EARLY CANADIAN HISTORY AND TALES

PREREQUISITE: ENGL1012
A multi-disciplinary study of the early history of Canada, up to the late 1800s, and the literature and films both from and about those times. Students will begin this study with the times of the first explorers, from Champlain’s books, to the colonization of the land and native people by the French, especially its Catholic missionaries. The course will then transition to the arrival of the British, beginning with the war that expelled French rule but not its colonists in the east, the impact of wars with America (both the Revolution and the War of 1812), and the push west to the edge of the Prairies. Finally, we will explore the great Arctic explorers’ stories, such as Franklin’s epic and tragic history, the Métis rebellion in the country’s heartland, and the literal nation building accomplished by the cross-continental railroad reaching Vancouver, 1871-1885, soon after the nation’s Confederation in 1867.