Search for ""

The Treaty of Ryswick (or Rijswijk), signed in 1697, ended the Nine Years’ War in Europe between France and the Grand Alliance, which included England and several other European states. In the North American theatre of war, known as King William’s War, the Treaty of Ryswick ended armed conflicts between the French and English and their respective Indigenous allies. However, the peace was short-lived; Anglo-French hostilities resumed in 1702.

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.

The Red River Resistance (also known as the Red River Rebellion) was an uprising in 1869–70 in the Red River Colony. The resistance was sparked by the transfer of the vast territory of Rupert’s Land to the new Dominion of Canada. The colony of farmers and hunters, many of them Métis, occupied a corner of Rupert’s Land and feared for their culture and land rights under Canadian control. The Métis mounted a resistance and declared a provisional government to negotiate terms for entering Confederation. The uprising led to the creation of the province of Manitoba, and the emergence of Métis leader Louis Riel — a hero to his people and many in Quebec, but an outlaw in the eyes of the Canadian government.

The Northwest Territories (NWT) entered Confederation in 1870 after Canada acquired Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company. The smaller territory now known as the NWT is what remains after the creation of several other provinces and territories out of the original 1870 lands.

The colony of British Columbia was founded in 1858 in response to the Fraser River Gold Rush. (See also The Fraser River Gold Rush and the Founding of British Columbia.) The colony established representative government in 1864 and merged with the colony of Vancouver Island in 1866. In May 1868, Amor De Cosmos formed the Confederation League to bring responsible government to BC and to join Confederation. In September 1868, the Confederation League passed 37 resolutions outlining the terms for a union with the Dominion of Canada. The terms were passed by both the BC assembly and the federal Parliament in 1871. The colony joined Canada as the country’s sixth province on 20 July 1871. The threat of American annexation, embodied by the Alaska purchase of 1867, and the promise of a railway linking BC to the rest of Canada, were decisive factors.

New Brunswick became one of the founding members of the Dominion of Canada on 1 July 1867 when it joined Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec in Confederation. Arthur Hamilton Gordon, the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, helped organize the Charlottetown Conference (1–9 September 1864), where a federal union of British North American colonies was first discussed. By 1865, however, a majority in the New Brunswick legislature had swung against it. Albert Smith defeated pro-Confederation premier Samuel Tilley in a snap election that year. But the Fenian Raids in 1866 fueled New Brunswick’s sense of insecurity and increased support for Confederation. After Tilley’s party won another election in 1866, the legislature voted 38–1 in favour of Confederation.

Ontario became one of the founding members of the Dominion of Canada on 1 July 1867 when it joined New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Québec in Confederation.

Nunavut — meaning "our land" in the Inuit language Inuktitut — entered Confederation in 1999 as Canada's third territory and newest member of the country.

The Commonwealth of Nations is made up of 56 countries, including Canada, that were for the most part once part of the British Empire. They work together on international policy and hold a major sports event every four years. It is one of the world’s oldest political associations of states.

The struggle over the rights of francophones in Manitoba to receive an education in their mother tongue and their religion is regarded as one of the most important “school crises” in Canadian history, with major short-term and long-term consequences.

The Military Service Act became law on 29 August 1917. It was a politically explosive and controversial law that bitterly divided the country along French-English lines. It made all male citizens aged 20 to 45 subject to conscription for military service, through the end of the First World War. As such, the Act had significant political consequences. It led to the creation of Prime Minister Borden’s Union Government and drove most of his French-Canadian supporters into opposition.

The North-West Territories Act, passed by the Liberal government of Alexander Mackenzie in April 1875, was an attempt to improve government administration and direct the development of the North-West Territories. Established in 1870, the North-West Territories was the first Canadian territory. It covered a vast area, stretching from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains and from the forty-ninth parallel to the Arctic Ocean.

Labour law governs collective bargaining and industrial relations among employers, their unionized employees and trade unions. In Canada a distinction is commonly made between labour law narrowly defined in this way and employment law, the law of individual employment relationships, comprising the common law of master and servant and supervening statutory enactments governing the workplace. In England, labour law describes both, and of course a close relationship exists between them. In most provinces these matters are covered in separate statutes, but the Canada Labour Code is Parliament's major enactment governing the workplace for industries within federal jurisdiction, and regulates labour standards and occupational health and safety.

Labour relations refers to the relations between employers and employees. They are affected by a number of factors, including labour organizations, collective bargaining, labour market, government policy, the structure of the economy, labour law and technological change.

Employment law in Canada generally refers to the law governing the relationship of an individual employee to an employer, as distinguished from labour law, the law of unionized collective bargaining relationships. Employment law includes both the common, or judge-made, law of "master and servant," which is concerned mainly with wrongful dismissal, and a complex mass of statute law dealing with minimum labour standards, human rights, occupational health and safety and workers' compensation.

The Conquest (La Conquête) is a term used to describe the acquisition of Canada by Great Britain during the Seven Years’ War. It also refers to the resulting conditions experienced by Canada’s 60,000 to 70,000 French-speaking inhabitants and numerous Indigenous groups. French forces at Quebec City surrendered to British forces on 18 September 1759, a few days after the crucial Battle of the Plains of Abraham. French resistance ended in 1760 with the capitulation of Montreal. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris surrendered New France to Britain. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 introduced assimilative policies that ultimately failed. They were replaced by the provisions of the Quebec Act of 1774. Although it helped spark the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), the Act also granted Canadians enviable conditions that resulted in generations of relative stability.

The Rush-Bagot Agreement (or Rush-Bagot Treaty) was signed in 1817 by Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush and Sir Charles Bagot, British minister in Washington. The treaty reduced the number of military ships on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain and helped secure the Canadian-American border.

Illness and disease are communal problems. While individual interventions can have an impact, they are less effective than measures that can be done at a community level. Preventing disease and promoting health among individuals and the population at large is the purpose of public health. Public health is managed by local, regional, national and international public health authorities. Public health interventions include research, prevention, education and emergency preparedness. The most important public health interventions for reducing mortality over the past 150 years have included cleaning the water and air, making roads safer and immunizing against infectious diseases. Ironically, as is often said by public health practitioners, success in public health is often invisible when measures are working. In Canada, the rapid emergence, urgency, severity, global scope and long persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic has put all aspects of public health in the public and political spotlight to a greater degree than ever before. For some Canadians, this has resulted in a loss of confidence in public health authorities, while others have realized the importance of maintaining and funding public health.

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

The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was the forerunner of Canada's iconic Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Created after Confederation to police the frontier territories of the Canadian West, the NWMP ended the whiskey trade on the southern prairies and the violence that came with it. They helped the federal government suppress the North-West Resistance and brought order to the Klondike Gold Rush. The NWMP pioneered the enforcement of federal law in the West, and the Arctic, from 1873 until 1920.

Between 1725 and 1779, Britain signed a series of treaties with various Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet), Abenaki, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy peoples living in parts of what are now the Maritimes and Gaspé region in Canada and the northeastern United States. Commonly known as the Peace and Friendship Treaties, these agreements were chiefly designed to prevent war between enemies and to facilitate trade. While these treaties contained no monetary or land transfer provisions, they guaranteed hunting, fishing and land-use rights for the descendants of the Indigenous signatories. The Peace and Friendship Treaties remain in effect today.