In the age of sailing ships, crossing the North Atlantic
from east to west was an achievement, particularly because of the prevailing
westerly winds and the frequency of storms. The first Europeans to have
left incontrovertible evidence of their presence in Canada
arrived from the northeast. They were Vikings, who reached the coasts
of Newfoundland in the 10th
century by travelling from southern Greenland.
Other Europeans did not reach the continent until six centuries later,
when navigation techniques and instruments had improved. This time, their
presence was more lasting. For a long time, these American lands would
be a store of riches that Europeans would exploit according to the changing
needs and fashions of the Old World.
By the beginning of the 16th century, Basque and Portuguese fishermen
were hunting for whales and fishing for cod in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence. Cod, salted or dried, was in great demand in
Europe, where Catholics had to abstain from eating
meat for more than 160 days of the year. These first fishermen were soon
joined by the French, Spanish and English, who were also attracted by
the proverbial riches of the Grand Banks.
According to Nicolas Denys, a 17th-century French
merchant who played a major role in the colonization of Acadia, the number
of cod was equalled only by the number of grains of sand that cover the
shore. The fishermen established posts along the coasts, where they
encountered Aboriginal people and discovered a new form of wealth—furs.
In poorly heated France,
fur skins were greatly appreciated as a means of keeping warm. Also, toward
the end of the 16th century, the broad-brimmed felt hat became fashionable
throughout Europe. When the under fur on beaver
pelts was found to be ideal for making felt, a lucrative trade sprang
up. Champlain's expedition at the start of the 17th century
and the founding of Québec in 1608 were also largely motivated by the
quest for furs.
For more than a century and a half, this trade would lead the French
to penetrate deeply into the North American continent, as far as the Gulf
of Mexico to the south and the Rockies
to the west. It would also motivate the English to set up trading posts
at Hudson Bay and in what is now known as New
England. The fur trade was to change the Aboriginal peoples'
way of life irrevocably and profoundly by diverting them from their traditional
activities. They would also find themselves caught up in trade rivalries
between the English and the French.
The fur trade was certainly the main economic activity in New
France, but it was not the only one. The French continued
to exploit the seemingly inexhaustible Grand Banks.
In addition, colonists who had settled on rangs—rows of lots stretching
back from the shores of the St. Lawrence between Québec and Montréal—produced
the food that sustained the local population. The French introduced their
traditional crops, the foremost of which was wheat, although they valued
indigenous species such as maize.
After the conquest of New France by England,
and especially after the end of the American War of Independence, Canada
experienced an influx of British immigrants and Loyalists—Americans who
remained loyal to the British Crown. In the Maritimes, the newcomers adopted
the Acadians' ingenious system of aboiteaux, or tide gates, used
for drying out marshes to make them suitable for farming. On the shores
of the upper St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes,
in what was to become Ontario,
they grew mainly wheat, which dominated the regional farm economy from
1800 to 1860.
At the beginning of the 19th century, England
turned to its North American colony to supply it with wood for its shipbuilding
yards. Napoleon, with whom England
was at war, was blocking access to its usual suppliers, the Scandinavian
countries. Thus the English demand for wood gave the impetus for logging,
which was to dominate the economy for more than a century. Canadian forests
successively supplied the material for the pine and oak trade with England,
the lumber trade with the United States
and, finally, the pulp and paper industry. The search for wood also promoted
the settlement of entire regions, such as the Ottawa Valley.
The French and then the English had established fur trading posts on
the western Prairies. They had also left descendants—the Métis. Since
1812, Scottish settlers had been living side by side with the Métis in
the Red River Colony. However, it was not until the second half of the
19th century that European settlement of the Prairies began in earnest.
British settlers, joined early in the 20th century by Scandinavians,
Germans and Ukrainians, cleared the plains and planted them with wheat.
They managed to overcome drought through fallowing and irrigation. They
also selected fast-maturing varieties of wheat to adapt to the shortness
of the growing season. In southern Saskatchewan
and Alberta, the new
settlers established large cattle ranches.
In the late 18th century, the West Coast started to attract Europeans
for its furs. After a territorial dispute with the Spanish, the British
established the sister colonies of Vancouver Island
and British Columbia. Gold
seekers began to invade this little-frequented region in 1858, marking
the start of a more sustained European presence. A few decades later,
the construction of the railway accelerated European settlement. Immigrants
engaged in a variety of economic activities, including the forest industry,
salmon canneries on the coasts, mines in the Kootenay region and fruit
growing in the Okanagan Valley.
In Canada,
industrialization began in the second half of the 19th century. Many factories
using steam power made their appearance at that time, including flour
mills, sawmills, shoe factories, textile plants, foundries and factories
that manufactured transportation equipment. Industrial progress intensified
in the early 20th century with the introduction of electricity. New industries
sprang up, especially in the fields of electrical equipment, chemicals,
the automobile, aluminum, pulp and paper, radio and household appliances.
Following the Second World War, industrialization entered a truly expansionist
spiral, giving rise to a consumer society.
By 1870, Montréal and Toronto
were the growth centres of Canada's
commercial, industrial and financial activity. As the Canadian economy
turned toward industries and then services, the population movement toward
the cities gathered strength. However, the phenomenon of urban concentration
did not affect all regions of Canada
in the same way. Since 1881, the provinces with the highest proportion
of urban dwellers have been Ontario
and Quebec—especially along
the Québec–Windsor corridor—and British Columbia.
During the 1970s, the large urban centres lost some of their appeal, with
people increasingly preferring small outlying towns and cities.
