Anglais > Civilisation > Canada > History

Native inhabitants : c. 40,000-30,000 BC: Prehistoric hunters migrate from Asia across the Bering strait land bridge. They are the ancestors of the Inuit, who live in the Arctic regions of Canada, and the First Nations who progressively settled from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. In the plains were the Blackfoot, etc. Around the Great Lakes were the Iroquois, ...	Iroquois warrior
Viking Explorations : c. 1000 AD: Norsemen, including Erik the Red and Leif Ericson, set up outposts in North America and reach Newfoundland, a region they name Vinland.	Viking explorations

Early modern explorations : 1496-97: Italian navigator John Cabot, under English sponsorship, explored the coasts of Canada and landed on the island of Newfoundland. 1524: Francis I of France sponsored Giovanni da Verrazzano to navigate the region between Florida and Newfoundland in hopes of finding a route to the Pacific Ocean. 1534: Jacques Cartier planted a cross on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, in Quebec, and claimed the land in the name of Francis I. 1608 Samuel de Champlain then founded what is now Quebec City, it would become the first permanent settlement and the capital of New France.

In 1535, two Indian Youths told Jacques Cartier about the route to "kanata" the Huron-Iroquois word for "village". But Cartier used "Canada" to refer to the region around the St Lawrence.

17th century : While French colonizers were well established in parts of Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and modern-day New England, British colonizers had control over the Thirteen Colonies to the south and also had laid claim (from 1670, via the Hudson's Bay Company) to Hudson Bay, and its drainage basin (known as Rupert's Land), as well as settlements in Newfoundland. The British colonies were rapidly expanding, while the French fur traders and Aboriginals allies were extended thinly with a population of only 10,679 individuals in 1680. La Salle's exploration of the Mississippi to its mouth in 1682 gave France a claim to a vast area bordering the American Colonies from the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley southward to the Gulf of Mexico. There were four French and Indian Wars between New England and New France before the final British conquest

17th century North America

Canada passes under British control : With the end of the Seven Years' War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763), France ceded almost all of its territory in mainland North America to the United Kingdom. The new British rulers guaranteed the right of the Canadiens to practice the Catholic faith and to the use of French civil law (now Quebec law) through the Quebec Act of 1774

NorthAmerica 1762-83