Browsing: Canada

A Brief History On October 19, 1864, military forces of the Confederate States of America invaded Vermont from a staging area in Quebec, Canada.  Although we have long been taught in school that the Gettysburg campaign was the last invasion of the North by the Confederate States, the St. Albans Raid proves that premise false.  Although not a “real” invasion by a large military force, the 21 cavalry soldiers involved on the side of the Rebels were in fact real soldiers of the CSA, men who had evaded capture in other campaigns and made their way North to Canada to…

A Brief History On February 24, 1942, an “order in council” was passed by the Canadian government that authorized the internment of all persons of Japanese ancestry in Canada. (On the same day, the United States passed a measure under the “War Powers Act” to also intern Japanese Americans. See our article, “Forced Internment of Japanese During World War II”) The internment order followed a series of other measures taken against Japanese people in Canada, including the seizing of Japanese owned fishing boats, interrogations, curfews and general harassment and discrimination. Incredibly, some of these measures stayed in effect until 1949!…

A Brief History On February 8, 1879, Scottish Canadian inventor and engineer Sandford Fleming proposed the adoption of Universal Standard Time at The Royal Canadian Institute. Fleming proposed that the world be divided into 24 time zones, each 15 degrees of longitude in breadth and sequentially one hour behind the preceding time zone. All land within each time zone would be set to the same time. Up until this time, clocks in every city and town had been set to local time based on each location’s position on the Earth, creating no standards of keeping time and mass confusion when…

A Brief History On February 1, 1796, the British government changed the capital of Upper Canada from Newark to York. Oddly named to the casual observer, the province of Upper Canada is actually the furthest South of all parts of Canada, and no, it does not have a high elevation, either. Digging Deeper Occupying the central area of British Canada (Canada became independent in 1867, and the French claimed a large portion called New France until after the Seven Years War), Upper Canada was a province that today is the southern part of Ontario, from the 1000 Islands region North…