ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a sweeping survey of civilian-driven violence in the making of Canada, from seventeenth-century British claims to Newfoundland to present-day penetration of the Arctic north; and across the breadth of North America from the Maritime Provinces to British Columbia. Canada lacks a narrative of how settler-driven violence shaped both Native policy and the resulting status of Indigenous peoples. There are a handful of now-classic stories of the genocide of Native peoples. One of these is the extermination of the Beothuk, the original inhabitants of Newfoundland, which rivals the annihilation of the Tasmanian Aborigines. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, the colonial government made some effort to protect the Beothuk, but by then it was too late to reverse the damage that had been done to these people. Nova Scotia, from which New Brunswick was separated in 1784, had a diverse economy, based mainly on agriculture.
