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Canadian History PDQ Posting Date: Jul 14 2008 12:51AM With Canada Day fading behind us in the calendar, SundayMonkey would like to remind the masses of the important milestones of our nation’s history. School-aged readers should feel comfortable ignoring their textbooks and memorizing the following historical summary. Every detail you are about to read is true.
Today, we deal with everything up to Confederation. We’ll talk about the other stuff later.
Canadian history began on June 24, 1497 when John Cabot, an Englishman with a colonial disposition, landed on Canada’s Atlantic coast. When he stepped out of his boat and onto Canadian soil, he looked around, ignored all the pesky indigenous peoples and the Viking ruins, and loudly proclaimed, “I claim this land for King Henry VII, and I name it Saskatchewan.”
Cabot then promptly left.
Thirty-seven years and one month later to the day, the French arrived when Jacques Cartier landed at Gaspé, which seemed fitting since it already had a French name. Cartier stepped ashore, looked around, ignored Mr. Cabot and all those pesky indigenous peoples and said, “Nation of Gaspé, I claim this land in the name Francis I,” which has to be the worst name for a king ever.
After that, nothing much happened in Canada for nearly 150 years. A couple of towns popped up and the white folks figured out how to kill mosquitoes and make pancakes, but other than that, it was pretty boring until May 2, 1670 which was the first day of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which through some political shenanigans basically got the entire country given to them, which makes you wonder why you can’t find a pair of size 33 khaki Dockers when you go to the menswear department.
On October 2, 1758, the legislative assembly of Nova Scotia became Canada’s first elected legislature. Robert Mugabe actually won a seat.
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham took place in Québec City on September 13, 1759 and the result was notable for two important reasons. First, the British victory flipped Québec into English rule and soon all the “Arret” signs in the province became “Stop” signs. Second, it was a match-up of perhaps the two worst generals in the history of military warfare. They were both killed, for crying out loud. Wolfe got himself shot three times. From that day forward, generals began sitting well back of the front lines and yelling orders to the lesser ranks. This was the beginning of “smart” warfare.
On December 31, 1775, a bunch of Americans celebrated New Year’s Eve by invading Québec City. You can probably guess that since Canada has its own currency and hockey team, the Americans lost quickly and everyone got back to watching Dick Clark do the countdown from Times Square.
On October 13, 1812, Canadians opened another can of whoop-ass on Americans at the Battle of Queenston Heights. This was a critical victory in the War of 1812, a war that Americans conveniently forget every time they claim to be undefeated in their warring efforts. This was also the beginning of Laura Secord chocolates, so this is arguably the most important date in Canadian history.
In late 1837, Canada lived through its own Civil War when William Lyon Mackenzie led a parade down Yonge Street in Toronto in an effort to overthrow the government. A few shots were fired, the parade dispersed and everyone was home before the street lights came on.
The Fraser Gold Rush started in 1858, causing a lot of people to head to British Columbia where they discovered that Jimmy Pattison already owned everything, so the prospectors mostly just sat around drinking coffee and learning to snowboard.
On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act came into effect, thus creating the Dominion of Canada. Interestingly, Canadians had little to do with this great event. The act itself was passed by British Parliament and given royal assent by Queen Victoria. Compared to other more dramatic ways of forging nationhood, this was like having someone else lose your virginity for you. This did, however, snag Queen Victoria her own national holiday, so now everyone gets to watch fireworks on May 24th. It all worked out in the end. |
