History of Canada: From the Act of Union to the End of the 19th Century

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering Canadian history from the Durham Report and the Act of Union to Confederation, Western expansion, industrialization, and 19th-century socio-cultural developments.

Lord Durham

The British governor sent to Canada following the 1837–1838 Patriote rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada to investigate the political situation.

Rapport Durham

An 1839 report identifying a lack of ministerial responsibility and ethnolinguistic tensions, which recommended uniting the Canadas, encouraging British immigration, and assimilating French Canadians.

Province du Canada (Canada-Uni)

The single colony formed under the 1840 Act of Union by merging Upper Canada and Lower Canada, with combined public debts and equal legislative representation.

Acte d'Union

An 1840 British constitutional act uniting Upper and Lower Canada, granting each region 42 assembly seats, and initially designating English as the sole official parliamentary language.

Alliance réformiste Lafontaine-Baldwin

A political coalition between Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine and Robert Baldwin based on democratic principles to secure a legislative majority and achieve responsible government.

Gouvernement responsable

A system achieved in 1848 where Executive Council members are chosen from the majority party in the Legislative Assembly and must retain its confidence.

Rep by Pop (Représentation proportionnelle)

A principle advocated around 1850 by George Brown and the Clear Grits demanding that legislative representation correspond proportionally to regional population numbers.

Loi d'indemnisation des victimes des rébellions

An 1849 statute granting financial compensation to Lower Canada rebellion victims, provoking an anglophone riot that burned the Montreal Parliament on April 25, 1849.

Abolition du régime seigneurial

An 1854 law in Lower Canada requiring censitaires to buy out their land from former seigneurs to secure outright ownership of their farms.

Protectionnisme britannique

An economic policy granting preferential tariffs to colonial goods such as Canadian timber and wheat, which the United Kingdom abandoned in 1846 in favor of free trade.

Traité de réciprocité

An economic agreement between the Province of Canada and the United States from 1854 to 1866 that abolished tariffs on raw materials and granted shared fishing and navigation access.

Féniens

An Irish-American nationalist organization that launched armed border raids into the Province of Canada to seek vengeance against Great Britain.

Grande Coalition

An 1864 political alliance uniting George Brown, John Alexander Macdonald, and George-Étienne Cartier to resolve ministerial instability and pursue a British North American federation.

Conférence de Charlottetown

A September 1864 constitutional meeting where colonial delegates first discussed forming a federation uniting the Maritime colonies and the Province of Canada.

Résolutions de Québec (72 Résolutions)

The framework for federal union and division of legislative powers drafted during the Quebec Conference held from October 10 to 27, 1864.

Acte de l'Amérique du Nord britannique (AANB)

The constitution that took effect on July 1, 1867, creating the Dominion of Canada as a constitutional monarchy comprising Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

Droit de désaveu

The constitutional power of the federal government in Canada to disallow or overturn laws enacted by provincial legislatures.

Pouvoirs résiduels

Government jurisdictions not explicitly enumerated or allocated in the Constitution, which are automatically assigned to the federal government.

Terre de Rupert et Territoire du Nord-Ouest

Vast western territories purchased by Canada from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1868 for 1.5 million dollars to prevent American annexation and open land for settlement.

Métis

A distinct Western Canadian people primarily descended from European and Indigenous unions, characterized by buffalo hunting, traditional farming, Catholicism, and Michif language.

Soulèvement de la rivière Rouge

The 1869 Métis uprising led by Louis Riel against unannounced Canadian land surveying, culminating in the seizure of Fort Garry and the creation of Manitoba in 1870.

Loi sur les Indiens

An 1876 federal statute designating First Nations individuals as legal minors, removing voting rights, controlling band chief selection, and banning certain cultural assemblies.

Pensionnats autochtones

Residential schools established by the Canadian government to assimilate Indigenous children into dominant Euro-Canadian culture.

Traités numérotés

Agreements negotiated between 1871 and 1921 through which the federal government acquired First Nations lands in exchange for reserves and provisions of food and medicine.

Deuxième rébellion des Métis

An 1885 armed conflict centered at Batoche, Saskatchewan, prompted by the arrival of settlers and transcontinental railway construction on Métis lands.

Louis Riel

A Métis leader born in 1844 who directed both western resistances, established provisional governments, and was executed for high treason in 1885.

Honoré Mercier

Premier of Quebec from 1887 to 1891 who championed French-Canadian nationalism, provincial autonomy, and organized the 1887 Interprovincial Conference.

Autonomie provinciale

The principle that provincial governments should independently manage their constitutional jurisdictions without federal intrusion or interference.

Scandale du Pacifique

An 1873 political scandal revealing that the Canadian Pacific Railway funded Macdonald's Conservative election campaign, leading to his resignation.

Politique nationale

An 1878 economic program launched by John A. Macdonald that implemented protective tariffs, accelerated transcontinental railway construction, and boosted immigration.

Première phase d'industrialisation

A late 19th-century economic transformation marked by coal-powered steam machinery, division of labor, and industrial capitalism funded by British and Anglo-Canadian capital.

Loi des Unions ouvrières

An 1872 Canadian law that granted official legal recognition to organized labor unions.

Commission royale d'enquête sur les relations de travail (1886)

A federal commission established in 1886 that investigated working-class conditions and recommended financial compensation for work-related injuries.

Exode rural

The migration of French-Canadian rural inhabitants toward urban factory centers or New England textile towns due to agricultural land scarcity in the St. Lawrence Valley.

Grosse-Île

An island quarantine station near Quebec City created to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as typhus carried by incoming British and Irish immigrants.

Curé Antoine Labelle

A Catholic priest appointed to head the Ministry of Agriculture and Colonization in 1888 to direct settlement projects in peripheral regions like the Laurentians.

Agriculturisme

An ideology promoting agricultural labor and rural lifestyles to shield traditional Catholic and French-Canadian values from the effects of industrialization.

Drave

The practice of floating felled timber down rivers to sawmills, which frequently blocked waterways and hindered Indigenous navigation and hunting.

Nationalisme de survivance

A French-Canadian worldview centered on safeguarding Catholic faith, the French language, rural agriculture, and traditional patriarchal families against assimilation.

Ultramontanisme

A Catholic ideology asserting Church supremacy over the civil State and demanding clerical authority over education, healthcare, politics, and social life.

Mgr Ignace Bourget

The Bishop of Montreal and prominent champion of ultramontanism who combated political liberalism, established new religious orders, and strictly enforced the Index.

Index

A list of forbidden books censored by the Catholic Church that Catholics were strictly prohibited from reading or possessing.

Anticléricalisme

A reformist movement advocating the separation of Church and State and seeking to limit clerical influence exclusively to religious matters.

Institut canadien de Montréal

A Montreal intellectual association whose library maintained books banned by the Catholic Index, leading to excommunication threats from Bishop Bourget.

Affaire Guibord

A conflict over the Catholic burial of excommunicated Institut canadien member Joseph Guibord, whose 1875 burial required a concrete coffin, 1,235 military guards, and episcopal unconsecration.

François-Xavier Garneau

The first French-Canadian historian, whose historical accounts depicted French-Canadian history as a continuous struggle for national survival.

École patriotique de Québec

An 1860 literary movement founded by Octave Crémazie and Louis Fréchette celebrating historical French-Canadian heroes, rural life, and religious devotion.

École littéraire de Montréal

A literary circle that emerged in Montreal during the late 19th century, famously associated with the poet Émile Nelligan.

Laure Conan

The pseudonym of Félicité Angers, regarded as Quebec's first female novelist and author of works such as Angéline de Montbrun (1886).

Statut juridique des femmes mariées (1866)

The legal classification under the 1866 Civil Code designating married women as legal minors subordinate to their husbands and barred from signing contracts or managing their own wages.

Montreal Local Council of Women

A philanthropic association established in Montreal in 1893 by bourgeois women to improve social conditions, public health, and youth education.