page_title: History of Canada
section_title: Confederation
hierarchical_section_title: History of Canada / Confederation
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo by James Ashfield of Canadian artist Robert Harris' 1884 painting, "Conference at Québec in 1864, to settle the basics of a union of the British North American Provinces", also known as "The Fathers of Confederation". The original painting was destroyed in the 1916 Parliament Buildings fire. Français&#160;: Photographie d'une peinture de Robert Harris faite en 1884 initulée Conférence à Québec, en 1864, pour établir les bases d'une union des provinces de l'Amérique du Nord britannique. L'original de la peinture a été détruit en 1916 dans un incendie des édifices du Parlement.
context_page_description: The history of Canada covers the period from the arrival of the Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day. Prior to European colonization, the lands encompassing present-day Canada were inhabited for millennia by Indigenous peoples, with distinct trade networks, spiritual beliefs, and styles of social organization. Some of these older civilizations had long faded by the time of the first European arrivals and have been discovered through archeological investigations.
  From the late 15th century, French and British expeditions explored, colonized, and fought over various places within North America in what constitutes present-day Canada. The colony of New France was claimed in 1534 with permanent settlements beginning in 1608. France ceded nearly all its North American possessions to the United Kingdom in 1763 after the French defeat in the Seven Years' War. The now British Province of Quebec was divided into Upper and Lower Canada in 1791 and reunified in 1841. In 1867, the Province of Canada was joined with two other British colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia through Confederation, forming a self-governing entity named Canada.
context_section_description: The Seventy-Two Resolutions from the 1864 Quebec Conference and Charlottetown Conference laid out the framework for uniting British colonies in North America into a federation. They had been adopted by the majority of the provinces of Canada and became the basis for the London Conference of 1866, which led to the formation of the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867. The term dominion was chosen to indicate Canada's status as a self-governing colony of the British Empire, the first time it was used about a country. With the coming into force of the British North America Act, 1867 (enacted by the British Parliament), the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia became a federated kingdom in its own right. (According to J. McCullough, use of the phrase "Dominion of Canada ... was gradually phased out" during the "late 1940s, 50s, and early 60s" with the growth of "post-colonial Canadian nationalism".)
  Federation emerged from multiple impulses: the British wanted Canada to defend itself; the Maritimes needed railroad connections, which were promised in 1867; British-Canadian nationalism sought to unite the lands into one country, dominated by the English language and British culture; many French-Canadians saw an opportunity to exert political control within a new largely French-speaking Quebecpp. 323–324 and fears of possible U.S. expansion northward. On a political level, there was a desire for the expansion of responsible government and elimination of the legislative deadlock between Upper and Lower Canada, and their replacement with provincial legislatures in a federation. This was especially pushed by the liberal Reform movement of Upper Canada and the French-Canadian Parti rouge in Lower Canada who favoured a decentralized union in comparison to the Upper Canadian Conservative party and to some degree the French-Canadian Parti bleu, which favoured a centralized union.
caption: 1885 photo of Robert Harris' 1884 painting, Conference at Quebec in 1864, also known as The Fathers of Confederation. The scene is an amalgamation of the Charlottetown and Quebec City conference sites and attendees.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2004:12:22 11:51:04", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6864", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "760", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "457"}