choices. The Cabinet is traditionally drawn from

members of the Prime Minister?s party in both legislative houses, and mostly from the House of Commons. Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and Cabinet, all of whom are sworn into the Queen?s Privy Council for Canada, and become

Ministers of the Crown. The Prime Minister exercises vast political power, especially in the appointment of other officials within the government and civil service.

The federal parliament is made up of the Queen and two houses: an elected House of Commons and an appointed Senate. Each member in the House of Commons is elected by simple plurality in a “riding” or electoral district; general elections are

called by the Governor General when the Prime Minister so advises. While there is no minimum term for a Parliament, a new election must be called within five years of the last general election. Members of the Senate, whose seats are apportioned on a regional basis, are chosen by the Prime Minister and formally appointed by the Governor General, and serve until age 75.

Canada?s four major political parties are the Conservative Party of Canada, Liberal Party of Canada, New Democratic Party (NDP), and the Bloc Québécois. Economy

Canada is one of the world?s wealthiest nations with a high per capita income, a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Group of Eight (G8). Canada is a free market economy with slightly more government intervention than the United States, but much less than most European nations. Canada has traditionally had a lower per capita gross domestic product (GDP) than its southern neighbour (whereas wealth has been more equally divided), but

higher than the large western European economies. For the past decade, after a period of turbulence, the Canadian economy has been growing rapidly with low

unemployment and large government surpluses on the federal level. Today Canada closely resembles the U.S. in its market-oriented economic system, pattern of production, and high living standards.

In the past century, the impressive growth of the manufacturing, mining, and service sectors has transformed the nation from a largely rural economy into one primarily industrial and urban. As with other first world nations, the Canadian economy is dominated by the service industry, which employs about three quarters of Canadians. However, Canada is unusual among developed countries in the importance of the primary sector, with the logging and oil industries being two of Canada?s most important.

Canada is one of the few developed nations that is a net exporter of energy. Canada has vast deposits of natural gas on the east coast and large oil and gas resources centred in Alberta, and also present in neighbouring British Columbia and

Saskatchewan. The vast Athabasca Tar Sands give Canada the world?s second largest reserves of oil behind Saudi Arabia. In Québec, British Columbia, Newfoundland &

Labrador, Ontario and Manitoba, hydroelectric power is a cheap and relatively environmentally friendly source of abundant energy.

Canada is one of the world?s most important suppliers of agricultural products, with the Canadian Prairies one of the most important suppliers of wheat and other grains. Canada is the world?s largest producer of zinc and uranium and a world leader in many other natural resources such as gold, nickel, aluminum, and lead; many, if not most, towns in the northern part of the country, where agriculture is difficult, exist because of a nearby mine or source of timber. Canada also has a sizeable manufacturing sector, centred in southern Ontario and Québec, with the automobile industry especially important.

Canada is highly dependent on international trade, especially trade with the United States. The 1989 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and 1994 North

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (which included Mexico) touched off a dramatic increase in trade and economic integration with the U.S.

Education

The educational systems in Canada derive from British, American, and—particularly in the province of Québec—French traditions.

The earliest Canadian schools date from the early 17th century and were conducted by French Catholic religious groups. Higher education began in 1635 with the founding of the Collège des Jésuites in the city of Québec.

There is no central ministry of education in Canada. The federal government steps in only for special populations outside normal provincial jurisdiction, such as inmates of federal prisons, the families of Canada?s armed forces, and indigenous peoples on reserves. Increasingly, indigenous groups are acquiring more control over their local educational programs.

Although education is administered by the government, churches frequently play an integral role in its delivery. Church-run schools that are alternatives to the secular system of elementary and secondary schools exist in all provinces and territories. Typically these schools receive state funding if they agree to teach the regular curriculum; in addition, they offer extra language and/or religion courses.

Education is compulsory for children from age 6 or 7 to age 15 or 16, depending on the province they live in, and it is free until the completion of secondary school studies. Participation in the school system is almost universal. After the period of mandatory education is completed, participation decreases.

Canada?s large universities were established in the 19th century, beginning with McGill University in 1821. Since World War II (1939-1945), higher education has expanded. Many new institutions have been founded, and the older universities have increased in size, scope, and influence. The federal and provincial governments fund the university system in Canada, including sectarian institutions, and students pay only a small portion of the cost. Universities are still the predominant institutions offering higher education, but the number of nonuniversity postsecondary institutions, particularly community colleges, has increased sharply in recent decades. Literature

The field of Canadian literature is large and complex, and includes voices from the various regions and many cultural groups of the country. Notable Canadian poets include Irving Layton and Dorothy Livesay. Children around the world have enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery, a 1908 novel set in rural Prince

Edward Island. Hugh MacLennan, Robertson Davies, and Margaret Laurence set new standards for Canadian fiction in the mid-20th century. Other important writers have followed, such as Margaret Atwood, Gabrielle Roy, Anne Hébert, Marie Claire Blais, and Alice Munro. Many have drawn on their experiences as immigrants or members of minority groups in their fiction: Mordecai Richler (Jewish), Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lankan), and Neil Bissoondath (Caribbean) are just a few examples.

The earliest works of visual art in North America were produced by indigenous groups. European colonists introduced their artistic traditions almost as soon as they settled in the land that became Canada. The defining moment for post-Confederation Canadian art, however, is generally acknowledged to have been the formation of the Group of Seven in Toronto during the 1910s and 1920s. The post-Impressionist images of elemental nature created by these painters have inspired generations of Canadian artists.

Other distinctly Canadian schools were the Canadian Group, the Contemporary Art Society, Les Automatistes, and Painters Eleven.

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