Chapter 8

Who We Are

The three founding peoples, the English and French communities, and Canada’s diversity.

Canadian identity

Canada has inherited the oldest continuous constitutional tradition in the world and is the only constitutional monarchy in North America.
Canadian institutions uphold a commitment to Peace, Order and Good Government, a key phrase in Canada’s original constitutional document of 1867, the British North America Act.
To understand what it means to be Canadian, it helps to know the three founding peoples: Aboriginal, French and British.

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The ancestors of Aboriginal peoples are believed to have migrated from Asia many thousands of years ago, and were well established here long before European explorers arrived.
Aboriginal and treaty rights are in the Canadian Constitution. Territorial rights were first guaranteed through the Royal Proclamation of 1763 by King George III, which established the basis for negotiating treaties.
From the 1800s until the 1980s the federal government placed many Aboriginal children in residential schools. The schools were poorly funded and inflicted hardship; Aboriginal languages and cultural practices were mostly prohibited. In 2008 Ottawa formally apologized to the former students.
The term Aboriginal peoples refers to three distinct groups: First Nations (the term that came into use in the 1970s for those who are not Inuit or Métis), the Inuit, and the Métis.
Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language. The Inuit live in small, scattered communities across the Arctic.
The Métis are a distinct people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry, most of whom live in the Prairie provinces and speak their own dialect, Michif.
About 65% of Aboriginal people are First Nations, 30% are Métis and 4% are Inuit.

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English and French are the country’s official languages, and the federal government is required by law to provide services throughout Canada in both.
There are 18 million Anglophones — people who speak English as a first language — and 7 million Francophones. While the majority of Francophones live in Quebec, 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 in what are now the Maritime provinces in 1604. Between 1755 and 1763 more than two-thirds of the Acadians were deported from their homeland, an ordeal known as the “Great Upheaval”.
Most Quebecers are descendants of 8,500 French settlers from the 1600s and 1700s. The House of Commons recognized in 2006 that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.

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The majority of Canadians were born in this country, and this has been true since the 1800s. Canada is still called a land of immigrants because over the past 200 years millions of newcomers have helped build and defend its way of life.
The largest ethnic groups are the English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian and Scandinavian. Since the 1970s most immigrants have come from Asian countries.
The great majority of Canadians identify as Christians, the largest affiliation being Catholic, followed by various Protestant churches. The numbers of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, members of other religions and people of no religion are also growing.
Canada’s diversity includes gay and lesbian Canadians, who enjoy the full protection of and equal treatment under the law, including access to civil marriage.
Newcomers are expected to embrace democratic principles such as the rule of law. Experiences of warfare or conflict elsewhere do not justify bringing violent, extreme or hateful prejudices to Canada.

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