Chapter 4 of 12

Who We Are

The peoples, languages and shared expectations that the guide treats as the basis of Canadian identity.

27 facts in 4 parts · covers Who We Are

The guide describes three founding peoples whose heritage shaped Canada: Aboriginal, French and British.
The guide describes Canada as a constitutional monarchy and as the only one in North America, although the monarch is also head of state in some Caribbean and Central American countries such as Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize.
The phrase peace, order and good government appears in the British North America Act of 1867, Canada's original constitutional document.
The name Canada comes from kanata, an Iroquoian word for a village or settlement, which appeared on European maps by the 1550s.

The Constitution recognises three groups of Indigenous peoples: First Nations, Inuit and Metis.
The ancestors of Indigenous peoples are understood to have migrated from Asia many thousands of years ago and to have lived across North America long before European explorers arrived.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III, first guaranteed territorial rights and formed a basis for later treaty negotiations.
First Nations describes Indigenous peoples who are neither Inuit nor Metis; the term came into use in the 1970s.
About half of First Nations people live on reserve land in roughly 600 communities, and about half live off reserve, mainly in cities.
Inuit means the people in Inuktitut, and Inuit communities are small and scattered across the Arctic.
Metis are a distinct people of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry, mostly living in the Prairie provinces, with their own dialect, Michif.
From the 1800s until the last federally run school closed in 1996, the federal government placed many Indigenous children in residential schools in an attempt to assimilate them, and it apologised to former students in 2008. The guide itself says the schools ran until the 1980s.
Indigenous peoples gained the right to vote in federal elections in 1960.

English and French are the official languages, and federal institutions must be able to provide services in both across Canada.
New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province, and Quebec has a majority French-speaking population.
Acadians descend from French colonists who settled in the Maritime provinces from 1604; between 1755 and 1763 more than two-thirds were deported in what is known as the Great Upheaval.
Most Quebecers descend from about 8,500 French settlers who came in the 1600s and 1700s.
In 2006 the House of Commons recognised that the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada.
Most Francophones live in Quebec, with about a million in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, and English-speaking Quebecers have a heritage of about 250 years in the province.
The Official Languages Act of 1969 guarantees French and English language services from the federal government across Canada.

Almost all Canadians are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, and immigration from Britain, the United States and Europe shaped the West in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Since the 1970s most immigrants have come from Asian countries.
Black Loyalists, escaped enslaved people and free people of African origin came to Canada from the United States in the 1780s, while slavery remained legal in the United States until 1865. The guide gives 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Groups named in the guide among Canada's largest include English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian, Scandinavian and Indigenous peoples.
The Canadian Multiculturalism Act sets out Canada's commitment to preserve and share cultural heritage.
Gay and lesbian Canadians have equal legal treatment and protection, including access to civil marriage.
John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General from 1935 to 1940, argued that immigrant groups should keep their individuality while contributing to the national character.

What has changed in the guide

This chapter of the guide carries demographic figures, including counts of Anglophones and Francophones and the proportions of Indigenous groups. Those numbers come from the guide's edition and should not be repeated as current. Check the source ↗