British North America in 1850: Setting the Stage

Let's start with a question

In 1850 there was no country called Canada. Forty years later, in 1890, Canada stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with a railway joining the two coasts.

How did that happen so fast? And here is the harder question a historian asks: who gained from it, and who paid the price?

In this unit you will investigate the years 1850 to 1890, when Canada was created and grew. You will meet politicians and railway builders, but also First Nations and Métis leaders, Black newspaper editors and pioneers, Chinese workers, women and newcomers. Each of them helped make Canada, and each saw it differently.

Remember from Grade 7

In Grade 7 History you studied Canada, 1800–1850. You learned about the War of 1812, the Métis Nation at Red River, the treaties before 1850 (including the Robinson Treaties of 1850), the Underground Railroad and Black communities such as Dawn and the Elgin Settlement at Buxton, the Rebellions of 1837–38, the Act of Union (1840) and responsible government (1848).

This unit picks up the story right where that one ended.

The map around 1850

• The Province of Canada had two halves: Canada West (mostly English-speaking, now southern Ontario) and Canada East (mostly French-speaking, now southern Quebec). They shared one legislature.
• On the Atlantic coast were the separate colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.
• On the Pacific coast, Vancouver Island became a British colony in 1849. The mainland colony of British Columbia was created in 1858, during a gold rush.
• In between lay Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) claimed them for the fur trade, but they were the homelands of many First Nations, the Métis Nation and, in the Arctic, Inuit, who governed themselves and lived by their own laws.

Who lived here?

The peoples of British North America in 1850 included:

• First Nations, such as the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cree, Blackfoot (Siksikaitsitapi), Dene, Mi'kmaq and many nations on the Pacific coast.
• Inuit, across the Arctic.
• The Métis Nation, centred at Red River and along the rivers of the Northwest.
• French-speaking Canadiens in Canada East, and Acadians in the Atlantic colonies.
• English, Scottish and Irish settlers, many of them recent arrivals.
• Black communities, some going back to the Loyalists and the War of 1812, and many new arrivals who had escaped slavery in the United States.

Over the next forty years, newcomers would also arrive from China, Germany, Iceland, Russia (Mennonites) and elsewhere.

Your historian's toolkit

You will use the same four historical thinking concepts you used in Grade 7, but you will push them further:

1. Historical significance: Why does this matter? How many people did it affect, how deeply, and for how long?
2. Cause and consequence: What caused it? What were the short-term and long-term results? Were some consequences unintended?
3. Continuity and change: What changed between 1850 and 1890? What stayed the same? What is still the same today?
4. Historical perspective: How did people at the time see it? Be careful not to judge the past only by today's values, and be careful not to excuse harm by saying "everyone thought that way then". Many people at the time spoke out.