Who Canadians are

One sentence in the guide carries the whole chapter, and you should memorize it. To understand what it means to be Canadian, it is important to know about our three founding peoples: Aboriginal, French and British. Everything else follows from those three. The Aboriginal peoples were here first, the French built a colony along the St. Lawrence, and the British took over that colony and brought settlers of their own.

One word needs a note before you go further. The guide says Aboriginal, and in French Autochtones, and those are the words the test will use in its questions and its answers. In everyday Canadian speech today you will more often hear Indigenous, and you will see it in news reports and government documents. Both refer to the same peoples. When you are answering a test question, follow the guide.

The guide divides Aboriginal peoples into three groups: First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The proportions are a favourite test question, so learn the three numbers together. About 65% of Aboriginal people are First Nations, 30% are Métis and 4% are Inuit.

Each group lives differently. About half of First Nations people live on reserve land, spread across some 600 communities, and the term First Nations itself came into common use only in the 1970s. The Inuit live in small, scattered communities across the Arctic; their name means the people in Inuktitut, the language they speak. The Métis are a distinct people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry, the majority of them living in the Prairie provinces, and many speak Michif.

The chapter also covers the hardest part of this history. Residential schools for Aboriginal children operated from the 1800s until the 1980s. In 2008 the Government of Canada formally apologized to the former students. The test asks about that apology, so keep the two dates together.

Canada counts about 18 million Anglophones and about 7 million Francophones. English and French are the official languages, and the federal government is required by law to provide services throughout Canada in English and in French. That obligation follows you into any post office or federal office in the country.

The two languages are not spread evenly. The majority of Francophones live in Quebec, and about one million more live in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba. Only one province is officially bilingual, and it is New Brunswick. That single fact shows up on the test again and again, so do not confuse it with Quebec.

English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers arrived from the 1600s through to the 20th century, and the way of life they established became English-speaking Canada.

Quebecers are the people of Quebec, the vast majority of them French-speaking. Their story runs back to a very small beginning: the French-speaking Quebec of today grew from roughly 8,500 French settlers who crossed in the 1600s and 1700s.

Parliament put that distinctness on the record in 2006, when the House of Commons recognized that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada. About one million Anglo-Quebecers live in the province too, with a heritage there going back 250 years.

Further east lives another French-speaking people with a separate history. The Acadians are descendants of French colonists who began settling in the Maritimes in 1604. Between 1755 and 1763, during the wars between Britain and France, more than two thirds of them were deported from their homes. Acadians call this the Great Upheaval, in French le Grand Dérangement.

Canada calls itself a land of immigrants, and the numbers back the phrase up. Over the past 200 years, millions of newcomers have helped to build and defend the Canadian way of life. Where they come from has changed. Since the 1970s, most immigrants have come from Asian countries, which is why Chinese languages are now the second most spoken at home in the biggest cities: 13% of people in Vancouver and 7% in Toronto.

The guide lists the largest ethnic groups in the country, and the list is long: English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian and Scandinavian. Religion follows a similar pattern of an old majority and a growing variety. The great majority of Canadians identify as Christians, the largest affiliation being Catholic, followed by the Protestant churches. The numbers of Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs keep growing. Many Canadians state that they have no religion.

Diversity in the guide means legal equality as well as variety. Canada's diversity includes gay and lesbian Canadians, who enjoy the full protection of and equal treatment under the law, including access to civil marriage. Nobody has to give up their background to be Canadian.