Page 68 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Canada
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DISCOVER  A Brief History













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        A British Dominion
        In the 1830s, rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada occurred.
        The response of the British Government was to join together
        the two colonies into a united Province of Canada in 1840. After
        a series of conferences from 1864 onward, politicians of the
        Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick worked
        to establish a new country, the Dominion of Canada, on July 1,
        1867. British Columbia, a Crown colony since 1858, chose to join
        the Dominion in 1871, and Prince Edward Island joined in 1873.

        The Métis Rebellion
        Following confederation, the government purchased from
        the Hudson’s Bay Company the area known as Rupert’s Land.
        The Métis people (descendants of mostly French fur-traders
        and Aboriginal Peoples) who lived there were alarmed by the
        expected influx of English-speaking settlers. In 1869, local
        leader Louis Riel took up their cause and led the first of two   Gravestone of Louis Riel,
        uprisings, out of which the new province of Manitoba was   who died campaigning
        created. Riel was ultimately charged with treason and     for the rights of the
        hanged in Regina on November 16, 1885.     Métis people

        Timeline of events
           1841                            1874
           An Act of Union                 Canadian inventors
           unites Upper and                Henry Woodward and
           Lower Canada as the             Mathew Evans sell
           Province of Canada              their light bulb patent
                                           to Thomas Edison
                                      1870
                       1855           The Province of   1885
               Queen Victoria designates   Manitoba is created   The last spike of the
                Ottawa as capital of the   following the Red   transcontinental
                  Province of Canada  River Rebellion  railroad is put in place

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