Reluctant provinces, a railway to the Pacific and rebellion on the prairies. Discover the words behind the deals, clashes and broken promises that stretched a fragile new country from sea to sea.
These terms were extracted from Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Aboriginal people of Newfoundland; believed to have disappeared — due to exotic diseases, loss of territory, and armed conflict with European colonists — by the second quarter of the 19th century.
The anguish expressed earlier in the 19th century at the tragic disappearance of the Beothuk peoples was not, it seems, followed up by any measure to protect other Aboriginal communities.
A pair of routes to the gold-bearing regions on the Interior Plateau of British Columbia, initiated in 1860. One begins in Fort Douglas, the other at Yale.
Building the Cariboo Wagon Road had effectively bankrupted the united colony of British Columbia.
Founded by Amor de Cosmos and John Robson in 1868, promoting the idea of union with Canada through newspapers and direct lobbying of administrations in Victoria, Ottawa, and London. Their goals included responsible government in the colony, reciprocity with the United States, and austerity measures to address colonial debt.
Their audacity in this regard served to increase support for the Confederation League.
An effective veto held by Ottawa that could be used to overturn provincial legislation.
The BNA Act gave substance to this argument in the form of disallowance.
1872; the legal mechanism that made possible the distribution of western lands.
As in the United States, Canadian homesteaders were promised a whole section of free land under the Dominion Lands Act (1871).
An organized movement in 19th century Prince Edward Island with the objective of ending absent landlordism and the distribution of lands to tenant farmers.
The Escheat Movement worked to eliminate leasehold tenures and absentee landlordism.
1871; the E&N was built to connect the coalfields of the central island with the British Columbia capital, Victoria.
The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway linked the coalfields of central Vancouver Island with Victoria.
Also called a dry dock; repair facility for shipping.
Another was the graving dock at Esquimalt that made the Vancouver Island port, in the calculations of the Royal Navy, even more critical.
1883 Newfoundland dispute in which Orange Lodge Protestants and Catholic neighbours came to blows; led to five deaths and a dozen casualties.
The Harbour Grace Affray of 1883 saw Orange Lodge Protestants and Catholic neighbours come to blows.
An agent of the federal government’s Department of Indian Affairs (or, later, DIAND) with responsibility for managing and/or supervising one or more Aboriginal communities.
The town was abandoned by alarmed settlers and the Indian Agent was unwilling or unable to offer the Cree-Nakoda protest group any food or resources.
Hawaiians or Pacific Island workers; this term may have been used disparagingly or in a derogatory fashion, however, the word means “human being” in the Hawaiian language.
Kanakans), and fortune-hunters from even further afield.
The 49th parallel north, so named by the First Nations of the Plains because it worked as an invisible barrier to stop attacks northward by United States soldiers.
The Sioux and the Niitsitapi moved freely back and forth across the Medicine Line and thus posed a threat to both Euro-North American nation states.
An early Protestant sect from central Europe; established missions in Labrador, with the first permanent site established at Nain in 1771.
Naskapi and Montagnais), many of whom were being missionized by the Moravian Brethren who had no presence on Newfoundland proper.
Movements among mostly Indigenous peoples under imperialism that attempt to throw off their occupiers and return to an idealized past way of living; sometimes imbued with a mystical element that could involve divine intervention.
He has been described by one of his many biographers as part of a larger global trend of nativist millenarians who represented Indigenous peoples under imperialism.
1873; Macdonald’s Conservative Party was given significant funds from the Canadian Pacific Railway, which caused the CPR to lose the opportunity to complete the Intercolonial Railway, cost Macdonald his administration, and brought the Mackenzie Liberals into office.
The 1873 Pacific Scandal created serious doubt on the likelihood of an all-Canadian route for a railway to the West — let alone to British Columbia.
From Section 91 of the BNA Act as regards “residual” or “residuary powers” (granted to the Queen, the Senate, and House of Commons to make laws), and which could cover anything and everything that was either not itemized or as yet not imagined in the constitutional division of authority.
British Columbia’s boundaries in 1867 were a little uncertain, especially concerning Alaska and the Peace River valley.
Colloquial name for a dispute between the United States and the British Empire over the San Juan Islands, from 1859-1873.
Likewise, the dispute over the San Juan Islands (known colloquially as the Pig War) percolated along from 1859-1873.
In politics, an appeal to the interests and concerns of the community by political leaders (populists) usually against established elites or minority — or scapegoat — groups. The rhetoric of populists is often characterized as vitriolic, bombastic, and fear-mongering.
Even the province’s limited male suffrage drew their criticisms and accusations that it had produced a populist assembly.
A system introduced by Canada for extinguishing Métis land title, beginning in 1870. Scrip documents indicated individual entitlement to land, although not necessarily to land on which one was already settled. While the numbered treaties dealt with whole First Nations communities collectively, scrip was negotiated on an individual and household basis.
Canadian failure to respect the scrip they issued to the Métis for land was one factor, as was the virulent hostility of Orangemen outraged at the “martyrdom” of Thomas Scott.
The system used by land surveyors to divide land and property. One section is meant to be 1 mi (1.6 km) square.
The Canadians sent in land survey teams to redraw the map of the Red River settlement using the section and quarter-section block system, which ran lines right across existing colonists’ farms.
Used in New France; based on a feudal system in which land was granted under a royalty system, and the tenant was responsible for farming the land to meet their physical needs (food, heat, and shelter). This system was abolished in 1854.
They established new farms – made up of long and narrow strips that were a legacy of the seigneurial system in New France – and erected churches and other elements of established communities.
Ended the Seven Years’ War. France ceded all of its territory east of the Mississippi to Britain (including all of Canada, Acadia, and Île Royale) and granted Louisiana and lands west of the Mississippi to its ally Spain. Britain returned to France the sugar islands of Guadeloupe. France retained St. Pierre and Miquelon along with fishing rights on the Grand Banks.
The Treaty of Paris (1763) that ended the Seven Years’ War saw Britain make a further concession to the defeated France.
Elements in Catholicism that emphasize papal authority over secular authority and, after 1870, papal infallibility. Seeks a large, extensive role for the church in daily life and objects to the main features of modernity, especially the growth of the secular state. Although ultramontanism faded in Europe after 1870, it remained a powerful force in Canada to the 1960s.
In the case of Riel, his vision of cultural resurrection and a promised land for the Métis combined ultramontanist Catholicism with elements of numerology, as well as Mormon-style polygamy and a Saturday Sabbath.
Meeting between British Columbian delegates to determine the colony’s demands as regards joining Confederation.
Meeting at the Yale Convention that year, they set out their goals: responsible government in the colony, reciprocity with the United States, and austerity measures to address colonial debt.