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Billion Dollar Gift, the Canadian government's first comprehensive attempt to help finance Britain's war effort during the Second World War. Canada's war production, and its wartime prosperity, was dependent upon British orders, but Britain lacked gold and dollar reserves.

From 1862 to 1874 the HBC trader became Her Majesty's Hired Survey Ship Beaver. After the HBC sold the ship in 1874, it was used as a workhorse and tow until 1888, when it was wrecked in the First Narrows in Vancouver harbour. Only a few relics remain.

Canada's History (until 2010, The Beaver), a magazine published by the Hudson's Bay Company, was started in 1920 as a staff magazine as part of the company's 250th anniversary celebrations.

In the 1880s, parts of Newfoundland's government and mercantile community felt that RECIPROCITY with the US would solve growing economic problems by providing new markets for dried cod.

Breadalbane is a ghost ship, a three-masted barque lying beneath the ice of the Northwest Passage. It is the world's northernmost known shipwreck and the best-preserved wooden ship yet found in the ocean.

King George's Sound Company (Richard Cadman Etches and Co), founded 1785 in London to trade for furs on the Northwest Coast.

Noteworthy as the first oceanographic study of the Gulf of St Lawrence and Scotian Shelf, the expedition originated with E. E. Prince, dominion commissioner of fisheries.

Canada Studies Foundation, was founded 1970 following revelations of the National History Project (1965-68) that the average Canadian high-school student had an abysmal knowledge of Canada. A.B.

In 1841, Britain united the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada. This was in response to the violent rebellions of 1837–38. The Durham Report (1839) laid out the guidelines to create the new colony with the Act of Union in 1840. The Province of Canada was made up of Canada West (formerly Upper Canada) and Canada East (formerly Lower Canada). The two regions were governed jointly until Confederation in 1867. Canada West then became Ontario and Canada East became Quebec.

Bedford Magazine Explosion, 18-19 July 1945, initiated when an ammunition barge blew up at the naval magazine jetty on Bedford Basin, Halifax harbour. Fire spread quickly to adjacent piles of ammunition, which had been temporarily stored outside because of overcrowding in the main compound.

Canada’s official motto is A Mari usque ad Mare, which translates as “From Sea to Sea.”

In 1792, after exploratory voyages by Spaniards Manuel Quimper (1790) and Francisco de Eliza (1791), the extent of Juan de Fuca Strait remained a mystery. Some still believed the strait held the entry to the fabled Northwest Passage.

Later, the posts were placed on a sill or foundation above ground level. This method was displaced by the pièce-sur-pièce technique: roughly squared, relatively short logs were laid horizontally, to meet at rabbeted corners.

Sovereignty is an abstract legal concept. It also has political, social and economic implications. In strictly legal terms, sovereignty describes the power of a state to govern itself and its subjects. In this sense, sovereignty is the highest source of the law. With Confederation and the passage of the British North America Act, 1867, Canada’s Parliament was still legally under the authority of the British Parliament. By 1949, Canada had become fully sovereign in relation to Great Britain. This was due to landmark legislation such as the Statute of Westminster (1931). The Constitution Act, 1982 swept away Britain’s leftover authority. Questions of sovereignty have also been raised by Indigenous peoples in Canada and by separatists in Quebec. The latter, for a time, championed the concept of sovereignty-association.

During the SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 90 officers and men of the Royal Canadian Dragoons were assigned to cover the retreat of a British infantry column under attack by several hundred Boer horsemen near Leliefontein farm, east Transvaal.

From 4 December 1866 to March 1867, politicians from the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick met with delegates of the British government in London. This was the last of three conferences — after the Charlottetown Conference and Quebec Conference in 1864 — that were held to determine the constitutional details of Confederation. The Quebec Resolutions — 72 points that had been agreed upon in Quebec City — were reviewed and amended. They formed the basis of the British North America Act. It was passed by the British Parliament and received Queen Victoria’s Royal Assent on 29 March 1867.

Lend-Lease, an Act of the US Congress passed March 1941, providing for the transfer of American war materials to Britain and its allies in return for theoretical deferred payment.