Who We Are

Medium

The three founding peoples, the Aboriginal groups, and the language/diversity numbers.

Guide pages 10–13

The big frame

Canada has the oldest continuous constitutional tradition in the world and is the only constitutional monarchy in North America.
“Peace, Order and Good Government” is a key phrase from the British North America Act, 1867.
The three founding peoples are Aboriginal, French and British.

Ancestors are believed to have migrated from Asia many thousands of years ago.
Territorial rights were first guaranteed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III — the basis for negotiating treaties.
From the 1800s until the 1980s, the federal government placed many Aboriginal children in residential schools. Ottawa formally apologized to former students in 2008.
Three distinct groups: First Nations (the term replaced “Indian” in the 1970s), Inuit, and Métis.
About 65% of Aboriginal people are First Nations, 30% Métis and 4% Inuit.
About half of First Nations people live on reserve land in about 600 communities; the other half live off-reserve, mainly in urban centres.
“Inuit” means “the people” in Inuktitut. They live in small, scattered communities across the Arctic.
The Métis are a distinct people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry, the majority living in the Prairie provinces. They speak their own dialect, Michif.

18 million Anglophones (English as a first language); 7 million Francophones.
Most Francophones live in Quebec, but one million live in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba.
New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province.
The Acadians are descendants of French colonists who began settling the Maritimes in 1604.
Between 1755 and 1763 more than two-thirds of the Acadians were deported — known as the Great Upheaval (le Grand Dérangement).
Most Quebecers are descendants of 8,500 French settlers from the 1600s and 1700s.
In 2006 the House of Commons recognized that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.
One million Anglo-Quebecers have a heritage of 250 years.

The majority of Canadians were born in Canada — true since the 1800s.
Largest ethnic groups: English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian and Scandinavian.
Since the 1970s, most immigrants have come from Asian countries.
Chinese languages are the second most-spoken at home after English in Vancouver (13%) and Toronto (7%).
The great majority of Canadians identify as Christians; the largest affiliation is Catholic.
Gay and lesbian Canadians enjoy the full protection of and equal treatment under the law, including access to civil marriage.