History of Canada

The history of Canada covers the period from the arrival of Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day. Canada has been inhabited for millennia by distinctive groups of Aboriginal peoples, with distinct trade networks, spiritual beliefs, and styles of social organization. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first European arrivals and have been discovered through archaeological investigations. Various treaties and laws have been enacted between European settlers and the Aboriginal populations.

Beginning in the late 15th century French and British expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic Coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America to Britain in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the British Empire, which became official with the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and completed in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.

Over centuries, elements of Aboriginal, French, British and more recent immigrant customs have combined to form a Canadian culture. Canadian culture has also been strongly influenced by its linguistic, geographic and economic neighbour, the United States. Since the conclusion of the Second World War, Canadians have supported multilateralism abroad and socioeconomic development domestically. Canada currently consists of ten provinces and three territories and is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state.

Le Canada est un pays d'environ 35 millions d'habitants qui occupe la partie septentrionale du sous-continent nord-américain ; c'est le deuxième plus grand pays du monde en superficie, après la Russie. Habité depuis des millénaires par les Amérindiens (peuples autochtones), le Canada a évolué à partir d'un groupe de colonies européennes en une fédération officiellement bilingue (anglais et français) et multiculturelle, ayant pacifiquement obtenu sa souveraineté de la dernière puissance coloniale, le Royaume-Uni. Les Européens ont envoyé des premiers groupes importants de colons au xviie siècle jusqu'à ce que le pays gagne son indépendance au xixe siècle et une souveraineté complète au xxe siècle. Son histoire a été affectée par ses habitants, sa géographie et ses relations avec le monde extérieur. Le Canada fait partit du top 10 des plus grandes puissances mondial. Il vit en paix (de nos jours) comme la suisse.