When it comes to knowing your nation’s history, Canadians surely rank last on the planet. Why? Because it’s never been taught. Yet for those willing to take a peek into the past, our formation is an example for the world. (Yes, for the world.)
Canada is the amalgamation of ancient hunter gatherers with the moderns of England and France. Not an easy combination considering these two systems are miles apart. But managing a merger without much for violence is an accomplishment claimed by no other. So let’s get started.
Tribalism
When societies first began forming, activities were centered around food. You see, Krog had to eat. So hunting and gathering in the form of vegetation and berries was happening everywhere–not just in North America. You could easily say, from a cultural perspective, that nowhere in the world was any different. Sure, some folks ate more fish but what’s the difference–we needed to survive. And this meant living in tribes.
Residing alongside nature, a few thousand inhabitants would cuddle together and separate chores. But constant exposure to the elements came with brutalities. Not just in terms of physical conditions, like too hot and too cold, intellectually there wasn’t much for schools. Not only could people not read or write, they didn’t know math. Why would you? There wasn’t anything to calculate. And neighbours weren’t exactly friends. Hatred flourished as tribes competed for scarce resources. Yes, people still got married and everyone loved their kids, but murder, enslavement, and torture were commonplace (occurring much more often than we care to admit). Scholars of the day famously referred to those living under such conditions as barbarians or savage. (And remember, everyone did it.)
Anyway, no better or worse than anywhere else, before British or French explorers existed, native Canadians resided in tribes. Generation after generation undertook the very same practices for thousands of years, until one day they saw a boat.
1600-1800
Samuel Champlain arrived on the shores of Quebec in 1608–one year after Britain had established its first colony in America. And natives loved him. Why not? Sammy and others like him brought practical goods that improved everyday living. Exchanging items like pots and pans for a beaver pelt was more than a great deal for everyone. Traders opened up stores and every time a new shipment arrived it was like the dickie-dee ice cream guy coming down a summer street.
Crack any book on history and you’ll see the years 1608-1830 were considered good. The general relationship between Natives and Europeans (Brits and French) was purely business and customer-vendors became friends. Why wouldn’t they? Natives helped the voyageurs explore the land inward and goodies kept coming. Over time, the fur trade delivered items made from steel (like tools and knives), fabrics including wool, sugar from the Caribbean, and guns that could be used for hunting. All of which were great. Yes, the times were good but those home improvements didn’t fall from the sky. They were a consequence of the Western European system.
Agrarian / industrial society
This may sound surprising but Europeans were previously hunter gatherers too. They just switched to another style. One that involved staying stationary and the theory of individualism. The agrarian introduction of farming allowed one family to produce bushels of potatoes to trade for everything they needed. It was amazing and a gigantic step in economics. And not only could we feed ourselves, excess capacity through the market system created unlimited possibilities. Add to this top-notch institutions for learning and you see the mother of big-time science and engineering.
Hunter gatherers could never build a massive ship to transport goods. Tribal infighting would never allow it. Let alone trade all over a country or the world. That’s why characterizations of chiefs yelling “get off our land” are misleading. Senior leaders hardly disagreed. But don’t kid yourself, Europeans didn’t make this transition in a lifetime. Unifying small tribes into a nation; adding legal and financial systems so individuals could do business with complete strangers; implementing organized religion to pound hard work and discipline into everybody’s head; and figuring out things like private property took hundreds of years.
Treaties and agreements
The fuss you hear over government and First Nations comes by way of the 1800s. The French had ceded their parts of Canada (New France) to the British in 1763 (through the Treaty of Paris), then the damn Americans broke away 20 years later. So after the British-American war of 1812, Britain decided to get serious about forming a country to keep what they had.
Former agreements were renegotiated to allow immigration to settle the West and a railroad was planned to be built. A misconception is that native leaders fought these reforms but that was hardly the case. Everyone knew Americans were mounting pressure from the south and the fur trade was dying. Leaders were just looking for their slice. So since reforms were inevitable, and in contrast to Americans who went to war with their tribes, people said, “Hey, we’ve been working together for 200 years. Let’s make a few deals.” Of course, the most controversial of these was residential schools.
Residential schools
Modeled after a similar program in America, Sir John A authorized the establishment of residential schools in 1883 with a clear and defined purpose: to ensure aboriginal children could read and write in English or French, and learn the standard curriculum including mathematics. At the time, native languages totaled over 60, and this system was central to the government’s model of assimilation. Upon Macdonald’s insistence, these schools were initially “optional” and operated this way for the first 37 years. They didn’t become mandatory until 1920. The system was then slated for closure in the early 1950s and dismantling soon began. As of 1979, 28 schools remained. The last one closed in 1996. At max, there were 80 in 1931.
I don’t have to tell you about the abuses reported at these institutions but given the circumstances, they had to be residential. And remember back then, many shipped their kids off to boarding schools voluntarily, including the parents of Winston Churchill (who hated it). In those days, even the wealthy considered family separation over education acceptable. And for the sake of information, Boy Scouts of America recently settled with 92,000 claimants over sexual abuse. No one is saying any of this was right, but it was a different time and money wasn’t plentiful. And I have a hard time believing Macdonald, Sir Wilfred Laurier, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and Pierre Trudeau (or his minister for Indian Affairs, Jean Chretien) believed they were subscribing to something evil. That being said, audits and commissions over these same years found native children to be in overtly poor health and poverty was a circumstance of reservations along with native living in general.
Summary
Canada is and always has been a great nation. Shameable only by ignorance. Don’t blame schools for not teaching history. What nine-year-old needs to hear about murder, torture, and enslavement. Topics like these should be left for those who study as adults. But I think kids should know about the assembly of this nation. Natives, French, British, and immigrants, all pieced together in a reasonably amical way. That’s why Canada is a test case for the world. We might yell at each other from time to time, but generally we keep the peace.
Americans surely know their history better than we do ours, but memorizing battles and generals isn’t it. Looking at the past means measuring progress and determining how advancements came to be. In our case, it’s by negotiating and renegotiating until tiny steps moved us forward. Yes, there was definite stubbornness towards the policy of assimilation because natives were afraid of losing their culture. They were okay with abandoning the economic part. It was nothing new and had been around for thousands of years. But folks were afraid of losing their home. You see, when an Italian immigrant jumps into the melting pot, they retain a motherland across the ocean. Somewhere they can return to. But in the case of North American Indians, this is the motherland. And once you wipe out their ways, they have nowhere to go.
The majority of complaints against assimilation were, and still are, social. Leaders don’t desire the entire European package. They find it too money-oriented, always focused on attaining more, and it doesn’t allot enough time for The Creator. So we’ve arrived at a hybrid. Today, 56% of First Nations live off-reserve and many who live on, pop off to work. 600,000 Canadians describe themselves as Metis, meaning of mixed blood. And though few solutions have been found to support communal economics, 60-70 reservations now operate under self rule. In non-indigenous Canada, aboriginals are recognized often and best efforts are employed to preserve elements of native culture. Perhaps godless capitalists will one day see a piece of the puzzle lies right beneath their feet.
Note: I went easy on the government over residential schools. That’s because the first rule of history is to view everything in context. The current messaging suggests we’ve developed genetically over the past 100 years. We have not. There was savagery in the British system as well, and it still exists today. The only path forward is through decent economic conditions, education, and encouraged civility in everyday life.