Canada

The ‘emigration’ of thousands of poor London children in the 19th century was seen by its organisers as an act of Christian deliverance, but the experience of the young people sent to Canada tells a different story. 

Canada’s attempts to ‘assimilate’ its indigenous peoples following the Indian Act of 1876 have been described as ‘cultural genocide’.

Newfoundland was England’s first overseas colony, but its settlement did not follow the usual patterns: its communities were nomadic, moving around the island with the seasons.

Dig deeper into Canada’s history and one encounters a more challenging past than its modern image suggests.

The pioneer spirit was different amongst the settlers of Québec. Instead of new found individualism, their cry, ‘Retournons à la terre’, resounded with the traditional values of the church and state.

Andrew Stewart investigates the forgotten role of those ‘ideal soldiers of democracy’, troops from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, who arrived to defend Britain from invasion.

The novelist and peer died on February 11th, 1940. 

Larry Hannant describes a forgotten episode of conflict over immigration and race between two bastions of the British Empire, Canada and India, in the summer of 1914.

Crevecoeur fought under Montcalm at Quebec in 1759 and, writes Stuart Andrews, afterwards settled in New York and Pennsylvania.

The Confederation of Canada was not achieved without protest and bloodshed. In the Red River rising of 1869 and the Saskatchewan rebellion of 1885, writes George Woodcock, Louis Riel led the French-Indian hunters of the North-West against the advance of Canadian federal authority.