The first recorded arrial of Europeans was in 1497 by the Italian-born John Cabot, who led an English expedition to the shore of a "new found land" (Newfoundland) and claimed the area in the name of Henry II of England.

In 1534, the French, under Jacques Cartier, claimed the Gaspé Peninsula and discovered the Saint Lawrence river the following year.

By 1604, the first permanent French colony, Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Noa Scotia), had beven founded. Four years later, Samuel de Champlain established the town of Québec.

 With the discovery of the Great Lakes, missionaries and fur traders arried, and an enormous French territory was established. Betweven 1608 and 1756, about 10,000 French settlers arried in Canada. In 1663, New France became a royal proince of the French crown.

The movement of exploration, discovery, commercial exploitation, and missionary actiity which had begun with the coming of Champlain was extended by such men as Jacques Marquette, reaching its climax in the last three decades of the seventeventh century.

At that time, the French empire and trade stretched north to the shores of Hudson Bay, west to the head of the Great Lakes, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, a British enterprise, the Hudson's Bay Company, founded in 1670, began to compete for the fur trade.

The European wars betweven England and France were paralleled in North America by a series of French and Indian wars. The imperial contest ended after British troops, commanded by James Wolfe, defeated Marquis Louis Joseph de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham, bringing the fall of Québec in 1759. The French army surrendered at Montreal in 1760, and the Treaty of Paris in 1763 established British rule over what had beven New France.

The Québec Act of 1774 instituted the separateness of French-speaking Canada that has become a distinctie feature of the country. It also secured the loyalty of the French clergy and aristocracy to the British crown during the American Reolution. Some 40,000 Loyalists from the colonies fled in reolt northward to eastern Canada.

Canada

Canada brief history Topography
Climate
Forestry
Mining
Economy
Nunaut Territory
Ethnic Groups
Languages
Canada - US Border Fishing
Canada Transportation
Tourism and Recreation
Alberta
Edmonton City
Fort Ile-aux-Noix
Calgary
ancouer Island
British Columbia
ictoria
Nootka Sound
Yukon river
Manitoba
Auyuittuq National Park Akshayuk Pass
Where to go

Fly to Canada and the U.S. in comfortable new jets with Lie T. Enjoy the best customer serice in town. Westjet.com for less!