Pride in Canada

The Dominion of Canada wasn't born out of revolution, or a sweeping outburst of nationalism. Rather, it was created in a series of conferences and orderly negotiations, culminating in the terms of Confederation on 1 July 1867.

The 1869–70 uprising in the Red River Colony was sparked by the transfer of the vast territory of Rupert's Land to the new nation 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 October Crisis began 5 October 1970 with the kidnapping of James CROSS, the British trade commissioner in Montréal, by members of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ).

The National Policy was a central economic and political strategy of the Conservative Party under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, and many of his successors in high office. It meant that from 1878 until the Second World War, Canada levied high tariffs on foreign imported goods, to shield Canadian manufacturers from American competition.

Police banging on doors at all hours of the day or night, ordering frightened occupants to gather up only what they could carry. Parents and children innocent of any crime ushered from their homes, herded into a central depot and sent out by train to remote camps.

At 8 PM Monday, December 3, 1837 William Lyon Mackenzie set out by horse down Yonge Street to scout the route for his attack on Toronto. At the top of Gallows Hill (below St Clair) he met Tory alderman John Powell, himself on patrol from the city. Mackenzie and his men took Powell prisoner.

On January 11, 1914, Vilhjalmur Stefansson's flagship, Karluk, was crushed and sunk by the tumultuous, rumbling ice of the East Siberian Sea. Not an auspicious start for an invasion, but that is exactly what it turned out to be.

Eight statesmen, scores of aides, hundreds of press, and thousands of security personnel will all descend on Kananaskis, Alberta, in late June 2002. For the fourth time since 1976, but the first time in Western Canada, a Canadian prime minister will be hosting the G-8 leaders summit.

On Monday August 29, 1864 half the cabinet of the Canadian government boarded the steamer Queen Victoria at Quebec. They had heard that representatives of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI were meeting in Charlottetown to discuss Maritime union and they hoped to crash the party.

In 1891, Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald won his final election as prime minister — successfully campaigning on the fear, real or imagined, that the Liberal promise of "unrestricted reciprocity" with the United States would lead to American annexation of Canada.

​The election of 1896 divided the country — along linguistic lines — over the Manitoba schools question.

Two elections within 12 months. Two leaders fighting for supremacy: one intellectual and cold, the other deliberately vague and hiding his ambition.

​In 1957 and 1958, Canadian voters swept aside 22 years of Liberal rule for the untested Conservatives under John Diefenbaker, whose campaign brilliance won him first a minority government, and then a historic majority.

Calling elections is like Goldilocks visiting the three bears – which political stew will turn out to be too soon, too late, or just right? The elections of 1979 and 1980 illustrate the perils of too late, followed by too soon.

“Canada is a hard country to govern,” observed John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister. It’s also a hard country in which to get elected.

When the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa were reconstructed after a fire during the First World War, stone plaques were erected over the entrance to the Peace Tower.

In April 1982, as an Ottawa winter turned into spring, Queen Elizabeth II made her eleventh visit to Canada. She had come to make it official: after more than a half-century of trying, Canada would have its own constitution.

On a Sunday evening, June 3, 1990, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the ten provincial premiers marked the third anniversary of the Meech Lake Accord at a dinner in the architectural splendour of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec.

On 15 February 1965, at hundreds of ceremonies across the country and around the world, the red and white Canadian Maple Leaf Flag was raised for the first time.

French Canadian militants in Lower Canada took up arms against the British Crown in a pair of insurrections in 1837 and 1838. The twin rebellions, which killed more than 300 people, followed years of tensions between the colony's anglophone minority and the growing, nationalistic aspirations of its francophone majority.

The Oka Crisis was a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Mohawk protesters, police, and army. At the heart of the crisis was the proposed expansion of a golf course and development of condominiums on disputed land that included a Mohawk burial ground.

​The terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 had an immediate and profound impact on Canada.

​On 22 October 2014, Parliament and the National War Memorial in Ottawa were the targets of an unprecedented attack by a lone gunman.

​On 4 June 2014, the city of Moncton, New Brunswick, was the scene of one of the worst police killings in Canadian history.

​In 1917, Canadians went to the polls on an issue that was literally one of life and death.