Nipissing University History 2005 Canadian Social History Essay

This essay analyzes Canadian social history, focusing on the relationship between First Nations and European settlers, the impact of immigration, and the rise of marginalized communities. It examines the initial interactions between First Nations and settlers, including treaty agreements and conflicts. The essay further explores the increasing diversity of Canada post-World War II, with an emphasis on the rise of visible minorities and the evolution of the workforce. It highlights the impact of immigration policies, the growth of the welfare state, and the changes in the labor market, including the emergence of new occupations and the challenges faced by different segments of the population. The essay also addresses the history of queer communities in Canada, the influence of social movements, and government policies related to diversity and equality. The student uses course readings and personal insights to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject.

Running head: CANADIAN SOCIAL HISTORY
CANADIAN SOCIAL HISTORY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Answer 1
Aboriginal people are considered as the founding nation of Canada. Prior to the arrival of
the European settlers, Aboriginals or the First Nations already comprised of governance
structures and legal systems. Aboriginal individuals had two choices, which relied on either to
adapt or embrace the foreign culture and system or to uphold its own and disregard the White
settlers, which resulted to the rise of conflict (Gaudry & Leroux, 2017). The thesis statement of
is “relationship between the First nations and settlers initiated through the agreement of the
treaties.” This association began with the French who arrived first and continued with the British
who defeated the French in the 1860s.
The First Nations in Canada had been killed in significant numbers by the European
ailments such as measles, smallpox, and influenza due to lack of immunity. However, they not
only died because of severe illnesses, but also by European blades and factors, which had been
directly linked to colonialism such as land theft on massive scale, enforced elimination along
with exhaustion of natural resources. Indeed, from the 1830s onward, the First Nations were
exhilarated and compelled to sacrifice their conventional migratory practices and settle on
reserves, adapt agricultural practices and trade exchange as well as accept religious instructions.
Although, the Crown served as the trustee of Indigenous lands for safeguarding unlawful trades,
plundering and violation, other legal provisions seized Indigenous rights to selling alcohol and
protected reserve members from legal actions, taxation and property confiscation (Rotz, 2017).
However, in recent times, First Nations of varied backgrounds have developed as significant
figures and have been serving as role models in the Aboriginal community and influencing the
Canadian cultural distinctiveness.

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By the 1830s and 1840s, when the colonization of the Canadian region started to shift
into great extent, the European settlers followed laws and regulations to control the populace
with whom they came into interaction. The reserve however had been regarded as colonial
strategy for dealing with local Indigenous population. Studies of Mackey (2014) revealed that
reserves existed in Canada where the colonizers were supposed to address the people they
dispossessed where people who apparently stood in the way of the political and economic plans
of White settlers. During the initial settlement years, First Nations individuals opposed to the
unlawful ownership of the lands in several means. As per studies of Alcantara and Nelles (2014),
some made official illustrations to the administration and further to Queen Victoria. On the other
hand, another proportion of First Nations populace were engaged in unlawful practices such as
theft and burglary. Moreover, in severe cases, First Nations people imposed vehemence on lately
arrived settlers.
Associations between First Nations and White settlers all through the settlement period
of British Columbia starting from 1858-1901 had not been completely unfriendly. Studies of
Snelgrove, Dhamoon and Corntassel (2014) found that on Salt Spring Island, around one-quarter
of all matrimonies took place amongst Indigenous woman and a non-Native man. Moreover, by
1881, around half of the proportion of the children on Salt Spring Island comprised of mixed
parentage. Parlee (2015) has noted that First Nations women had not only been engaged in
providing families for colonizers, they further offered local understanding regarding the way rely
on the land and sea in an extraordinarily opulent environment. With utmost proficiency in
hunting and fishing as well as in the farming and arrangement of local foods, First Nations had
served as a decisive part as settlers adjusted to situations on the Pacific Coast. Furthermore,
according to authors, Indigenous of Canada practised white skills and further assisted them to

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familiarize to a life regardless of medication, transportations or the store-bought products, which
number of settlers had relied on Canada.
For several centuries starting from 1650 and 1850, First Nations lived in utmost
coherence with fur traders who arrived to the region from Montreal in order to obtain furs and
subsequently other agricultural produces. As per the study of Snelgrove, Dhamoon and
Corntassel (2014), Canadian fur traders did not exhibit any interest in acquiring lands of the First
Nations, but only in utilizing Indigenous-hunting abilities to deliver the furs for trade practices in
European marketplaces. There had been witnessed European-Canadians had been dependent on
the First Nations meant for this trade. Thus, the relationship between First Nations and White
settlers has been considered as being of ‘contact’. Drawing relevance to these factors, it has been
noted that Salt Spring Islanders conceited them by upholding equivalent associations and
dealings between African-Americans with the larger British population. Parlee (2015) has noted
that the African-American inhabitants had been amongst the highly knowledgeable on the island
in addition to number of men showed dynamic participation in local policymaking. Furthermore,
being the first non-Native arrivals, they developed the competence to settle down on some of the
most fruitful lands. Studies of authors have found some evidences related to the lack of
contentment African-American natives showed due to wide-ranging equality whereby they
gathered in single part of the island. Moreover, number of historians have argued that many non-
natives left the land as the end of the American Civil War concluded sanctioned oppression in
the United States. Regardless of the underlying explanations, the African-American community
developed as much smaller and subordinate subsequent to the killings of the late 1860s. In
addition to this, First Nations inhabitants have been celebrating treaties amongst them previously
in order to form associations among nations and their land properties prior to the settlement of

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the Aboriginal lands. The treaties had been documented thoroughly and chronicled on trees, and
rocks and had been offered utmost reverence and weighty position (Snelgrove et al., 2014).
Failure of discerning them had the propensity to create monetary complications, political
unpredictability in addition to confrontation.
Moreover, it had been considered that Indigenous population or the First Nations prior to
the Europeans inhabited their lands and had been controlled in federations or coalitions by means
of agreements and treaties. Consequently, it can be applicable to note that neither federalism nor
contracts or settlements had been directly inherited from Western customs and traditions.
Answer 6
Canada’s visible minority populace has elevated rapidly since post World War II
particularly subsequently to the 1960s, when immigration guidelines underwent changes to
authorize significant aperture from Asia as well as Africa. Smith (2016) revealed that an
insignificant amount of 2% of the populace had been categorized as visible minority. The thesis
statement is “With increasing development in welfare states Canadian society witnessed
elevation of gays and lesbians, ethnic minorities and workers.”
However, in 2001, through amalgamation of immigration, births in addition to increasing
rate of intermarriage the census documented around 4 million distinct marginalized communities
living in Canada. Additionally, Banks (2014) claimed that the Bill comprised of the status of a
regular law instead of a constitutional power. It showed greater degree of limitation in
comparison to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which passed in 1982.
Nevertheless, its effect on the immigrant populace had been massive. The Bill of Rights surfaced
the way in the direction of elimination of obstructions to immigration by non-Europeans.

5CANADIAN SOCIAL HISTORY
As per the view of Silver (2015), the past four decades witnessed significant shift towards
urbanization along with rapid technological change with increasing socio-economic polarization.
Meanwhile, with alterations to the structure, distribution and character of the Canadian populace
have brought variations to the workforce. The growth of the welfare state along with customer
services in addition to the degeneration of manufacturing has had posed severe influence on
workforces as the emerging workforce showed more subdivision by educational and skill
requirements. In 1961, Canada’s urban business profile focused mainly on manufacturing as well
as customer services. Drawing relevance to this, Braunsteiner and Mariano-Lapidus (2014) have
noted that more than 40% of all workforces were engaged in both of these industrial segments
with around one-quarter in employed in manufacturing, while the private sectors employed
around one in seven workers and social services. Furthermore, the new labour force exhibited
greater degree of contradiction in relation to essential skills and the remuneration, which had
been obtained. Moreover, as per the studies of Shuayb (2016), emergent occupations in the
domains of health, education as well as welfare sectors in addition to business services showed a
propensity to require extensive ranks of education in relation to the situation for other sectors.
Novel occupations in customer services had a tendency to involve comparatively low levels of
expertise and education. The manufacturing sector post Second World War period had been
experiencing stagnation, while new employment services in the services sectors had been at both
elevated and reduced ends of the wage-education spectrum. While low skill or high wage jobs
had been predominant during the 1960s, these occupations had been threatened through the
1970s as well as 1980s. As a result, workforces had been progressively inflowing into highly
segmented workforce.

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Meanwhile, Canada comprises of an extended and enriched history of queer structure,
but much of it has not been properly documented or expressed. Quebec and particularly Ontario
have been well represented, but concurrently less has been known about the West and the East.
According to Braunsteiner and Mariano-Lapidus (2014), fundamental focus on the
organizational and social activist work of Canadians who associated them with gay liberation
and afterwards gay equality movements which were introduced in 1960s had offered insightful
ways of comprehending the linkages and disparities between regional organizations and politics.
Studies of authors found that in the Canadian society similar to the United States, sexism
demarcated lesbian and gay communities by marginalizing them as ‘second class’ citizens. Such
acts channelled greater amount of enthusiasm into struggles in opposition to pornography and
against aggression and violence acts in addition to reproductive authorities even as they
endeavoured in opposition to acts of homophobia in women’s movements. In addition to this,
within the Canadian society, First Nations along with people belonging to cultural enriched
sections other than French and English challenged the ‘two founding nations’ myth and began
structuring in opposition to state and social marginalization and subjugation of gay and lesbian
communities. In acknowledgement as well as in response to shifts as well as the dealings across
territories in Canada, federal as well as provincial administrations have presented a range of
regulation and strategy over the ages intended precisely at subjects related to diversity. Stevens,
Ishizawa and Grbic (2015) have stated that scholarly works by anti-colonial writers namely
Franz Fanon and Pierre Vallieres were regarded as essential readings. Furthermore,
comprehensive studies of Ng and Rumens (2017) observed significant changes in social
approaches related to homosexuality that the Liberal government could focus on the good deal of
public support when it declared its purpose of legalizing specific homosexual acts in private

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between consenting adult individuals. This liberalization of outlooks towards same-sex align
with the fact that homosexuality had developed as a public area of concern which had been
covered by mass media as well as discussed by diverse religious convictions and religious
institutions. Smith (2016) cited the instance of the Klippert case which stimulated the drive
towards restructuring the Criminal Code in the mid-1960s. Such a public support had been
headed by rising national security campaigns in opposition to queers, which had begun in the late
1950s and early 1960s and had been exemplified by major endeavours of developing the well-
known ‘fruit machine’.
On the other hand, immigration considerably raised the racial and ethnic diversity of the
Canadian population. Smith (2016) mentioned in his studies that since the 1960s, when
discriminatory selection policies were removed, questions regarding immigration’s impact on the
cohesiveness of Canadian society gained higher level of eminence. The growing impact of racial
diversity in Canada has been exaggerated due to the concentration of ethnic minorities in certain
immigrant-intensive cities particularly in Toronto and Vancouver. Comprehensive studies of
Banks (2014)have mentioned that Canada in contemporary years, reactions towards growing
racial diversity have been undergoing gradual developments where greater degree of attention
has been given to issues concerning egalitarianism rather than shedding light on cultural
harmonies. For instance, while equality has been regarded as an objective of Canada’s
multiculturalism and diversity inventiveness, it was formerly required with an emphasis on
cultural and ethnic factors. These factors have been linked to the recognition of the ethnic
influence of different ethnic groups in addition to the undertaking of government provision for
values and culture. Such assistance from the government had the fundamental purpose of
analysing the obstacles of equal participation in society (Silver, 2015).

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However, since the 1980s, multiculturalism has encompassed an explicit antiracism
factor. Thus, ethnic or racial equality in recent times has been considered as a significant focus of
other strategies and dogmas for instance, the federal employment equity policy which has been
adopted in 1986.

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References
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Toward a more robust definition of multilevel governance. Publius: The Journal
of Federalism, 44(1), 183-204.
Banks, J. A. (2014). Diversity, group identity, and citizenship education in a global
age. Journal of Education, 194(3), 1-12.
Banks, J. A. (2014). Diversity, group identity, and citizenship education in a global
age. Journal of Education, 194(3), 1-12.
Braunsteiner, M. L., & Mariano-Lapidus, S. (2014). A perspective of inclusion:
Challenges for the future. Global Education Review, 1(1).
Gaudry, A., & Leroux, D. (2017). White settler revisionism and making Métis
everywhere: The evocation of Métissage in Quebec and Nova Scotia. Critical
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Lefevre, T. A. (2015). Settler colonialism (pp. 9780199766567-0125). Oxford University
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Ng, E., & Rumens, N. (2017). Diversity and inclusion for LGBT workers: Current issues
and new horizons for research. Canadian Journal of Administrative
Sciences, 34(2), 109-120.

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Parlee, B. L. (2015). Avoiding the resource curse: indigenous communities and Canada’s
oil sands. World Development, 74, 425-436.
Rotz, S. (2017). ‘They took our beads, it was a fair trade, get over it’: Settler colonial
logics, racial hierarchies and material dominance in Canadian
agriculture. Geoforum, 82, 158-169.
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Smith, M. (2016). Canada: The power of institutions. In The lesbian and gay movement
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