Canada: Colony to Dominion


Canada also achieved measures of sovereignty and began to expand westward. Expansion of the fur trade by both the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company created greater direct contact between the whites of the East and the nomadic tribes of the West.

On the west coast, the Hudson's Bay fur trade led to the formation of the colony of British Columbia, which eventually joined Canada.

In 1867, a coalition of English and French Canadian leaders managed to create a partnership that wanted to obtain greater control over British North America for Canadians. They persuaded the British government to grant them Dominion Status, and the new Confederation of Canada was created in a document called the British North America Act (1867).




Later the new Canadian Government would purchase control of the lands called Rupert's Land from the HBC. This included most of the West (from Manitoba to Alberta) as well as the lands of the north.

New policies such as the "National Policy" of the first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald were created to achieve a goal of peaceful settlement of the lands to the west. First Nations people were not consulted in this vision for the West.

As Canadian expansion westward continued, the Canadian Pacific Railway was built to help exploit the resource rich West and to transport new settlers. Canadians saw the West as vast treasure of land for settlement, farming and resource development. In addition, a transcontinental railway would help to make the control of the West more secure and be an important strategic development for the British Empire, to help secure control of the Pacific.