by Beth Ramsay

Created on: May 12, 2009

The year is 1497 and one man is about to make a discovery that will change the world. His name is John Cabot and he is about to discovery Canada. To him it will be a land of great wealth; not because it has gold or jewels, no Cabot is about to discovery the Grand Banks. The Grand Banks are what first drew settlers to this great land we now call Canada. From a small French settlement in Newfoundland to harvest fish to the country that we know today was a slow road.

So how did Canada go from one small French colony to a fully fledged member of the British Empire? First there was the slow discovery of the resources that Canada held. After all something has to have value before people are willing to fight over it. Cartier would find that value during his quest for the Orient. Cartier believing that he was mapping a new and faster route to the orient kept detailed maps of the area he was traversing. Well he never did find a way to the Orient, Cartier did discover treasure: Lake Michigan and the St. Lawrence River. Well he may not have realized it at the time his discovery of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes would become more important than any mythical route to the Orient. This is because of the great farmland found around the St. Lawrence and Lake Michigan. Colonize that land and France would never starve.

The French king was slow to realize the value of this area but in 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec City. New France would grow out of this one colony into a vast French colony that spanned most of what we now call the Maritimes. The colonist would enrich France with furs, wood and wheat. Yet France was not the only one to discover the New World not was it the only one to found a colony there.

This is where the British enter the picture. Always rivals of the French they had settled the area around Lake Michigan and were expanding steadily. With the British expanding north and the French expanding south conflict was inevitable. It eventually broke out in a dispute over a prime piece of farmland: the Ohio valley. Both the British and the French claimed this land as their own. In 1753 the Governor of New France had Fort Duquesne built in the Ohio Valley. The British colonists sent George Washington to remove the French from 'their' valley. The French defeated Washington and he was forced to surrender in disgrace.

However the Seven Years 'War between France and Britain had begun all the same. The Seven Years' War would last nine years from 1756-1763. Though skirmishes started in 1753 the colonial government had to get together and send word back to Britain. This caused a delay that meant that war was not declared until three years after the first shot was fired.

Years of war followed but eventually on September 13, 1759 the British troops managed to force the French into the open on the Plains of Abraham. Over in fifteen minutes it was a massacre for the French. This was the beginning of the end. Quebec City had fallen and was in British hands. There were skirmishes for a while longer as the British cleaned up the last pockets of French resistance.

On February 10, 1763 the Treaty of Paris is signed and France ceded all their colonies in the New World to the British. France had decided to cut their loses and give up Canada so that they could keep the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

The British triumphed and Canada became a British colony. She joined the grand ranks of the British Empire after 150 years of war between France and Britain. Britain emerged a triumphant super power and France faded into obscurity. Canada would forever be British and a proud part of an Empire on which the sun never sets.

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