Page 68 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Canada
P. 68
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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