what factors created a climate favorable to reform in the 20th century

20th Century History of Canada

Later years of political turmoil, the tardily 19th century saw four of Uk's Northward American colonies unify into a single, self-governing confederation called Canada. As the century concluded, this confederation proceeded to expand to the due east and northward, eventually taking over the entire northern one-half of the continent.

Economic Growth

Originally a nation of farmers, fishermen, loggers, and fur traders, the dawn of the 20th century saw a full-calibration transformation of Canadian lodge. As new provinces were settled, new cities began to spring upwards, and past the 1910s one-half of all Canadians were living urban, rather than rural lives for the showtime fourth dimension. The evolution of new machines under the frantic period of late-19th century modernization known as the Industrial Revolution saw a dramatic growth in city-based factory work. Canada's raw natural resources were now being processed into useful products such as lumber, textiles, and meat — creating all sorts of new jobs that got people off the farm and out of the woods.

A massive influx of immigrants, intended to settle uninhabited parts of the Canadian w, helped change the fundamental ethnic makeup of the land. No longer only French and English, big numbers of Canadians were now Irish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch, or Scandinavian — and even some Chinese and Japanese, besides. To this day, the 10 years between 1906 and 1916, when Canada welcomed some 2 million new residents, remain the country's largest population boom.

Nether the 15-year leadership of Prime number Minister Wilfred Laurier (1841-1919, served 1896-1911), Canada pursued policies that yielded great economic growth, and a rise standard of living for almost everyone. True, a few rich folk at the peak were getting much richer than everyone else — and much faster — but compared to the state of much of the rest of the planet, things in Canada seemed to be going quite well indeed.

Canadian World War I soldiers marching past Stonehenge in England, en route to France.
Glenbow Museum

Globe War I (1914-1918)

In 1914,Germany invaded Belgium, which forced Britain to go to war with Germany due to an alliance the Brits and Belgians had at the fourth dimension. Information technology was a confusing state of war without much obvious relevance to Canada, yet all British colonies were promptly expected to fight alongside the motherland. Canada received an awkward reminder that despite the country's emerging status equally ane of the wealthiest, virtually industrialized, modern societies on globe, it was nevertheless a mere colonial possession of a much stronger empire, unauthorized to run its own foreign affairs.

The French-Canadian residents of Quebec were particularly resentful. They had no involvement in fighting "English language wars" and viciously opposed efforts by the federal government to impose a national draft. More than 650,000 Canadians would fight in Europe, but they were overwhelmingly of English heritage. The Canadian prime government minister of the time, Robert Borden (1854-1937, served 1911-1917), was a potent backer of United kingdom's war effort, simply was simultaneously skeptical of London'southward sense of entitlement regarding the service of colonial troops. Backside the scenes, he pointedly insisted that if Canadian soldiers were going to be used to fight the Empire's wars, Canada's government should have greater say in how those wars were fought.

Canadian soldiers, in any case, performed exceptionally, making heroic contributions on central European fronts, most notably the Battle of Vimy Ridge in France (1917), where more than 3,000 Canadians were killed. The sacrifice of so much Canadian life abroad solidified opinion back home that Canada was a mature nation in its own right, and deserved to be recognized as such.

• Canada and the Kickoff World State of war, Library and Archives Canada
• Canadian National Vimy Ridge Memorial

Canada Earns Its Independence (1918-1931)

In the aftermath of the First Earth War, successive Canadian governments, backed by the governments of other cocky-governing white British colonies like Australia, Ireland,New Zealand, and South Africa, aggressively lobbied U.k. to restructure the Empire to permit its colonies greater independence. In 1926, an Imperial Briefing in London featuring all the colonial prime number ministers declared that Britain and its dominions were, in fact, "equal in status," and not master and subject. In 1931, post-obit further negotiation, the British Parliament passed a law known as the Statute of Westminsterwhich formally surrendered Britain's ability to make laws for Canada.

No longer an Empire, it was said the self-governing white colonies at present formed a "Commonwealth" of friendship in which they shared allegiance to a common male monarch, but enjoyed full independence in domestic and foreign policies. For all intents and purposes, Canada was at present an independent land, with Britain only retaining a few increasingly symbolic powers.

Depression and World War Ii (1929-1945)

Afterward a brief economic blast in the 1920s, a astringent, worldwide economic plummet — dubbed the Swell Depression — hit Canada hard in the 1930s, putting millions out of work and plunging millions more into miserable poverty, particularly on Prairie provinces where hardships were compounded by the and then-called Dust Bowl drought. Desperate Canadian workers and voters became drawn to revolutionary ideas and wild new political parties. Information technology was a time of radicalism, but the outcomes were not always destructive. Early on feminist protests earned Canadian women the right to vote in elections across the country, and union activists — who began exercising their right to strike — helped abolish child labour and secure safer factories.

In 1939, United kingdom once more declared war on Germany, which was now run by the fanatic dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), and though Canada was no longer automatically obligated to follow adjust, pro-British sentiment in the country remained stiff. The government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King (1874-1950) passed a supportive declaration of war against Germany a week later on, and Canadian troops were once once more sent to Europe. When Britain alleged war on Germany's Asian marry Japan in 1941, Canada again followed, and the conflict expanded to the Pacific Body of water.

The 2nd World War — Canada's first to exist fought under Canadian command — involved a massive mobilization of people and resources, both at home and abroad. More than a meg Canadians served in their country's war machine, while the wartime production of ammunition, armaments, and vehicles gave an enormous boost to Canada'due south suffering economy. Overseas, Canadian troops again demonstrated great bravery playing a disquisitional role in several key fronts, notably the failed battles of Hong Kong (1941) and Dieppe (1942), and the more successful invasion of Sicily (1942), and liberation of the Netherlands (1944-45).

Though the war's cease in 1945 was a time of considerable commemoration across Canada, an uncomfortable fact remained: the bulk of Canada'southward fighting had been done past English-Canadians. Equally had been the example with the First World War, French-Canadians once once again largely opposed participating in what they deemed an "English" disharmonize, and vigorously opposed a national typhoon. Canadians of Japanese decent, meanwhile, had found themselves on the receiving finish of brutal wartime racism, culminating in Prime Minister King's 1942 decision to round upwards all citizens of Japanese descent and place them in internment camps in rural communities, where they would supposedly pose no danger to whites. The episode remains one of the state's darkest chapters and the regime of Canada officially apologized in 1988.

• Canada and the Second World State of war, Canadian War Museum

The Mail-war Boom

Globe War II had inverse Canada, both in terms of economic evolution and national pride. Wartime industrialization dramatically grew themanufacturing sector of Canada'due south economy, allowing the country to get a globe leader in industries similar car-building and chemical processing, while the 1947 discovery of oil in the province of Alberta put Canada on the map every bit 1 of the planet'south major petroleum producers. As education became more than affordable, more than Canadians were able to pursue careers in new, not-physical sectors of the economic system, such as science, finance, engineering science, media, and of form, an ever-growing government hierarchy.

All of this allowed more Canadians than ever to bask comfortable, eye grade jobs and lifestyles, and the growth of suburban communities in previously empty areas surrounding the cities, where mom, dad, and the kids could live in pocket-sized houses with their own g, motorcar, and white lookout man fence, reflected the new standard of Canadian living.

Canada'south post-war governments of the 1950s and '60s wrapped up the concluding, mostly symbolic loose ends of securing complete political independence from Uk. In 1952, Canada said goodbye to its terminal British-appointed governor, the Viscount Alexander (1891-1969), and turned the role into a figurehead position to exist filled by Canadian citizens. The dominion of Newfoundland on the Maritime declension, which was a self-governing British colony, agreed to join the Canadian confederation in 1949, giving Canada its tenth province — and present-24-hour interval borders. Subsequently much fence, in 1965 a uniquely Canadian flag, the Maple Leaf, was adopted, and the Union Jack was lowered from Canada'due south Parliament.

Postwar foreign affairs apace became dominated by fears of the Russian-led Soviet Union, which had grown big and powerful in the aftermath of the war. Fright of a Soviet takeover of the globe through its mode of Communist philosophy and regime spawned a decades-long Common cold War (1945-1991), in which the Usa led the "free world" in opposition to communist regimes. In 1949 Canada joined the The states-led military and political alliance known as NATO to help oppose Russian expansion and kickoff in 1963, dozens of U.s.a. nuclear weapons were stationed in Canada . At the aforementioned fourth dimension, successive Canadian prime ministers worked equally difficult to earn Canada a reputation as a moderate, compassionate "center ability," skilled at affairs and negotiation in the tense Cold War climate. Though more than 500 Canadians would dice fighting Communist forces in the Korean War (1950-1953), Canada's refusal to participate in the American-led Vietnam War (1964-1973) against the Communist armies ofNorth Vietnam earned the country a reputation for caution and restraint.

• Expo 67, Library and Athenaeum Canada

The Conflict with Quebec

Always since their conquest by the British in 1759, the French-speaking residents of Quebec struggled to maintain their unique culture in face of English language force per unit area to assimilate. For 200 years, this hostility and insecurity played out in the form of an ultra-conservative, extremely Catholic, largely feudal, agrarian order that shut itself off from much of the modernization that had occurred in the remainder of Canada. As had been the instance for centuries, much of the province's wealth remained concentrated in the hands of a few rich English families.

It was not until the mid-20th century that the quondam means began to break down. Afterward the decease of Maurice Duplessis (1890-1959), Quebec's long-serving ultraconservative prime number minister, French-Canadian guild underwent a phase known as the Quiet Revolution, which saw a new generation of politicians and educated professionals aggressively modernize the province. Post 1960s, Quebec became more secular and industrialized, while a slew of new businesses put more wealth into French-Canadian hands. "Masters in our own house" was the slogan of the fourth dimension.

Yet many Quebecers felt things were not improving fast enough. Separatism — the thought that Quebec was too different from the rest of Canada to exist every bit a province, and could simply realize its full potential every bit an contained land — began to grow in popularity after the war, spurned by economical difficulties and a growing sense of self-reliance. A certain radical vein of Quebec separatists turned to Marxism and violence, with a terrorist group known as the Front de Libération du Québec setting off dozens of bombs in government buildings and other loftier-profile targets beyond the province throughout the 1960s. An openly separatist Quebec regime, led by Premier Rene Levesque (1922-1987), was elected in 1976, and a referendum on separation from Canada was held in 1980. Information technology failed, but the dynamic of Canadian-Quebec relations was forever changed.

A New Constitution (1980-1993)

Prime number Government minister Pierre Trudeau, a charismatic, progressive, and often authoritarian effigy who led Canada for nearly 16 years between 1968 and 1984, nearly single-handedly determined Canada's political priorities during the 1970s and '80s — fifty-fifty later on he left ability. A Quebecer himself, Trudeau believed that much of Canada's French-English tension could be alleviated nether a new Canadian constitution that protected Quebec's French language and culture, while also enshrining the principle that all citizens were equal nether the law.

The result of years of intense negotiation with the provincial premiers, Trudeau's new Constitution Act of 1982 did not alter Canada's system of authorities, merely contained aCharter of Rights and Freedoms that finally enshrined the basic civil rights of all Canadians, including liberty of voice communication, religion, and movement, and declared Canada abilingual nation where all citizens had a right to speak either French or English. Possibly most importantly of all, the Constitution Human activity was also the terminal law Britain would always laissez passer for Canada; following its approval, the British Parliament agreed to give up its control of Canadian constitutional law — its last remaining power over the country.

The separatist government of Quebec had opposed the new constitution and was the only province that refused to sign information technology. Trudeau's successor as prime minister, Brian Mulroney (b. 1939, served 1984-1993), embarked upon two aggressive campaigns to revise the Constitution Human action in a mode that would finally please the French province, but both efforts ultimately failed after long, polarized national debates. Quebec'south signature remains symbolically absent from the Canadian Constitution to this mean solar day. Capitalizing on the dissatisfaction of the constitutional talks, in 1995 Quebec'southward regime held a second referendum on separation from Canada and it only failed by a margin of less than one per cent.

• A Retrospective of Canadian Rights and Freedoms, Library and Archives Canada

zubiawhistooday.blogspot.com

Source: https://thecanadaguide.com/history/the-20th-century/

Share this post