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vampireadamooc · 5 years

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Lecture II: Suggestions And Perversions Of The Rite

2.3 - A New Nature Through New Blood

It was a primeval idea, of universal sway, that the taking in of another's blood was the acquiring of another's life, with all that was best in that other's nature. It was not merely that the taking away of blood was the taking away of life; but that the taking in of blood was the taking in of life, and of all that that life represented. Here, again, the heart, as the fountain of blood, and so as the center and source of life, was pre-eminently the agency of transfer in the acquiring of a new nature.

Herodotus tells us of this idea in the far East, twenty-four centuries ago. When a Scythian, he said, killed his first man in open warfare, he drank in his blood as a means of absorbing his fairly acquired life; and the heads of as many as he slew, the Scythian carried

Berwick's Daily Life and Origin of Tasmatnam, p. 89; cited in Spencer's Des. Soc., III., 43,

in triumph to the king; 1 as the American Indian bears away the scalps of his slain, today. Modern historians, indeed, show us other resemblances than this between the aboriginal American and the ancient Scythian.

The Jesuit founder of the Huron Mission to the American Indians, "its truest hero, and its greatest martyr," was Jean de Brebeuf. After a heroic life among a savage people, he was subjected to frightful torture, and to the cruelest death. His character had won the admiration of those who felt that duty to their gods demanded his martyrdom; and his bearing under torture exalted him in their esteem, as heroic beyond compare." He came of a noble race," says Parkman, 2 "the same [race], it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and 'his death was an astonishment to his murderers.'"

"We saw no part of his body," wrote an eye-witness, 3 "from head to foot, which was not burned [while he was yet living], even to his eyes, in the sockets of which these wretches had placed live coals." Such manhood as he displayed under these tortures, the Indians could appreciate.

Hist., IV, 64

Jesuits in No Am. in 17th Cent., p. 389 f.

Ragueneau; cited by Parkman.

Such courage and constancy as his, they longed to possess for themselves. When, therefore, they perceived that the brave and faithful man of God was finally sinking into death, they sprang toward him, scalped him, "laid open his breast, and came in a crowd to drink the blood of so valiant an enemy; thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his courage. A chief then tore out his heart, and devoured it."

Not unlike this has been a common practice among the American Indians, in the treatment of prisoners of war. "If the victim had shown courage," again says Parkman, concerning the Hurons, "the heart was first roasted, cut into small pieces, and given to the young men and boys, who devoured it, to increase their own courage." 1 So, similarly, with the Iroquois. 2 And Burton says of the Dakotas: 3 "They are not cannibals, except when a warrior, after slaying a foe, eats, porcupine-like, the heart or liver, with the idea of increasing his own courage." Schomburgk, writing concerning the natives of British Guiana, says: "In order to increase their courage, and [so their] contempt of death, the Caribs were wont to cut out the heart of a slain enemy, dry it on the fire, powder it, and mix the powder in their drink." 4

Jesuits in No. Am., Introduction, p. xxxix.

Ibid., p, 250.

City of the Saints, p. 117. See also Appendix.

Reisn in Brit. Guian., II., 430, cited in Spencer's Des, Soc., VI., 36.

The native Australians find, it is said, an inducement to bloodshed, in their belief like that of the ancient Scythians that the life, or the spirit, of the first man whom one slays, enters into the life of the slayer, and remains as his helpful possession thereafter. 1 The Ashantee fetishmen, of West Africa, apparently acting on a kindred thought, make a mixture of the hearts of enemies, mingled with blood and consecrated herbs, for the vivifying of the conquerors. "All who have never before killed an enemy eat of the preparation; it being believed that if they did not, their energy would be secretly wasted by the haunting spirits of their deceased foes." 2 The underlying motive of the bloody "head-hunting" in Borneo, is the Dayak belief, that the spirits of those whose heads are taken are to be subject to him who does the decapitating. The heads are primarily simply the proof like the Indian's scalps that their owner has so many lives absorbed in his own. 3

A keen observer of Fellaheen life in Palestine has reported: 4

Trans, of Ethn Soc. new series, III., 240, cited in Spencer's Des. Soc, III., 36.

Beecham's Ashantee and the Gold Coast, p. 211; cited in Spencer's Des Soc., IV , 33.

See Tyler's Primitive Culture, I., 459; also Bock's Head Hunters of Borneo, passim.

Mis. Finn's "Fellaheen of Palestine" in Surv. of West. Pal. "Special Papers," p, 360.

"There is an ugly expression used among the fellaheen of South Palestine, in speaking of an enemy slain in war 'Dhabbahhtho bisnany' ('I slew him with my teeth') l; and it is said that there have been instances of killing in battle in this fashion by biting at the throat. In the Nablous district (Samaria), where the people are much more ferocious, the expression is, 'I have drunk his blood'; but that is understood figuratively."

An ancient Greek version of the story of Jason, telling of that hero's treatment of the body of Apsyrtos whom he had slain says: "Thrice he tasted the blood, thrice [he] spat it out between his teeth;" and a modern collator informs us that the scholiast here finds "the description of an archaic custom, popular among murderers." 2 This certainly corresponds with the Semitic phrases lingering among the Fellaheen of Palestine.

In the old German epic, the Nibelungen Lied, it is told of the brave Burgundians, when they were fighting desperately in the burning hall of the Huns, that they were given new courage for the hopeless conflict by drinking the blood of their fallen comrades; which "quenched their thirst, and made them fierce." 3

This is Mrs. Finn's rendering of it; but it should be "I sacrificed him with my teeth." The Arabic word is obviously dhabaha (أضحية), identical with the Hebrew zabhakh (לְזַבֵּחַ) "to sacrifice."

Lang's Custom and Myth, p. 95 f.; also Grimm's Household Tales p. lxvni.

Cox and Jones's Pop. Rom. of Mid. Ages, p. 310.

With their added life, from the added blood of heroes, they battled as never before.

"It strung again their sinews, and failing strength renewed. This, in her lover's passion, many a fair lady rued." 1

Is there not, indeed, a trace of the primitive custom thus recognized in all quarters of the globe of absorbing the life of a slain one by drinking in his blood, in our common phrase, "blood-thirstiness," as descriptive of a life-seeker? That phrase certainly gains added force and appropriateness in the light of this universal idea.

It is evident that the wide-spread popular belief in nature-absorption through blood-appropriation, has included the idea of a tribal absorption of new life in vicarious blood. Alcedo, a Spanish-American writer, has illustrated this in his description of the native Araucanians of South America. When they have triumphed in war, they select a representative prisoner for official and vicarious execution. After due preparation, they "give him a handful of small sticks and a sharp stake, with which they oblige him to dig a hole in the ground; and in this they order him to cast the sticks one by one, repeating the names of the principal warriors of his country, while at the same time the surrounding soldiers load these abhorred names with the bitterest execrations.

Lettsom's Nibel. Lied, p. 373.

He is then ordered to cover the hole, as if to bury therein the reputation and valor of their enemies, whom he has named. After this ceremony, the toqui, or one of his bravest companions to whom he relinquishes the honor of the execution, dashes out the brains of the prisoner with a club. The heart is immediately taken out, and presented palpitating to the general, who sucks a little of the blood, and passes it to his officers, who repeat in succession the same ceremony." 1 And in this way the life of the conquered tribe passes, symbolically, into the tribal life of the conquerors.

Burckhardt was so surprised at a trace of this idea in Nubia, that he could hardly credit the information concerning it; "although several persons asserted it to be a fact," he says; and he "heard no one contradict it." 2 As he learned it: "Among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia, a horrible custom is said to attend the revenge of blood. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into the midst of them, bound upon an angareyg; and while his throat is slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl, and handed round amongst the guests;

Thompson's Alerdo Geog. and Hist. Dict. of America, I., 408; cited in Spencer's Des. Soc., VI., 19.

Travels in Numbia, p. 356.

every one of whom is bound to drink of it, at the moment the victim breathes his last" The forfeited life of the murderer here seems to be surrendered to, and formally appropriated by, the family, or clan, which he had, to the same extent, depleted of character and life.

A practice not unlike this is reported of the Australians, in their avenging the blood of a murdered person. They devour their victims; who are selected from the tribe of the murderer, although they may be personally innocent of the murder. The tribe depleted by the murder replaces its loss by blood which is life from the tribe of the murderer. Indeed, "when any one of a tribe [in New South Wales] dies a natural death, it is usual to avenge [or to cancel] the loss of the deceased by taking blood from one or other of his friends." 1 In this way, the very life and being of those whose blood is taken, go to restore to the bereaved ones the loss that death has brought to them.

Strange as this idea may seem to us, its root-thought, as a fact, is still an open question in the realm of physiological science. The claim is positive, in medical works, that insanity has been cured by the transfusion of a sane man's blood; 2

Trans, of Ethn. Soc., II, 246, and Angas's Austr. and New Zeal., I, 73, 227, 462, cited in Spencei's Des. Soc. Ill , 26.

See Dict. Med et Chir. Prat, Art. "Transfusion"; also Roussel's Transf. of Blood, pp. 78-88.

that a normal mind has been restored, through a normal life gained in new blood. Moreover, the question, how far the nature, or the characteristics, of an organism, are affected, in blood transfusion, by the nature, or the characteristics, of the donor of the transfused blood, is by no means a settled one among scientists. Referring to a series of questions in this line, propounded by Robert Doyle, more than two centuries ago, Roussel has said, within the past decade: "No one has been able to give any positive answers to them, based upon well-conducted operations"; and, "they still await solution in 1877, as in 1667." 1

Transf. of Blood, p. 19.

#by H. Clay Trumbull #Library #The Blood Covenant A Primitive Rite And Its Bearings On Scripture

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maysoper · 6 years

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Why Is It "Suomi"?

This woman hasn't stopped since PyeongChang as Venla Hovi has been doing media appearances all week thus far after the University of Manitoba Bisons women's hockey team captured the 2018 U SPORTS National Women's Ice Hockey Championship. Venla, as you may know, also captured a bronze medal at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games this past February while representing Finland. The funny thing about Finland, though, is that all the Finnish national teams wear the name "Suomi" across their gear rather than Finland. Why is Finland not "Finland" in Finland? I have often wondered this myself how a country like Finland calls itself something very different than what the rest of the world calls it. Well, it turns out that Finland DOES call itself Finland. You just have to know the story to put the dots together. Amy McPherson of BBC Travel decided to find out where the Suomi name came from and why Finland isn't used by Finland on their uniforms.

"[Krista] Fransman explained that the name 'Finland' was not Finnish-born. In fact, the original Finnish alphabet didn't even contain the letter 'f', which was introduced to the language through borrowed words. One theory is that the name 'Finland' comes from the Old English word finna, a general term once used to describe people from Scandinavia. However, some historians believe its origins are actually Swedish, where the words finlonti and finlandi are believed to have been used as early as the 12th Century to describe the land that is now the south-western part of modern Finland."

That's interesting if the name "Finland" truly came from their neighbours in Sweden. There's a heckuva rivalry between the Scandinavian nations when it comes to most sports, but to have your arch-rivals provide your name that the rest of the planet uses? That's a new level of bulletin board material! Miss McPherson pushed on in trying to find the origins of Suomi.

"'There is no certain knowledge about the real origin of the name 'Suomi',' said [National Museum of Finland] curator Satu Frondelius. 'One theory is that Suomi comes from word 'suomaa' which means 'swampland' in Finnish.' She noted that the south-western part of the country is home to numerous lakes, which could have looked like swampland to outsiders. 'Another theory is that the word comes from 'suomu', which means 'scale' [of a fish], suggesting that people in Finland wore clothes made out of fish skins.'"

I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone wear clothes made out of fish skins, but I'm pretty sure that society would need to discard their clothes regularly due to the smell. The idea of the swampland and people that live in and around those lands makes much more sense when you consider that explorers would have come from the south, but Miss Frondelius didn't really provide any hard and fast evidence of this being true. Miss McPherson found one more theory.

"A third theory led me to Finnish Lapland in search of the Sami, a traditionally nomadic tribe of reindeer herders. According to Klaas Ruppel, etymology expert at the Institute for the Languages of Finland, some linguists believe that both 'Sami' and 'Suomi' derive from the same proto-Baltic word, źemē, which was used to refer to land or territory, and the people living on that land.'

Again, this seems like a more likely origin of the word "Suomi". People have always described the societies they have found by the lands and environments they're found in, and I would tend to believe an etymology expert when it comes to the origin of specific words. Miss McPherson makes an important observation about the Finns towards the end of the article. She writes,

"While traditionally Finland's Sami identify themselves as Sami first and Finnish second, this connection to the land seemed similar to the importance Finns place on nature and their surroundings."

And she follows that point with another quote from her friend, Krista Fransman.

"'I think in this multicultural world, lesser-known languages such as Finnish enrich the versatility of the country's culture,” she said. 'Finnish is our language and 'Suomi' is the word for 'Finland' in Finnish. It is only natural for us to use the name of our country in our own language.' "However, Fransman added, Finnish, or Suomi, identity wasn't something she spent much time thinking about. 'Being Finnish means I appreciate quietness, the space and the nature around us,' she said."

I found that last line very interesting as I've heard Venla Hovi talk about the space and nature in Winnipeg. Maybe Miss Fransman is right in that an identity should be something we can be proud of, but it's our work as a society that should define us as a nation. Finland, like Canada, is passionate about hockey, and both countries usually rate high on both the Environment Performance Index and on lists of the best countries to live in. I'd say both societies are doing a good job at being good societies when it comes to the important things that people value. If Canada was named from the Huron-Iroquois word "kanata" meaning "village" or "settlement," I'd be inclined to lean towards the swampland theory or the Sami theory since it describes Finnish society of centuries past. Regardless of what the origins are, the people of Finland should be as proud of Venla Hovi, Teemu Selanne, and Patrik Laine as the people of Winnipeg are. Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice! from Sports News http://hockey-blog-in-canada.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-is-it-suomi.html

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studycountry-blog · 7 years

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Learn about the different eras in the Canadian history

Canada has a rich and proud history—a history full of plenty of setbacks and even more successes. In the following article we will discuss the various periods in Canada’s history and provide some pertinent information regarding the developments that helped shape this great nation into what it is today.

Canada: Prehistory

A Mammoth from Canada's prehistory, SourceAccording to archaeologists, there is evidence that the first natives in North America, of which Canada makes up more than 40 percent, first arrived some 40,000 years BCE (before the Common Era) by crossing a land bridge which had formed between Asia and Alaska during the latest Ice Age. In the United States, these people are often referred to as “Indians” or “Native Americans,” while in Canada they are usually known as “Aboriginal People,” “Native People” or “People of the First Nations.” Because this period of pre-history literally involves thousands of years, below we have created a time-line, beginning 9000 BCE, that will help you see some of the major developments at a glance.

9000-8000 BCE: During this millennium, the Huron people, originally known as the Wendat, settled into Southern Ontario along the Eramosa River near what is now Guelph. They were concentrated between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. Most of the land was still covered in glaciers and the Wendat hunted caribou to survive.

7000 BCE: Aboriginal tribes began settling the west coast of Canada and various cultures built themselves around the rich salmon fishing in the region. The Nuu'chah'nulth, or Nootka people of Vancouver Island began whaling.

6000 BCE: Various cultures were built around the vast store of buffalo by the Plains Indians in central Canada. These groups hunted buffalo by herding them off of cliffs. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, near Lethbridge, Alberta, is the most famous hunting grounds in this region of the country and was in use for 5,000 years.

5000 BCE: The oldest ceremonial burial site was discovered at L'Anse Amour on the coast of Labrador containing the remains of a 12-year-old boy. The child was buried face down in a very elaborate manner; red ochre had been sprinkled on the back of his head and in a circle around the body. Also found in the tomb were a decorative caribou antler pestle, a bone pendant, bird bones, a harpoon head, a bone whistle, and a walrus tusk. It is unknown what standing the boy had in the community to have been buried in such a way.

2000 BCE: The Inuit people arrived in what is now Canada by small boats, long after the land bridge had disappeared and settled in the Arctic regions.

800 BCE: As the glaciers receded and the weather warmed, the Huron people became farmers rather than hunters, cultivating corn which will not grow wild.

500 BCE-1000 AD: Natives had settled across most of Canada. Hundreds of tribes had developed, each with its own culture, customs, legends, and character. Some of the most well-known were the Huron, Inuit, Blackfoot, Cree and Iroquois.

Canada: The First Settlers and Fight for Control

The earliest contact with what is now Canada is thought to have been made by the Vikings in an expedition led by Bjarni Herjólfsson, who was blown off course en route from Iceland to Greenland around 985 AD. However, there are no records of this discovery save for Icelandic sagas; vague word-of-mouth accounts handed down over the generations.

The first European contact noted in Canadian history was made by the Italian explorer John Cabot sailing under the patronage of King Henry VII of England. In 1497, in a quest to find a trade route to the Orient, Cabot ended up somewhere on the eastern Canadian coast and claimed it for the King. This voyage, and one subsequent in 1498, gave England a claim by right of discovery to an indefinite amount of area of eastern North America; in fact, its later claims to Newfoundland, Cape Breton and neighboring regions were based partly on Cabot's exploits.

In the early 16 century, a Frenchman named Jacques Cartier also sailed on two expeditions to Canada, sailing into the St. Lawrence River in August of 1535.

On August 5, 1583, Humphrey Gilbert, armed with legal claim papers from Queen Elizabeth I, formally took possession of Newfoundland in St. John's harbor on behalf of England. But the French also started to make claims on Canadian territories. While their first attempts at settlement failed, in 1604 the fur trade monopoly was granted to Pierre Dugua Sieur de Monts of France, who led his first colonization expedition to an island located near the mouth of the St. Croix River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer named Samuel de Champlain, under whom the St. Croix settlement was moved to Port Royal (today's Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).

It was France's most successful colony and the settlement came to be known as Acadia. However, the cancellation of de Guast's fur monopoly in 1607 brought the Port Royal settlement to a temporary end. Undiscouraged, Champlain was able to persuade de Guast to allow him to take some colonists and settle on the St. Lawrence, where in 1608 he would found France's first permanent colony in Canada at Quebec. It became the capital of New France.

While the English colonies were growing rapidly along the Atlantic coast, French fur traders and explorers were slowly extending ownership deep into the heart of North America. After settling the area around what is now the Hudson Bay in the early 17 century, the English would later go on to capture Quebec in 1629, although the region was later returned to the French in 1632 during a brief time of peace between the two nations.

Peace between France and England did not last long, however. The Seven Years War (1756-1763) in Europe pitted England against France in a bloody fight for control over North America and Canada particularly. In 1758, the British captured the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, and in 1759, the English General Wolfe captured the city of Quebec (Wolfe’s victory at Quebec ensured that Canada would become British rather than French). In 1763, the French were forced to surrender all their territories in Canada to Britain by the Treaty of Paris.

Canada: The Early Days of British Rule

A depiction of the Conference at Quebec in 1864After France was forced to give up its claim on North America, England, which had now added to their other Atlantic colonies, was faced with two pressing problems. There were now over 50,000 new French-speaking subjects in what had formerly been New France. Additionally, there were large tracts of wilderness in the Great Lakes area where the small garrisons of the British were gravely outnumbered by the native Indians.

Led by an intelligent and treacherous Ottawa chieftain named Pontiac, the Indians suddenly rose against their new English masters and began to overthrow these forts one by one; massacring the English soldiers that inhabited them, until fresh troops were rushed in and the uprising was finally subdued.

To avoid further conflict with the French, the English Parliament enacted the Quebec Act of 1774, allowing the French Canadians to practice their own religion—Roman Catholicism—and to keep French civil law alongside British criminal law. By 1775, Canada had a population of about 90,000.

During the American Civil War (1775-1783), the loyalty of what was once New France was tested. Within a year of the passing of the Quebec Act, the rebelling American colonies sent two armies north to capture the province. Sir Guy Carleton, the British governor of Canada, narrowly escaped capture when one of these armies, under Richard Montgomery, took Montreal.

Carleton reached Quebec in time to organize its small garrison against the forces of Benedict Arnold. Arnold began a siege of the fortress, in which he was soon joined by Montgomery. In the midwinter fighting that followed, Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded. When spring came, the attacking forces retreated. During the rest of the American Revolutionary War, there was no further fighting on Canadian soil.

After the American Revolution, thousands of British Loyalists from the newly-established United States of America, fled to Canada to begin their lives anew in Nova Scotia and in the unsettled lands above the St. Lawrence rapids and north of Lake Ontario. This massive wave of new settlers, known in Canada as the United Empire Loyalists, marked the first major wave of immigration by English-speaking settlers since the days of New France. Their arrival meant that both the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia and the inland colony of Quebec would need to be reorganized.

Initially, the unsettled forests to the west of the Bay of Fundy, once part of French Acadia, had been included in Nova Scotia. In 1784, however, this area was established as a separate colony known as New Brunswick. Cape Breton Island was simultaneously separated from Nova Scotia (a division that was ended in 1820). In all, some 35,000 Loyalist immigrants are believed to have settled in the Maritimes.

Meanwhile, the settlement of the more inaccessible lands north and west of Lake Ontario and along the north shore of the upper St. Lawrence proceeded somewhat more slowly, with only roughly 5,000 Loyalists settling in this area.

Canada: The 19 Century

During the American War of 1812 the Americans invaded Canada but the Canadians were able to turn them back. However, the successful defense of their newly formed country had not prevented the Canadians from seeing the cracks in their own form of government. There were many citizens, particularly the wealthy businessman and landowners, who believed that the colonists had sufficient powers of self-government through their elected assemblies. Others were upset, that the real power did not lie in the hands of the people through their elected representatives, but with the governor who was responsible only to the government in Britain.

One of the loudest accusers of the government's administration, especially when it came to land grants, was William Lyon Mackenzie, who eventually became Mayor of Toronto in 1834. In 1837, he led an unsuccessful uprising, during which he was killed. At about the same time, in Lower Canada, the French Canadians of Lower Canada also rebelled under the leadership of Louis Joseph Papineau; this revolt, too, was quickly put down.

The gravity of troubles in Canada caused deep concern in Great Britain, where memories of the American Revolution were still fresh. At the request of Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, John George Lambton, earl of Durham, accepted appointment as governor in chief of British North America with special powers as lord high commissioner. Lambton arrived in Quebec in the spring of 1838, and though he ended his stay before the year was out, his Report on the Affairs of British North America is one of the most important documents in the history of the British Empire.

Durham recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united under a single parliament, believing if the colonies were given as much freedom to govern themselves as the people of Great Britain, they would become more loyal instead of less so. He did not live to witness the action that was taken on his report, for within a year he became ill and died. In 1840, the Act of Union was passed, joining Upper and Lower Canada under a central government.

Canada eventually gained democratic government in 1867 when Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were federated as the Dominion of Canada. Canada then had a strong central government, which ruled from Ottawa, the new capital. The first prime minister of Canada was Sir John Macdonald.

Throughout the 19th century, the population of Canada grew rapidly, boosted by a massive wave of European immigration. Canada established its first democratic government in 1867, when Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were federated as the Dominion of Canada. Manitoba was made a province in 1870, and British Columbia joined the confederation in 1871. Alberta and Saskatchewan would later join in 1905.

The Canadian economy also expanded greatly during this time, aided by the spread of the country’s railway system. A transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific, was completed in 1885, and vast areas of land were turned over to farming and manufacturing industries that quickly began to boom. Gold was discovered in the Klondike District of the Yukon in 1896, sparking a gold rush that would last for several years.

Canada: The 20 and 21 Century

A Canadian war tank, SourceIn the years before World War I, Canada faced one of its most pressing foreign policy issues as a naval competition increased between Germany and Britain. Great Britain naturally desired to receive military help from the colonies. The Canadian Prime Minister at the time, Wilfrid Laurier, found a compromise that satisfied neither the pro-British faction nor the French partisans. He founded the Canadian Navy in 1910 with the provision that in time of war it be placed under British command. This quickly led to accusations that Canadian soldiers would be drafted into the British Army if war came. As a result, Laurier was defeated in the next election of 1911.

The new Conservative government, headed by Robert Laird Borden, had the responsibility of rallying the nation to Britain's side in World War I. Had Canadians remained as divided as they were at the end of Laurier's term, this might have been a difficult thing to do. But Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium in 1914 forged a unity of Canadian sentiment and a demand for participation in the conflict.

Before the war ended in 1918, more than 619,000 officers and men had enlisted, including some 22,000 who had served in the British Royal Air Force. More than 60,000 Canadians were killed in action or died of wounds, a terribly heavy toll in relation to the country's population. Over 66 million shells were produced in Canadian factories. The gross national debt soared from 544 million dollars in 1914 to almost 2 1/2 billion dollars in 1919, most of the money being raised in Canada itself through public war loans.

Following the war, in the 1920s, Canada saw several prosperous years, but like the rest of the world the country suffered greatly during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Exports of timber, fish and grain dropped off sharply, and by 1933 unemployment had soared to a whopping 23%. The government introduced relief works, but economic hardship continued throughout the decade.

With the early 1940s came the start of the Second World War. Within three months an entire division of the new Canadian Active Service Force had been transported to the United Kingdom. These Canadians saw service in almost every theater of war. The Royal Canadian Navy was increased from fewer than a dozen vessels to more than 400. It served primarily as an antisubmarine and convoy force in the North Atlantic. Some of its units were deployed from time to time as far away as the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Canada lost 45,000 soldiers during World War II.

Following the war, the population of Canada grew rapidly, from 16 million in 1951 to 18 million in 1961. People came from all over Southern and Eastern Europe, and, in the 1960s, also from, Southern Asia.

The 1950s and 1960s saw the Canadian economy boom and Canada became a very affluent society. However, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a recession hit Canada and unemployment rose to 11%. There was another recession in the early 1990s, yet Canada quickly recovered.

In the early part of the 21 century, Canada’s economy rebounded nicely, but like the rest of the world, the country is just now beginning to shake off the effects of the global recession that began in 2008. In 2012, the unemployment rate in Canada stood at 8.1 percent, but today that number has shrunk to 6.9 percent—the lowest rate the country has seen since before the 2008 recession.

Source:http://www.studycountry.com

#History of Canada #Canadian history

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