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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 Qué
bec 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, Qué
bec,
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 Qué
bec 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
Qué
bec.
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
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地理
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历史
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政治
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经济
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教育
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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 Qué
bec
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 Qué
bec Act
of 1774,
re-establishing the French
language, Catholic faith, and French civil law in
Qué
bec.
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
Qué
bec, 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 Qué
bec, 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 Qué
bec
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, Qué
bec,
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
Mé
tis 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
Qué
bec, 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
Parliam
ent?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.