Did you know that Indigenous nations began building log houses in the Great Lakes region in the year 1100 and that Black people were enslaved in New France and British North America from 1629 to 1834?
If your relatives came to Canada in 1913, did you know they were part of the highest number of immigrants in one year in the 20th century?
Between 1948 and 1952, more than 100,000 Czechoslovakians came to Canada, fleeing the communist takeover.
If you’re descended from a Fille du roi, you may already know that almost 1,000 young women came to New France from 1663 to 1673 to marry and form families.
These are some of the many events that can be found on the The Timeline: Immigration and Impact, launched yesterday by the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The timeline shows significant events and developments connected to the history of colonization and immigration in what is now Canada.
You can explore the content through three lenses and their perspectives: Indigenous Presence, Arrivals (Immigration), and Government Policy and Legislation.
Each event is hyper-linked to a brief pop-up story.
Will this timeline help you track down ancestors? Probably not. What it will do is help place your ancestors who came to Canada within the context of a much bigger story.