A Brief Canadian History

Hopefully, Canadian textbooks won't be read in the future in history class explaining Canada's history of falling to a dictator. It starts with censorship of your information or news sources.

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When you have censorship in America is the foundation of how all dictators began.

Hopefully, Canadian textbooks won't be read in the future in history class explaining Canada's history of falling to a dictator. It starts with censorship of your information or news sources.

I'll include a couple of ancestors of my own and how these people and events have impacted our lives today. It might help you re-think certain things about our history and show what type of people we're supporting.

A Brief Canadian History

Canada officially became its nation on July 1, 1867. Sir John A. MacDonald became the first prime minister.

Unfortunately, in December 1866, while in London to work out the British North America Act (BNAA) final terms, MacDonald burned his shoulder after accidentally lighting his hotel room on fire oops.

The Canadian delegation wisely kept that a secret. Legendary for his drunkenness, they say he had his drinking under control by his 60th birthday.

According to a detailed 2006 paper on Macdonald's many drunken episodes, the Prime Minister's last "incident" of public drunkenness occurred in 1878, 13 years before his death.

In 1886, Macdonald took his first ride on the railroad he had pushed so hard to build, and his wife spent much of the journey through British Columbia on a chair strapped to the cowcatcher.

To help fund the railroad building, Macdonald found a private group called the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) to be a partner.

The estimated cost for building the line was 100 million dollars.

The Chinese Were Enslaved 

Unfortunately, many innocent lives came to an abrupt end during the railway building. Many surveyors got frostbite or scurvy, were attacked by grizzly bears, died in fires, or drowned.

The most challenging part of building the railway was the Fraser Canyon section. Fifteen tunnels were blasted there.

Just over 7,000 workers were needed. 6,000 of them were Chinese. Chinese workers were paid one dollar a day and had to pay for their equipment, while white labourers were paid $1.50—$1.75 a day and were given equipment.

So, of course, Chinese workers were usually given the most dangerous jobs, such as blasting, causing many deaths.

It is estimated that four Chinese workers died for each mile through the Fraser Canyon. Men also died from poor eating, sickness, skimpy clothing, and poor working conditions.

Macdonald's gets much of the heat for a national policy that would profoundly negatively impact First Nations. Yet, he was at the helm when thousands of prairie aboriginals succumbed to disease and starvation.

John A. MacDonald wasn't all that bad of a guy, though, he was the first leader to attempt to give women the right to vote, and at least he kicked his nasty addiction.

You can't please everyone, especially in the money-sucking, can't trust anyone, do only what's best for a small percentage of the population, governing society we all live in.

Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier

O Canada! The original lyrics of "O Canada" were written in French by Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier.

Routhier was a Canadian judge, author, and lyricist.

He was born on May 8, 1839, in Saint-Placide, Quebec. He graduated and then was called to the Quebec bar in 1861.

He was appointed to the Quebec Superior Court in 1873 (as Chief Justice from 1904 to 1906) and the exchequer Court of Canada (from 1897 to 1906).

Routhier was involved in several federal elections as a Conservative candidate, but he was never elected.

In June 1914, Routhier was one of the three judges appointed to conduct the Commission of Inquiry into the British steamship sinking, The Empress of Ireland (The Canadian Titanic), which had resulted in the loss of 1,012 innocent lives.

This number of deaths is the largest of any Canadian maritime "accident" during peacetime.

There were only 465 survivors, 4 of whom were children (the other 134 were lost), and 41 were women (the additional 269 were lost).

It would only take 14 minutes for the ship to sink from when the incident ultimately occurred.

They say it was due to heavy fog when a Norwegian coal ship ran into the side of the massive steamship along the St. Lawrence river.

Isn't it great this man had a part in creating our national anthem?

This cold hardhearted guy had many sites and landmarks named after him, such as Rue Basile-Routhier (Basile-Routhier Street), located in Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada; Place Basile-Routhier, located in Shawinigan; Rue Basile-Routhier in Montreal, Quebec.

Maybe, if he had killed another thousand people, we would have named a whole city after him, or possibly a province?

But instead, drop the sir and the "e" from the first part of his name, and you are left with the first name of another iconic mass murderer.

The Prison System a Canadian History

Many studies have proven that unattractive defendants are more likely to be found guilty than attractive ones.

According to canada.com, it costs taxpayers 101,000 dollars a year, per inmate, in our federal prison systems.

Many people who are incarcerated are there due to drug-related offences.

The majority of these people are addicts. Addiction is an actual disease. Most of these people don't even get a chance at rehab.

They go to jail and fill up the prisons, and we wonder why there's not enough room in prisons. But yet, when a person has a disease, they're usually offered proper treatment in this beautiful country.

Imagine if you had cancer, and through treatment, you were prescribed heavy painkillers.

After treatment is over, you are now addicted to, let us say, Oxycontin. You are doing anything to get the drug, such as stealing. Again, you were caught and charged multiple times.

Is it fair to go right to jail?

Or get a chance at a rehabilitation center?

Portugal legalized all drugs, and severe drug addicts get sent to rehab rather than prison.

According to Forbes magazine, 10 years later, Portugal's crime rate dramatically plummeted, and drug abuse dropped in half. We shouldn't allow a single person, or a tiny group of people, to decide the fate of a person's future.

We should allow people from that town or city, or a massive group of people, to decide what's best for that person's future. But, then, we should reconsider the death penalty for those serial killing, Charles Manson-type folk.

Jacques Cartier 

Two of the oldest people found on my family tree are part of Canadian history from the 1800s, one from the 1500s named Jacques Cartier and the other is named Indian Mary, on the other side of the family.

Both these individuals lived through critical times during Canadian history.

In 1547, Cartier was the first to document Canada's name and label the territory on the St-Lawrence River's shores.

The name was derived from the Huron-Iroquois word "Kanata," or village, incorrectly interpreted as the native term for the newly discovered land. He also named "Canadiens" the inhabitants (Iroquoians) he had seen there.

He was known to have made three voyages of exploration in dangerous and unknown waters without losing a single ship.

He entered and departed some 50 undiscovered harbours without serious mishap. He may be considered one of the most conscientious explorers of that time.

Cartier was also one of the first to formally acknowledge that the New World was a separate landmass from Europe/Asia.

Unfortunately, during his second voyage, there was an outbreak of scurvy. Cartier learned a unique concoction made from a tree known as Annetta that would cure scurvy.

His extraordinary remedy likely saved the expedition from destruction, allowing 85 Frenchmen to survive the winter.

In addition, I recently learned of a lady named Indian Mary, who was from the Athabasca region of Alberta, Canada.

She lived through the time Canada became a county and when Alberta became a province. It was a part of Canadian History. Without either of these individuals, I wouldn't be here today.

Canadian Genocide - Canadian History

My ancestors experienced the worst mass murders the world has ever seen as the Europeans took over the first nation peoples' land to go a bit further back. Their women were raped.

They were also spreading diseases, introduced alcohol to them, estimated anywhere from 17 to 25 million people were killed in total; some sources say that number could be as high as 100 million people during that era.

They called it a genocide when 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, a holocaust when 11 million people were killed during WW2, so what do we call it when upwards of 25 million people are killed?

What the first nation people were doing before alcohol was introduced was a lot more peaceful. They must have forgotten to leave that tidbit of information from our history books when I was in school.

I try and picture what my ancestors would say today if they could go forward in time. A few things come to mind, such as, "What the fuck is going on here?"

Also, "The technology is amazing, but why are people so addicted to their phones, and why do people feel it's necessary to share what's for lunch with the rest of the world?" The internet can connect us with the rest of the world like nothing else before it. Let us not abuse such a powerful resource.

Let's consider doing what's necessary to repair this beautiful country and make things right again.

We should focus on re-creating a place we all can love and respect, both the planet itself and one another and all other life forms. But unfortunately, Canada does not even have a free speech law today.

Canadians have the right to freedom of expression with many barriers.