Canada

Brunswick and Prince Edward Island before returning to France. 1535: Cartier embarked on his second voyage, this time sailing up the St Lawrence River, which he named, to the indigenous settlement of Stadacona (now Québec City) and then to the indigenous settlement of Hochelaga. At the latter site, Cartier climbed a hill and named it Mont Réal. 1541-42: On his third voyage, Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence River as far as Lachine Rapids and made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a French settlement there. 1576-78: The English navigator and explorer Sir Martin Frobisher made three voyages to Canada in search of the ‘North-West Passage’, a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the northern coast of the American continent; this route was considered to be of great importance by Europeans seeking to facilitate trade with the littoral countries of the Pacific, although it would be more than three centuries before it was successfully navigated. 1583: The English navigator Sir Humphrey Gilbert named the island of Newfoundland and claimed it for the English Crown. 1600: The indigenous population of what is now Canada is estimated to have exceeded 250,000 inhabitants at this time. They comprised Eastern Woodland peoples-nine farming tribes including the Iroquois Confederacy of southern Ontario and the Algonquin of western Québec; Great Plains peoples, who were nomadic livestock-rearers and comprised four main tribes including the Blackfoot of south-eastern Alberta and the Assiniboine of southern Saskatchewan; Plateau peoples, 11 tribes in eastern British Columbia; Subarctic peoples, who hunted caribou and moose and comprised 31 tribes sparsely populating subarctic Canada from Alaska to the Atlantic, the best known being the Cree; North-West Pacific Coast peoples, who inhabited a thin strip all along British Columbia’s Pacific coast and several offshore islands and comprised 14 tribes including the Tlingit and the Kwakiutl; and Arctic peoples, including the Inuit who, after about 2000 BC, had migrated from Alaska across Canada to Greenland and hunted seal, caribou and whale. 17th century: France established settlements around Placentia Bay, on the south coast of Newfoundland, and subsequently on the west coast. 1603: France, under King Henry IV of Navarre, granted a monopoly over New France to the French Huguenot (Protestant) explorer Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts who, in the same year, sailed there with the explorer Samuel de Champlain. 1604: Champlain and de Monts made another voyage to North America with a small party of French settlers who founded a colony at the mouth of the Saint-Croix River, which today forms the border between the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the US state of Maine. The surrounding area, comprising present-day New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, became known as Acadia. 1605: The Saint-Croix River colonists abandoned their site and moved to what is now south-western Nova Scotia, where they founded Port Royal, the first permanent European settlement in North America. Port Royal was subsequently renamed Annapolis Royal, after the British Queen, Anne. bec City;

subsequently became popularly known as the ‘father of New France’) forged alliances with the Algonquin and Huron tribes that endured for more than two centuries. 1610: British settlers founded the colony of Saint John’s, on the Avalon peninsula. 1610: The English navigator Henry Hudson made a fourth voyage in search of the NorthWest Passage. Under the patronage of an English company he sailed his ship Discovery into the bay that now bears his name and explored its eastern shore before becoming icebound at the onset of winter. Upon the thaw of the ice, permitting a return to the Atlantic, in June 1611, the crew mutinied and abandoned Hudson in the bay. 1611: Champlain founded a trading post at Hochelaga. 1621: Citing the 1497-98 voyage of John Cabot in the service of the English crown, Scottish-born King James I decided to press Britain’s claim to Acadia by granting proprietorship over it to the Scottish statesman and poet, Sir William Alexander, with a view to recruiting British colonists to settle there. He gave named part of the territory Nova Scotia, meaning ‘New Scotland’. Rivalry between Great Britain and France for primacy in Canada began. 1627: The French cardinal and statesman Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, who was Chief Adviser to the King Louis XIII, established the Company of One Hundred Associates, for the purpose of establishing French Roman Catholic colonies in what was officially known as New France. This name would remain in use until 1763. 1629: British forces occupied Québec City, the capital of New France. 1632: Great Britain yielded control of New France and Acadia to France. 1642: French settlers founded Ville Marie on an island in the St Lawrence River, near the hill which Cartier had named Mont Réal; the settlement would become the city of Montréal. 1645: The late Cardinal Richelieu’s Company of One Hundred Associates appointed the Community of Habitants as its colonial agents. 1648-49: The Iroquois confederacy, known since the 16th century as the Five Nations, attacked the Huron tribe and then threatened the French settlers, who were allies of the Huron. 1663: Jean-Baptiste Colbert, adviser to King Louis XIV, placed New France under the direct control of the French crown. 1666: The population of New France had grown to about 2,000 inhabitants of European, mainly French, descent. France granted large proprietorships to a select few men, called seigneurs, who were deemed to have sufficient wealth and ability to attract countrymen, called habitants, to emigrate to the ‘New World’ (as the Americas had become known), settle on their land and make it productive, usually as tenant farmers. 1670: Britain’s restored King, Charles II granted a Royal Charter for the Hudson’s Bay Company to a consortium of European aristocrats. The company was given control over territory on and to the west of Hudson Bay. 1689-97: King William’s War, named after Britain’s Dutch-born King William III, was the name given to the North American theatre of the conflict known variously in Europe as the War of the Grand Alliance, the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the f

Count of Frontenac, retaliated by attacking and burning the British colonial town of Schenectady, New York and threatening Boston and New York City. French pirates based in Acadia disrupted British ships approaching American ports. English colonial troops then captured the French colony of Port Royal. 20 September 1697: The Treaty of Ryswick, which concluded the War of the Grand Alliance, returned Port Royal to France. 1704: British colonial troops retaliated to a French attack on a British settlement by attempting to recapture Port Royal. The two European powers were opposed in the War of the Spanish Succession. 1710: British colonial troops, aided by the British Royal Navy, occupied the French colony of Acadia, but their subsequent assault on Québec City and Montréal failed. 1713: The Treaty of Utrecht, which formalized the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, awarded Newfoundland, continental Acadia, Hudson Bay and the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon to Great Britain. 1744-48: During the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe, fighting erupted in North America when French troops seized a British fort at Canso in Nova Scotia, imprisoned its occupants and transported them to the French fort at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. April 1745: A British colonial force from Boston besieged Louisbourg; the fort eventually capitulated on 15 June. 18 October 1748: The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen, Germany) concluded the War of the Spanish Succession; under its terms, Louisbourg was returned to the French. 1749: British settlers under the leadership of Col Edward Cornwallis founded Halifax, the future capital of the province of Nova Scotia. 1753: The French began erecting a line of fortresses extending from Lake Erie south to the fork of the Ohio River, in what today is the USA. The completion of the southernmost of the fortresses, Fort Duquesne, at what is now Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, USA, directly challenged Britain’s Virginia-based Ohio Company, which had also sought to establish a fortress in the same position. 1754: The Scottish-born Lieutenant-Governor of the Virginia colony, Robert Dinwiddie sent a military force under the command of Col George Washington, the future first President of the USA, to challenge the French; the ensuing conflict became known as the French and Indian War, more commonly known (from 1756) as the American theatre of the Seven Years’ War, in which Great Britain and its allies opposed France. 1755: British colonial authorities began requiring that all residents of Acadia, including those of French descent, swear allegiance to the British Crown. Any who refused had their lands confiscated and were forcibly deported to other colonies of the British Empire. 1758: British colonial troops again captured Louisbourg, destroyed Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario and seized Fort Duquesne. 1758: British North America’s first elected legislative assembly met at Halifax, Nova Scotia. 13 September 1759: In a decisive victory, British forces defeated the French main army at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, overlooking Québec City.