British North America 1763-1867

Please review each article prior to use: grade-level applicability and curricular alignment might not be obvious from the headline alone.

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First Nations sue over oil-rich land

Tyler Searle 4 minute read Preview
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First Nations sue over oil-rich land

Tyler Searle 4 minute read Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025

A pair of First Nations are suing the provincial and federal governments, claiming land and mineral rights to a swath of land in southwestern Manitoba that generates more than $1.3 billion annually from oil and gas production.

Canupawakpa Dakota First Nation and Dakota Tipi First Nation filed a statement of claim in Court of King’s Bench on Thursday calling for a declaration of title and subsurface rights over Manitoba’s portion of the Williston Basin.

The oil-rich basin stretches from southwestern Manitoba into southern Saskatchewan and over the U.S. border. The Manitoba portion hosts at least 14 identified oil fields and is home to all the current oil production in the province, the lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs are claiming rights over the entirety of the basin in Manitoba, including the “right to economically participate in the extraction, development and production of subsurface minerals.”

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Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025

ERIC GAY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES

Oil pump jacks work in unison on a foggy morning in Williston, N.D. The oil field crosses the border into Manitoba and two First Nations are taking the province and feds to court over land and mineral rights claim in the southwest corner of the province.

Eric Gay / The Associated Press files 
Oil pump jacks work in unison on a foggy morning in Williston, N.D. High crude prices catapulted North Dakota into the top tier of the global oil market and helped double or triple the size of once-sleepy towns that suddenly had to accommodate a small army of petroleum workers. But now that those prices have tumbled, the shifting oil market threatens to put the industry and local governments on a collision course.
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Decades-long fight to repeal discriminatory second-generation cut-off rekindled on Parliament Hill

Marsha McLeod 9 minute read Preview
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Decades-long fight to repeal discriminatory second-generation cut-off rekindled on Parliament Hill

Marsha McLeod 9 minute read Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

First Nations women who’ve spent a lifetime fighting for the right to belong in their own communities have been again travelling to Parliament Hill this fall, repeating their calls for change and their wish: for their children and grandchildren not to be excluded as they were.

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Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
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Fenians fancied a Manitoba foothold

Reviewed by Douglas J. Johnston 3 minute read Preview
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Fenians fancied a Manitoba foothold

Reviewed by Douglas J. Johnston 3 minute read Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022

Sometimes it’s the local angle that turns a book into a bit of a revelation.

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Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022

Canadian Spy Story

Canadian Spy Story

Canadian Spy Story
                                 Canadian Spy Story
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Map-based history of Canada a marvel

Reviewed by Douglas J. Johnston 3 minute read Preview
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Map-based history of Canada a marvel

Reviewed by Douglas J. Johnston 3 minute read Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017

If you like maps, you’ll like this book; if you like both maps and crisply recounted Canadian history, you’ll love it.

Adam Shoalts is the author of a previous Canadian bestseller, 2015’s Alone Against the North, which recounted his exploration of the muskeg and river wilderness that is the Hudson Bay Lowlands.

The maps of his second book are springboards for his accounts of how this country’s vast expanses were charted.

Shoalts believes maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of Canada. He supports this belief by offering up pivotal moments in our country’s history via stories built around 10 specific maps, most of which, in turn, are the product of specific explorations.

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Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017
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Uncovering Canada’s Arctic sea battle

By Alexandra Paul 4 minute read Preview
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Uncovering Canada’s Arctic sea battle

By Alexandra Paul 4 minute read Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013

In 1697, a single French ship sank a British warship, captured a second ship and chased off a third ship.

It was an audacious act of war that nearly turned into a suicide mission, but the Battle of Hudson Bay is a forgotten chapter in Canada's history.

That could change with an intrepid group's plan to film an educational video in Churchill this summer for a curriculum kit aimed at high school students. And if they can find the ship that sank, it would be a bonus.

Three hundred years ago, an imperious colonial aristocrat pointed his sails north from New France (modern Quebec), departing with a fleet of wooden sailing ships.

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Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013

Handout
Johann Sigurdson III (from left) Johann Sigurdson IV, Mackenzie Collette and David Collette of the Fara Heim Foundation stand at the approximate location of the Battle of Hudson Bay in 1697.

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Johann Sigurdson III (from left) Johann Sigurdson IV, Mackenzie Collette and David Collette of the Fara Heim Foundation  stand at the approximate location of the Battle of Hudson Bay in 1697.
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Hardship, history live in rock of ancient fort

By Bill Redekop 5 minute read Preview
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Hardship, history live in rock of ancient fort

By Bill Redekop 5 minute read Saturday, Jul. 13, 2013

CHURCHILL -- Samuel Hearne, English explorer and governor of Fort Prince of Wales in the late 1700s, claimed the beavers he let waddle around the stone fort made better pets than some cats and dogs.

"I kept several," he wrote in his journal, "... til they became so domesticated as to answer to their names...and follow as a dog would do; and they were as pleased at being fondled as any animal I ever saw."

You had to do something, after all, stuck in a fort made out of quartzite rock, on a desolate point overlooking Hudson Bay, buffeted by northern gales and frequent blizzards and surrounded by sea ice two-thirds of the year.

Fort Prince of Wales, built in the mid-1700s, is testament to the extraordinary mettle of those first immigrants, mostly Scots from the Orkney Islands, who plied the fur trade for the Hudson's Bay Co., and the First Nations people who traded with them.

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Saturday, Jul. 13, 2013

Photos by Bill Redekop/ Winnipeg Free Press
Cannon barrels stored outside fort.

Photos by Bill Redekop/ Winnipeg Free Press
Cannon barrels stored outside fort.
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Canadian political culture grew out of War of 1812

Reviewed by Graeme Voyer 3 minute read Preview
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Canadian political culture grew out of War of 1812

Reviewed by Graeme Voyer 3 minute read Saturday, Jun. 16, 2012

THE War of 1812 -- a conflict between Britain and the United States, much of it contested on Canadian soil -- was a decisive event in Canadian history.

The U.S. proved unable to conquer and annex Britain's Upper and Lower Canadian colonies, thus ensuring that Canada would develop as an independent nation within the British imperial orbit.

This summer marks the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the war. Recent years have witnessed a flurry of scholarship on the conflict -- Ontario historian Wesley Turner's 2011 biography of British general Isaac Brock comes to mind -- but it is difficult to imagine a better introduction to the War of 1812 than this account by York University professor of political science James Laxer.

This military and diplomatic history of the War emphasizes the roles played by two inspired leaders on the British and Canadian side: Brock, the commander of the forces of Upper Canada and the head of its civil government; and his ally Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief who joined the British to fight the Americans who were systematically encroaching on native land.

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Saturday, Jun. 16, 2012

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A country born amid controversy

Allan Levine 5 minute read Preview

A country born amid controversy

Allan Levine 5 minute read Friday, Jun. 30, 2017

Given his penchant to portray Canadian history as a glorious fusion of brazen courage, underdog determination, generosity of spirit and the march of progress, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau definitely would have been in his element had he been in Toronto 150 years ago.

The new province of Ontario had the most to gain from Confederation. By virtue of its large population, Ontario’s politicians were to dominate the new federal or central government and the province’s economic potential was seemingly unlimited. (It is not by accident that the western boundary of Ontario set in the early 1880s extends as far as Kenora, 1,900 kilometres from Toronto.)

Thus, on July 1, 1867, there was great optimism among Toronto’s 50,000 citizens. The ringing of the bells at St. James Cathedral at midnight on June 30 had signified that the Dominion of Canada was now a reality.

The publisher of the Toronto Globe, George Brown, a key player who, along with John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, had made Confederation a reality, had stayed up most of the night composing a 9,000-word article about the meaning of Confederation that took up the entire front page of the Globe on July 1. “We hail the birthday of a new nationality,” he wrote. “A United British America, with its four millions of people, takes its place this day among the nations of the world.”

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Friday, Jun. 30, 2017

National Archives of Canada / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
Several of the Fathers of Confederation at the Charlottetown Conference in September 1864. Sir John A. Macdonald and Georges-Étienne Cartier are in the foreground.

National Archives of Canada / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
Several of the Fathers of Confederation at the Charlottetown Conference in September 1864. Sir John A. Macdonald and Georges-Étienne Cartier are in the foreground.