How It Started

Out of all the large countries, Canada stands in second. Canada has a land mass of 10 million square kilometers! Canada's beginning dates way back 500 years. Let's start there. In the 1500's, people from Europe started coming to North America. They wanted resources and many riches from the land. Britain and France owned most of the land in North America at this time. Britain and France did not like each other and eventually went to war. The seven years war between France and Britain began as a result of this problem. It lasted until 1763, when Britain forced France to give up their land in North America to Britain. At this point, Britain controlled so much land in North America, they had land left over in the north named British North America. This land later became Canada about 100 years later. Over time, the colonies in British North America decided to form one country. This idea became a very popular idea due to the fact that in the 1860's, British North America was facing many types of problems. One way to fix these problems was to form one country out of all the little colonies. This idea was the call for the confederation. They created the Province of Canada which is now Ontario and Quebec. But soon, yet another problem arose. English-halves and French-halves had different ideas for the government. Leaders all over decided to join the other colonies, solving this problem. While that problem was resolved, the economy was not as well as it could be. The colonies could only sold to limited locations. They couldn't sell to each other that well either. To fix this, they decided to bring the colonies together to sell to each other a lot more easily. Ever since, America had fought for it's independence, America and Canada were not the best of friends. This got worse when Britain supported the south in the American Civil War. When the north won, they were very angry at Britain for supporting the south, and many people in America had plans to invade Canada. Britain also didn't want to pay for defending the colonies, so they decided to bring together the colonies into a self-governing country. This plan was for America not to invade Canada for it would be on it's own. This helped the call for the confederation. There is a lot more history after that, but that was how it all started.