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The colonization of eastern Canada began with the French in the 17th century. For some years, these settlers depended for clothing on what they brought with them.

Wars often have many causes. Some are long-standing problems between nations, while others are dangerous sparks that inflame attitudes and push nations to a call to arms.

The fur trade began in the 1600s in what is now Canada. It continued for more than 250 years. Europeans traded with Indigenous people for beaver pelts. The demand for felt hats in Europe drove this business. The fur trade was one of the main reasons that Europeans explored and colonized Canada. It built relationships between Europeans and Indigenous peoples.

(This article is a plain-language summary of the fur trade. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Fur Trade in Canada.)

In early Canada, the enslavement of African peoples was a legal instrument that helped fuel colonial economic enterprise. The buying, selling and enslavement of Black people was practiced by European traders and colonists in New France in the early 1600s, and lasted until it was abolished throughout British North America in 1834. During that two-century period, settlers in what would eventually become Canada were involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Canada is further linked to the institution of enslavement through its history of international trade. Products such as salted cod and timber were exchanged for slave-produced goods such as rum, molasses, tobacco and sugar from slaveholding colonies in the Caribbean.

This is the full-length entry about Black enslavement in Canada. For a plain language summary, please see Black Enslavement in Canada (Plain Language Summary).

(See also Olivier Le Jeune; Sir David Kirke; Chloe Cooley and the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada; Underground Railroad; Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; Slavery Abolition Act, 1833; Slavery of Indigenous People in Canada.)

Since the 1960s some craftsmen have moved away from traditional weaving into "art fabric," experimenting with traditional techniques but using a wide range of materials in the production of unique works.

Hôtel-Dieu is the name given to hospitals established by nursing orders of nuns. The Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal was founded by Jeanne Mance and funded by Madame de Bullion, the widow of one of Louis XIII's superintendents of finance.

Association chorale Saint-Louis-de-France. Male-voice choir founded in 1891 to serve in the church of that name in Montreal. It was incorporated in 1897. Its conductors were Charles Labelle 1891-1902, Alexandre M. Clerk 1903-27, Joseph Saucier 1927-36, and Charles Goulet 1936-68.

Jansenism, a theological doctrine which urged greater personal holiness, espoused predestination and was linked to some extent with GALLICANISM.

The Society of Jesus was founded in Paris in 1534 by Saint Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier who underwent a profound religious experience while recovering from serious wounds. Loyola called the society "The Company of Jesus" to indicate its military spirit. The order was authorized in September 1540 to ordain its members. The name "Jesuits" (meaning those who too frequently use or appropriate the name of Jesus) was used against the order as a term of reproach but in time was accepted by its members.

The council initially comprised the governor, the bishop, the INTENDANT and 5 councillors. In 1703 membership grew to 12, to which 4 associated judges were added in 1742. Members, usually recruited from the French gentry, were nominated initially by the governor and the bishop and later by the king.

La Musique du Royal 22e Régiment. The regimental band of the Royal 22e Régiment. Originally named the Royal 22nd Regiment by King George V, the infantry unit was renamed in 1928 as the Royal 22e Régiment to reflect the language and culture of the unit.

Coutume de Paris, the customary law of the Prévoté et Vicomté de Paris (written 1510; revised 1580), was a code of law first introduced to what is now Canada by the COMPAGNIE DES CENT-ASSOCIÉS in 1627.

French westward expansion in the 1670s and 1680s cut off the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy from new sources of beaver and threatened New York's fur trade.

The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) were a series of wars between France and shifting alliances between other European powers.

French is one of Canada’s two official languages. Although every province in Canada has people whose mother tongue is French, Québec is the only province where speakers of French are in the majority. In 2011, 7,054,975 people in Canada (21 per cent of the country’s population) had French as their mother tongue.

"It’s hard to forget. In dreams I keep on coming back. Some nights even now, I dream at night. I mean, it’s a long time ago that this war is over. But I still dream sometimes."

See below for Mr. Vicaire's entire testimony.

Please be advised that Memory Project primary sources may deal with personal testimony that reflect the speaker’s recollections and interpretations of events. Individual testimony does not necessarily reflect the views of the Memory Project and Historica Canada.

Streets, avenues, roads and parks are named according to criteria set by the municipal council concerned.

During the Cold War, Canada stationed army and air force units abroad for the first time during peacetime. Soldiers and airmen began to arrive in the early 1950s, shortly after the Cold War began, and remained until 1993, after it ended. In total, more than 100,000 Canadian military personnel served in France and West Germany in that period.