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Urban Migration of Indigenous Peoples in Canada

The Aboriginal population is the most rural in Canada. One-half of a million Aboriginal people are committed to the land by heritage, by rights in a rural land base, and by a broad range of bureaucratic mandates provided by the federal government. These conditions are supported by the Constitution Act, 1982, a legal guarantee that is unique in the world for an Aboriginal population with a predominantly hunting heritage.

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Women and Health

If life expectancy is any indication of health, Canadian women are, on average, much healthier than they were 70 years ago. The life expectancy of female babies born in 1921 was 61 while female babies born today are expected to live to age 82.

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Temperance Movement in Canada

The temperance movement was an international social and political campaign of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was based on the belief that drinking was responsible for many of society’s ills. It called for moderation or total abstinence from alcohol. This led to the legal prohibition of alcohol in many parts of Canada. The Canada Temperance Act (Scott Act) of 1878 gave local governments the “local option” to ban the sale of alcohol. In 1915 and 1916, all provinces but Quebec prohibited the sale of alcohol as a patriotic measure during the First World War. Most provincial laws were repealed in the 1920s in favour of allowing governments to control alcohol sales. Temperance societies were later criticized for distorting economic activity, and for encouraging drinking and organized crime.

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Evangelical and Fundamentalist Movements

Evangelical and Fundamentalist Movements

 Evangelical and fundamentalist movements include Protestant Christian denominations and subgroups, and nondenominational and paradenominational organizations whose designation indicates their differentiation from "liberal" or "modernist" religious, social and cultural currents, and which define themselves with reference to the Christian scriptures exclusively. Evangelical, the broader category, has the longer and richer history. A derivative of the Greek euangelion ("good news," or "gospel"), "evangelical" is a virtual equivalent of "Christian."

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Gavazzi Riots

The Gavazzi Riots were two major disturbances that occurred in Canada East in 1853. Alessandro Gavazzi, a former Catholic priest and Italian patriot, had embarked on a speaking tour of North America. He scheduled stops in Québec City and Montreal for June. Both of these events were violently disturbed by angry mobs. In each case, soldiers intervened to restore order. In Montreal, on 9 June 1853, soldiers opened fire on the mob that tried to stop Gavazzi’s speech. Ten were killed and many more were wounded. The riots were a major confrontation between the city’s Catholic and Protestant communities. The events highlighted a period of increased religious tension in Canada.

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Totem Pole

The totem pole (also known as a monumental pole) is a tall structure carved out of cedar wood, created by Northwest Coast Indigenous peoples to serve variously as a signboard, genealogical record and memorial. Some well-known carvers include Mungo Martin, Charles Edenshaw, Henry Hunt, Richard Hunt and Stanley Hunt.

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Knights of Columbus in Canada

Founded in the United States in 1882 and arriving in Canada in 1897, the Knights of Columbus are a lay Catholic fraternal service organization committed to charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism. They are devoted to mutual aid through an internal insurance system, to the promotion of the Catholic Church, and to social welfare through community voluntarism and charitable public works.

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Chinook Wawa

Chinook Jargon or Chinook Wawa — wawa meaning "talk" — is a pidgin language that was prevalent in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest in the 1800s and early 1900s. Its small vocabulary and simplified grammar and sound system made it ideal for communication between diverse communities, especially those engaged in trade. The language is based on Lower Chinook, Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), French, ​English, with some contributions from Salishan, and other ​Indigenous languages. It is estimated that approximately 100,000 people could speak Chinook Wawa in 1875, and it was used widely in court testimony, newspaper advertising, missionary activity among Indigenous peoples, and everyday conversation from central British Columbia to northern California.

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Resistance and Residential Schools

Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools that many Indigenous children were forced to attend. They were established to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Indigenous parents and children did not simply accept the residential-school system. Indigenous peoples fought against – and engaged with – the state, schools and other key players in the system. For the duration of the residential-school era, parents acted in the best interests of their children and communities. The children responded in ways that would allow them to survive.

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Domestic Service (Caregiving) in Canada

Domestic work refers to all tasks performed within a household, specifically those related to housekeeping, childcare and personal services for adults. These traditionally unpaid household tasks can be assigned to a paid housekeeper (the term caregiver is preferred today). From the early days of New France, domestic work was considered a means for men and women to immigrate to the colony (see History of Labour Migration to Canada). In the 19th century, however, domestic service became a distinctly female occupation (see Women in the Labour Force). From the second half of the 19th century until the Second World War, in response to the growing need for labour in Canadian households, British emigration societies helped thousands of girls and women immigrate to Canada (see Immigration to Canada). In 1955, the Canadian government launched a domestic-worker recruitment program aimed at West Indian women (see West Indian Domestic Scheme). In 2014 the government lifted the requirement for immigrant caregivers to live with their employer to qualify for permanent residence — a requirement that put domestic workers in a vulnerable position. (See also Canadian Citizenship; Immigration Policy in Canada).

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Assembly of First Nations

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is a political organization representing approximately 900,000 First Nations citizens in Canada. The AFN advocates on behalf of First Nations on issues such as treaties, Indigenous rights, and land and resources. The AFN's Chiefs assemblies are held at least twice a year, where chiefs from each First Nation pass resolutions to direct the organization’s work. There are over 600 First Nations in Canada.

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Political Protest

Political protest is the kind of political activity, eg, demonstrations, strikes and even VIOLENCE, usually but not always undertaken by those who lack access to the resources of organized PRESSURE GROUPS, or by those whose values conflict sharply with those of the dominant ELITE.

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Manitoba Act

The Manitoba Act provided for the admission of Manitoba as Canada’s fifth province. It received royal assent and became law on 12 May 1870. It marked the legal resolution of the struggle for self-determination between people of the Red River Colony and the federal government, which began with Canada’s purchase of Rupert’s Land in 1870. The Act contained protections for the region’s Métis. However, these protections were not fully realized. As a result, many Métis left the province for the North-West Territories.

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Women's Movements in Canada: 1985–present

Women’s movements (or, feminist movements) during the period 1985–present — sometimes referred to as third- or fourth-wave feminism — engaged in multiple campaigns, from employment equity and daycare, to anti-racism and ending poverty and violence against women.

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Family

There is no such thing as "the Canadian family." Membership in a family, the activities of those members in and out of the household, and the relationship among members varies with economic conditions and also with regions, historical periods, SOCIAL CLASS, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity.

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Czech Music in Canada

Perhaps the first musically important immigrant to Canada from what later was to be known as Czechoslovakia was Wilhelm Labitzky (violinist, b Becov 1829, d Toronto 1871; son of Joseph Labitzky, 'the waltz king of Bohemia').

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Irish Famine Orphans in Canada

Thousands of children became orphans during the 1847 Irish famine migration to British North America. Public authorities, private charities and religious officials all played a part in addressing this crisis. Many orphans were placed with relatives or with Irish families. A considerable number were also taken in by Francophone Catholics in Canada East, and by English-speaking Protestants in New Brunswick. Although many families took in orphans for charitable reasons, most people were motivated by the pragmatic value of an extra pair of hands on the farm or in the household.

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Christmas in Canada

Christmas is celebrated in various ways in contemporary Canada. In particular, it draws form the French, British and American traditions. Since the beginning of the 20th century, it had become the biggest annual celebration and had begun to take on the form that we recognize today.

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Bathurst High School Tragedy

Eight people, including seven teenage athletes from Bathurst, New Brunswick, died in January 2008 when their school van collided with a transport truck on a snowy highway. The disaster triggered an inquest and a public campaign by some of the grieving mothers that exposed safety flaws in the way schoolchildren are transported to off-site events.

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Early Women’s Movements in Canada: 1867–1960

​Women’s movements (or, feminist movements) of the 19th and early-20th century — often referred to as first-wave feminism — included campaigns in support of temperance, women’s suffrage, pacifism, as well as labour and health rights.