By J.L. Granatstein

In 2009, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney announced the end of the nation’s heritage languages programme. He told a journalist that “I think it’s neat that a fifth-generation Ukrainian Canadian can speak Ukrainian — but pay for it yourself.” Read the full story

By J.L. Granatstein

“When I would speak at the United Nations on anything that had to do with human rights or human security,” recalled one experienced Canadian diplomat, “I (always) got a very respectful hearing.” Why? The ambassador explained: “In terms of welcoming others and integrating them into society, nobody does it better than we do … and we get a lot of credit for that in the international community.” Read the full story

By Robert Bothwell

The uneasy compromises that governed relations between English and French Canadians began to break down in the 1950s. French-Canadians had usually, if sometimes grudgingly, accepted that they were part of a Canadian nation, even if it meant that they had to cohabit with an English-speaking majority. A better-educated and more prosperous population in Quebec began to seek more elbow room — better jobs in the corporations headquartered in Montreal; the ability to use their own language in government; and if the national government in Ottawa did not allow that, why not a government of their own, one that spoke French? A new nationalism, not Canadian, not French-Canadian, but Québécois — a new word — came into being, and as the 1960s advanced, it proved more and more attractive to many of the French-speakers of Quebec. Read the full story

By Robert Bothwell

One of the problems of a bilingual country is, inevitably, national unity. In Canada, national unity usually — though not always — refers to relations between English and French Canadians. Put another way, if the English-language majority leads, will the French minority follow? Read the full story

By Robert Bothwell

The Conquest of 1760 was the culmination of 70 years of sporadic warfare between Great Britain and France. France’s main North American colony, New France, stretched from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Mississippi valley and prevented the British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard from expanding into the interior. The British colonies were, moreover, far more populous and much richer than New France. New France’s main defence against them was hundreds of kilometres of wilderness along the frontier and a collection of Indian allies who feared and hated the British more than the French. Read the full story

By J.L. Granatstein

Let me begin with one simple fact: Toronto’s public schools declare themselves the most multicultural in the world. One school, Thorncliffe Park Public School in Toronto’s east end, has 1,913 students speaking 54 languages. What that means is obvious —  Canada today is a nation of immigrants. Read the full story

By Patrick Brennan

Fifty years after its founding by Samuel de Champlain in 1608, New France, with fewer than 3,000 settlers, was little more than a collection of fur trade outposts. Preoccupied with European wars, France would never show much interest in the colony’s fate. Settlement took the form of the feudal seigneurial system, which provided defence against marauding Iroquois and a crucial sense of established community in the wilderness. In practice, abundant land and the freedom of frontier society ensured that this system would be easier for the colonists than for peasants in France. Slowly, a robust, self-reliant agrarian society emerged. Even so, it was generous subsidies to promote marriages and large families that proved the salvation of New France — during its existence, 90 percent of population replacement came by birth, not immigration. Read the full story

By Pat Brennan

According to scientists, stone-age nomadic hunters from Siberia crossed the Bering land bridge and migrated into the Americas some 15-20,000 years ago. By 1000 CE, with the Inuit occupation of the high Arctic, all of present-day Canada was at least thinly inhabited. Apart from brief visits by Vikings some five centuries earlier, Native-European contact began in 1534 when French explorer Jacques Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence in his pursuit of a route to China. Read the full story