From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's
Peoples/Multiculturalism/Harold Troper Acknowledged or not, the
history of Canada is one in which immigration is centrally
important. Millennia before the coming of the first Europeans,
the ancestors of Canada’s aboriginal peoples are thought to have
migrated from Asia and gradually formed a rich tapestry of
cultural and linguistic groupings across the continent.
Approximately five hundred years ago the first permanent
European settlers arrived in what is now Canada. The first were
those who carried the banners of French imperial expansion into
the vast expanse to the north of the St Lawrence River and Great
Lakes system. The victory of British arms at Quebec in 1759,
followed by their defeat in the American Revolution, brought a
wave of settlers out of the recently proclaimed United States
into the British territory to the north, in what would
eventually become Canada. During most of the next century and a
half, authorities tried to balance the often competing interests
of