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The Commonwealth is a loose, voluntary association of Britain and most of its former colonies.

Dominion of Canada is the country's formal — but rarely used — title, first applied to Canada at Confederation in 1867. Today, the word Dominion has fallen away in common usage in both private and government circles.

The Statute of Westminster, of 11 December 1931, was a British law clarifying the powers of Canada's Parliament and those of the other Commonwealth Dominions. It granted these former colonies full legal freedom except in those areas where they chose to remain subordinate to Britain.

The South African War (1899–1902) was Canada's first foreign war. Also known as the Boer War, it was fought between Britain (with help from its colonies and Dominions such as Canada) and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

The SS Komagata Maru was a chartered ship featured in a dramatic challenge to Canada’s former practice of excluding immigrants from India. This challenge took place in the spring and summer of 1914, on the eve of the First World War.

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.

Loyalists were American colonists, of different ethnic backgrounds, who supported the British cause during the American Revolution (1775–83). Tens of thousands of Loyalists migrated to British North America during and after the revolutionary war — boosting the population and heavily influencing the politics and culture of what would become Canada.

Prince Rupert, BC, incorporated as a city in 1910, population 12,220 (2016 census), 12,508 (2011 census). The City of Prince Rupert is located on Kaien Island, at the mouth of the Skeena River in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. It is Canada's wettest city, with an average of 2,619 mm of precipitation falling each year. Prince Rupert marks western end of the Yellowhead Trans-Canada Highway and, as Canada's deepest ice-free seaport, a link between the lower United States, Vancouver and Alaska. For these reasons it is the industrial, commercial and institutional centre for BC's Northwest Coast.

Vancouver, British Columbia, incorporated as a city in 1886, population 631,486 (2016c), 603,502 (2011c). Vancouver is the largest city in British Columbia and the third largest census metropolitan area in Canada. The City of Vancouver lies on a peninsula in the southwest corner of the province's mainland. Two surrounding waterways — Burrard Inlet and the Strait of Georgia — provide a sheltered deep-sea port and convenient access to the Pacific Ocean, while the Fraser River offers an easy route to the rich agricultural lands of the Fraser River Lowland and the interior. Railways and highways give easy access to the interior.

British Columbia is Canada's most westerly province, and is a mountainous area whose population is mainly clustered in its southwestern corner. BC is Canada’s third-largest province after Québec and Ontario, making up 10 per cent of Canada’s land surface. British Columbia is a land of diversity and contrast within small areas. Coastal landscapes, characterized by high, snow-covered mountains rising above narrow fjords and inlets, contrast with the broad forested upland of the central interior and the plains of the northeast. The intense "Britishness" of earlier times is referred to in the province's name, which originated with Queen Victoria and was officially proclaimed in 1858.

British Columbia joined Confederation on 20 July 1871, becoming Canada’s sixth province in the wake of a the Fraser River Gold Rush and on the promise of a transcontinental railway link.

Kennedy Stewart, politician, academic, mayor of Vancouver (2018–present) (born 8 November 1966 in Halifax, Nova Scotia). Stewart served as a Member of Parliament for Burnaby–Douglas and Burnaby South and was a member of the NDP caucus. He is an associate professor on leave at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy. Stewart is currently the 40th mayor of Vancouver.

​The Constitution Act, 1867, originally known as the British North America Act (BNA Act) was the law passed by the British Parliament creating the Dominion of Canada at Confederation.