Chess
About 20% of adult Canadians play at least one game of chess a year. These games are mostly played for fun in backyards and basements, but for several thousand tournament players chess is a serious game.
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Create AccountAbout 20% of adult Canadians play at least one game of chess a year. These games are mostly played for fun in backyards and basements, but for several thousand tournament players chess is a serious game.
Communications influence all societies, but Canada in particular takes its shape and meaning from communications systems.
The Heritage Minutes collection is a bilingual series of history-focused public service announcements. Each 60-second short film depicts a significant person, event or story in Canadian history. They are produced by Historica Canada, the not-for-profit organization that also publishes this encyclopedia. First released in 1991, the Heritage Minutes have been shown on television, in cinemas and online. They have become a recognizable part of Canadian culture. The collection currently includes 99 episodes.
In 1986 Canadians of German descent formed the fifth largest ethnic group in Canada - after French, English, Scottish, and Irish. In 1986 the figure was approximately 900,000 of German origin and an estimated 1,700,000 with German-speaking ancestors from various parts of Europe.
In 1986 there were 107,000 people of Arabic extraction in Canada. The first immigration, in 1882, brought only Syrians and Lebanese who, even in the 1970s, formed a majority of Arab-Canadians, though 17 nations were represented to some degree in the total.
Immigration to Canada by the peoples of this eastern portion of modern Yugoslavia began in significant numbers after World War II, and by 1986 some 12,970 Serbian-Canadians lived and worked in the industrial areas of southern Ontario. Others lived in Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Immigration to Canada from Lebanon (formerly part of the Ottoman district of 'Greater Syria') began in 1882.
Although there are relatively few Canadians of Cuban origin (379 in 1987), there is a discernible influence of Cuban music on Canadian music, due mainly to its impact on various international styles of pop music, which has often come to Canada via the USA or other Latin American countries.
Founded in 1957 by Ludmilla Chiriaeff, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal is the most progressive and experimental of Canada’s three big ballet troupes (the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet being the other two). It is noted for a diverse repertoire that has emphasized new works as well as traditional 19th-century story-ballets and 20th-century classics. The company has also had a strong record of commissioning original works that are often choreographed, composed and designed by Canadians (see also Dance in Canada).
Electronic group The Halluci Nation (previously known as A Tribe Called Red) has garnered international acclaim for its politically charged, powwow drum-driven dance music. Featuring the DJs Bear Witness (Thomas Ehren Ramon) and 2oolman (Tim Hill), the group emerged from an Ottawa club party called Electric Pow Wow, which began in 2007. Former members include DJ Shub (Dan General), and founding members DJ NDN (Ian Campeau) and Dee Jay Frame (Jon Limoges). The group has described its “powwow step” music as “the soundtrack to a contemporary evolution of the powwow.” ATCR is part of what broadcaster and educator Wab Kinew has called the “Indigenous Music Renaissance,” an innovative new generation of Indigenous artists in Canada. The group was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize in 2013 and 2017, and has won three Juno Awards, including Breakthrough Group of the Year in 2014 and Group of the Year in 2018.
Traditionally made of wool and intricately finger-woven into a colourful lengthwise “zigzag” pattern, they have numerous names, including “arrowhead,” “Indian,” “Métis” and “voyageur” sashes.
The following article is an editorial written by The Canadian Encyclopedia staff. Editorials are not usually updated.
It has been said that Canadians don’t tell our own stories or celebrate our own myths. Our history is full of epics considered “too small to be tragic,” as The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie once sang.
Letters, journals, diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are all ways of saying to the reader, "I was there.
2 Pianos 4 Hands. Two-person comedy-drama with music; semi-autobiographical show by the pianists-playwrights Ted Dykstra (b Chatham, Ont 1961) and Richard Greenblatt (b Montreal, 1952 or 1953).
With the emergence of the Black Theatre Workshop in the late 1960s, Black theatre began to flourish across Canada, providing dynamic venues for the work of Black playwrights, directors, and actors.
Siksikáí’powahsin (commonly referred to as the Blackfoot language) is an Algonquian language spoken by four Blackfoot nations: the Siksiká (Blackfoot), Aapátohsipikani (North Piikani), Aamsskáápipikani (South Piikani) and Kainai (Blood). While there are some dialectal differences between these groups, speakers can generally understand one another. Blackfoot is an endangered language; since the 1960s, the number of new speakers has significantly decreased. The development of language programs and resources in Canada and the United States seek to preserve the language and promote it to new speakers.
Since 1902, the Alliance Française has offered high-level French classes in Canada and developed cultural programming to boost the cultural influence of France and the Francophonie throughout the world. While it once had twenty committees scattered across Canada, today there remain nine, located in large cities outside Quebec. Each year, the Alliance Française receives 12,000 students in Canada and close to half a million worldwide. Its funding comes mainly from enrolment income from the classes it offers. The Alliance Française de Toronto is the largest in the country, with five branches established in the region.
Written by Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933–1948 (published in 1982), documented antisemitism in the Canadian government’s immigration policies as they applied to European Jews fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany. The phrase “none is too many” entered the Canadian political lexicon largely because of this book. Even before its publication, the book played a crucial role in changing the Canadian government’s policies toward refugees, such that the government of Joe Clark welcomed Vietnamese refugees then referred to as the “Boat People.”
The First World War forever changed Canada. Some 630,000 Canadians enlisted from a nation of not yet eight million. More than 66,000 were killed. As the casualties mounted on the Western Front, an expatriate Canadian, Sir Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook), organized a program to document Canada’s war effort through art, photography and film. This collection of war art, made both in an official capacity and by soldiers themselves, was another method of forging a legacy of Canada’s war effort.