Postwar prosperity and the social safety net
Connect freer trade, Alberta oil and close ties with the United States to rising living standards and Canada’s social programs.
Canada came out of the Second World War into an era of record prosperity and material progress. During the Depression, countries had shielded themselves with restrictive trade policies; after 1945, agreements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) pried those markets open again. GATT’s work is now carried on by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Freer trade mattered because, as the economy chapter stresses, Canada has always been a trading nation.
Two milestones mark the change. In 1947, an oil discovery in Alberta launched Canada’s modern energy industry. By 1951, a majority of Canadians could for the first time afford adequate food, shelter and clothing, a basic test of how far living standards had climbed. From 1945 to 1970, as Canada built closer ties with the United States and other partners, its economy ranked among the strongest in the industrialized world.
The guide credits today’s standard of living, among the highest anywhere, to two things: Canadians’ hard work and trade with other countries, above all the United States. Rising wealth also gave governments the means to pay for social assistance. That link is the main idea of this section: prosperity made a broader safety net affordable. The programs did not all arrive together, though, and some came before the postwar boom.
Learn the program dates as a sequence. Old Age Security was first devised in 1927. The federal government introduced unemployment insurance, now called employment insurance, in 1940. The Canada and Quebec Pension Plans followed in 1965. The Canada Health Act ensures shared core features and a basic level of health coverage across the country, but delivering health care is a provincial responsibility, and the provinces and territories, not Ottawa, provide publicly funded education.
The Cold War, NATO, NORAD, the UN and Korea
Separate the alliances and organizations Canada joined after 1945, and the kinds of missions the guide names.
Like Australia and New Zealand, Canada won its autonomy gradually and became able to make significant contributions abroad. The postwar world soon tested that ability. The Cold War began when several eastern European countries, freed at the end of the Second World War, were pulled into a Communist bloc under the control of the Soviet Union and its dictator, Josef Stalin. Canada responded by joining other Western democracies in collective defence.
Two of those arrangements are easy to confuse. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a military alliance Canada formed with fellow Western democracies. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, is a partnership between Canada and the United States alone, guarding North American airspace. A memory hook: NATO spans the Atlantic to include European allies, while NORAD covers only North America.
Canada also became a member of international bodies such as the United Nations (UN). When the UN defended South Korea in the Korean War of 1950–53, Canadians served; 500 were killed and 1,000 wounded. Notice that Korea was a UN operation, not a NATO one. The guide’s photo of a Royal Canadian Air Force F-86 Sabre jet comes from this early Cold War period.
Canada has since taken part in many UN peacekeeping missions, and the guide names Egypt, Cyprus and Haiti as examples. It lists the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan separately, as other international security operations rather than peacekeeping examples. Expect questions that name one of these places and ask what kind of mission it was, or that try to blur the UN, NATO and NORAD together.
The Quiet Revolution, official bilingualism and Quebec’s referendums
Follow how rapid change in 1960s Quebec led to federal bilingualism, and keep the referendum and constitution dates apart.
French-Canadian society and culture flourished after the war. In the 1960s Quebec went through an era of rapid change known as the Quiet Revolution, marked by modernization and by the province’s institutions becoming more secular. The changes fed a stronger sense of Quebec identity, and many Quebecers began to seek separation from Canada. That pressure is the background to everything else in this lesson.
Parliament’s response was to examine the relationship between the two language communities. In 1963 it created the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The commission’s work led to the Official Languages Act of 1969, which guarantees that the federal government offers services in French and English across Canada. Learn the chain as cause and effect: the Quiet Revolution, then the 1963 commission, then the 1969 Act.
The guide’s symbols chapter lists the Act’s three aims: equality of French and English in Parliament, the Government of Canada and institutions covered by the Act; the maintenance and development of official-language minority communities, such as English speakers in Quebec and French speakers elsewhere; and the promotion of both languages’ equality in Canadian society. In 1970, Canada also helped create La Francophonie, a worldwide association of French-speaking countries.
Support for Quebec sovereignty kept growing, but the province’s voters rejected it in a 1980 referendum. After long negotiations, the Constitution was amended in 1982, entrenching the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, without Quebec’s agreement, and a second referendum, in 1995, again defeated sovereignty. Keep the issues apart: federal bilingualism is about language equality, while the referendums asked whether Quebec should separate. The guide calls Quebec’s autonomy within Canada a lively topic that still shapes the country.
A changing society: the vote, refugees and multiculturalism
Trace how the right to vote widened, which refugee movements the guide highlights, and why multiculturalism gained new momentum.
Over more than 50 years, shifting social values made Canada a more flexible and open society: more people took up growing opportunities in secondary and post-secondary education, and more women entered professional careers. The vote had widened in stages. As the history chapter explains, Manitoba was the first province to give women the vote, in 1916; most female citizens aged 21 and over could vote federally from 1918; and Quebec followed in 1940.
Voting rules also excluded people by ancestry. In the past, most Canadians of Asian descent could not vote in federal or provincial elections. The last of these groups to win it were Japanese Canadians, in 1948. Aboriginal people were granted the federal vote in 1960; before that (context not in the guide), most First Nations people could vote federally only by giving up their Indian status. Today every citizen aged 18 or older may vote.
Canada also took in thousands of refugees fleeing Communist oppression. In 1956, about 37,000 people fled Soviet repression in Hungary and found a new home in Canada. When the Vietnam War ended in a Communist victory in 1975, many Vietnamese fled, and more than 50,000 of them settled in Canada; the guide pictures a Vietnamese Canadian parade. Keep the pairs together: Hungary with 1956, Vietnam with 1975.
Immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries gave the idea of multiculturalism new momentum. By the 1960s, a third of Canadians traced their origins to neither Britain nor France, and many were proud to keep their distinct cultures as part of Canadian life. The guide says diversity enriches Canadians’ lives today, especially in the cities. This links back to Who We Are: many cultures within one shared citizenship and legal order.
Literature, music, visual art, film and performance
Match the writers, musicians, painters, sculptors and filmmakers the guide names to their field and region.
Canadian artists from every region, the guide says, have given shape to the country’s culture and earned acclaim both in Canada and internationally. Its literary figures, writing in English and in French, are Stephen Leacock, Louis Hémon, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Pauline Johnson, Émile Nelligan, Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence and Mordecai Richler. The guide gives no book titles, so the task is simply to recognize these names as writers.
Music and newer voices come next. Sir Ernest MacMillan and Healey Willan are the musicians the guide credits with winning renown at home and abroad. A later generation of writers, Joy Kogawa, Michael Ondaatje and Rohinton Mistry, is singled out for broadening the range of Canadian literature, which echoes this chapter’s immigration theme. A common slip is to file MacMillan or Willan among the writers; they are the two musicians.
Historically, Canada’s most famous visual artists are probably the Group of Seven, founded in 1920, whose distinctive painting style set out to portray the country’s rugged wilderness. The guide illustrates it with The Jack Pine by Tom Thomson, a painter closely linked to the Group (outside the guide: he died in 1917, before it formed). Emily Carr’s subjects were West Coast forests and Aboriginal artifacts, so pair her with British Columbia.
In 1950s Quebec, Les Automatistes broke new ground in modern abstract art; Jean-Paul Riopelle is the best-known member. Louis-Philippe Hébert, also from Quebec, was celebrated for sculptures of historical figures. Kenojuak Ashevak led the way in modern Inuit art, working in etchings, prints and soapstone sculpture. Keep the media straight: Riopelle is abstract painting, Hébert is historical sculpture, and Kenojuak Ashevak is Inuit printmaking and carving.
The performing arts have deep roots too: a network of regional theatres works across the country, and some Canadian companies have world reputations—the guide pictures Cirque du Soleil. In film, Denys Arcand’s movies found audiences in Quebec and the rest of Canada and won awards abroad, and Norman Jewison and Atom Egoyan are named as other noteworthy filmmakers. The guide adds that Canadian television has built a popular following.
Sport and national heroes
Learn the athletes, trophies and fundraising heroes the guide names, with the year and achievement attached to each.
Sport has flourished across Canada: every province and territory has produced amateur and professional stars and Olympic medallists, and Canadians play in many major leagues. A Canadian, James Naismith, invented basketball in 1891. In ice hockey, which this chapter calls the national sport, Canadian teams have dominated internationally. The symbols chapter is more precise: hockey is the national winter sport, and lacrosse is the official summer sport.
The guide pictures several champions. At the 1996 Summer Olympics, sprinter Donovan Bailey set a world record (since broken) and won two gold medals. Chantal Petitclerc won a world championship in wheelchair racing and Paralympic gold. Wayne Gretzky, among the greatest hockey players ever, was an Edmonton Oiler from 1979 to 1988. Other photos show Catriona Le May Doan carrying the flag after her 2002 Winter Olympic speed-skating gold, and Olympic gold medallist Mark Tewksbury, a prominent activist for gay and lesbian Canadians.
In 1972, Paul Henderson scored Canada’s winning goal in the Canada–Soviet Summit Series. Nicknamed “the goal heard around the world,” it is still remembered as a landmark in both sport and cultural history. Canadian football has its own trophy: professional teams in the Canadian Football League play for the Grey Cup, donated in 1909 by Lord Grey, the Governor General. The Canadian game differs in several ways from American football.
Two British Columbians became national heroes through fundraising. In 1980, Terry Fox, who had lost his right leg to cancer at 18, set out on a cross-country run, the Marathon of Hope, raising money for cancer research. Cancer cut short his run and later his life, but annual fundraising events in his name carry on his legacy. In 1985, Rick Hansen, also from British Columbia, set off around the world in his wheelchair, raising money for spinal cord research.
Science, research and space
Learn the pioneer thinkers, Nobel Prize winners and space milestones the guide uses to show Canada’s scientific reputation.
The guide presents Canadian science and technology as world-famous, with advances that transformed how the world communicates and does business. It names two pioneer thinkers, Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis, both known for influential ideas about communication and media. They are thinkers rather than inventors, so keep them on a different list from the people who created the telephone, the snowmobile or the pacemaker.
Canadian research has earned international recognition and draws world-class students, academics and entrepreneurs into fields such as medical research and telecommunications. Telecommunications is a thread worth noticing: Bell’s telephone idea, Fessenden’s first wireless voice message and the BlackBerry, all in the next lesson, are about reaching people far away, a natural focus for a vast and thinly populated country like Canada.
Canadian astronauts and the Canadian Space Agency have been part of space exploration since 1989, often relying on the Canadarm, a robotic arm designed and built in Canada. The arm appears again on the guide’s list of inventions, where it is credited to SPAR Aerospace and the National Research Council. Keep the two facts linked but distinct: 1989 marks the space agency, not the invention of the Canadarm.
The guide names six Nobel Prize-winning scientists: Gerhard Herzberg, John Polanyi, Sidney Altman, Richard E. Taylor, Michael Smith and Bertram Brockhouse. It adds one detail about Herzberg: he came to Canada as a refugee from Nazi Germany, which ties science to the immigration story of this chapter. The guide does not say which prize each won or when, so focus on recognizing the six names as Nobel laureates.
Great Canadian discoveries and inventions
Memorize the guide’s inventor-to-invention pairings in both directions, from insulin to the BlackBerry.
The guide’s most celebrated discovery is insulin. Sir Frederick Banting of Toronto and Charles Best discovered this hormone for treating diabetes, which the guide credits with saving 16 million lives worldwide. Next to it sits a list of famous Canadian inventions, best learned as pairs in both directions: from the person to the achievement, and from the achievement back to the person or team.
Several entries involve communication or time. Alexander Graham Bell came up with the idea for the telephone while at his summer home in Canada. Reginald Fessenden helped invent radio and transmitted the world’s first wireless voice message. Sir Sandford Fleming devised the worldwide system of standard time zones. Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward jointly created the first electric light bulb, then sold their patent to Thomas Edison, whose commercial version became far better known.
Others solved practical problems. Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile, a light vehicle for travelling over snow. Dr. John A. Hopps invented the first cardiac pacemaker, which keeps people with heart disorders alive today. SPAR Aerospace and the National Research Council created the Canadarm, a robotic arm for work in space. Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie built Research in Motion (RIM), a wireless company best known for the BlackBerry; it is now called BlackBerry Limited.
One name on the list is honoured for medicine rather than a device. Dr. Wilder Penfield, a brain surgeon at Montreal’s McGill University, pioneered his field and was hailed as “the greatest living Canadian.” A different kind of invention appears in the guide’s sports section: James Naismith, a Canadian, invented basketball in 1891. Watch for traps that swap partners, such as Bell with the light bulb, or Edison as its original inventor.
The chapter closes by inviting readers to visit museums, found in almost every Canadian city and town, and national historic sites, which exist in every province and territory and range from battlefields and archaeological sites to buildings and sacred spaces. The Virtual Museum of Canada and Parks Canada websites help you find them. The chapter’s final question asks each future citizen how they will contribute to Canada.
Key facts to remember
- Postwar trade and resource development helped raise living standards and supported programs including health coverage, employment insurance and public pensions.
- Canada is a founding member of NATO, works closely with the United States through NORAD, and has participated in the United Nations and international peace and security missions.
- The Official Languages Act of 1969 strengthened English and French services in the federal government.
- Quebec’s Quiet Revolution changed the province rapidly. Sovereignty was rejected in provincial referendums in 1980 and 1995.
- Voting rights expanded over time; most Asian Canadians obtained the federal vote by 1948 and First Nations people could vote federally without giving up status by 1960.
- Canadian achievement spans literature, visual and performing arts, medicine, science, communications and sport.
Check yourself
- Which international organizations and defence partnerships does the guide emphasize?
- The UN, NATO and NORAD: international cooperation, collective defence and Canada–U.S. aerospace defence.
- What did the Official Languages Act establish?
- It strengthened the equal use of English and French in federal institutions.
- How did voting rights and Canadian society change during the twentieth century?
- The vote expanded to groups previously excluded, society urbanized and diversified, and public programs and language rights grew.
Practice questions
Eight questions shaped like the official test: one right answer out of four, with the reason it is right. The timed twenty-question exams are in the app.
What helped drive Canada’s postwar economic growth?
- Closed borders and less trade
- Expanded trade and resource development
- An end to manufacturing
- The abolition of immigration
Answer: Expanded trade and resource development. Trade, industry, resources and a growing population supported postwar prosperity.
Under which organization did Canadians serve when South Korea was defended in the Korean War of 1950–53?
- NORAD
- The United Nations
- NATO
- The G8
Answer: The United Nations. Canada became a member of the United Nations, and when the UN defended South Korea in 1950–53, Canadians served: 500 were killed and 1,000 wounded.
What is NORAD?
- A military alliance of Western democracies on both sides of the Atlantic
- A partnership between Canada and the United States to defend North American airspace
- A United Nations peacekeeping force
- A trade agreement with Mexico
Answer: A partnership between Canada and the United States to defend North American airspace. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, is a Canada–U.S. partnership. NATO is the wider military alliance Canada formed with other Western democracies.
When was the Official Languages Act first adopted?
- 1867
- 1917
- 1969
- 1982
Answer: 1969. The 1969 Act strengthened equal use of English and French in federal institutions.
About how many people fled Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and found a new home in Canada?
- About 3,700
- About 37,000
- About 370,000
- About 3.7 million
Answer: About 37,000. In 1956 about 37,000 Hungarians fleeing Soviet repression settled in Canada. After 1975, more than 50,000 Vietnamese refugees did the same.
Which group is associated with Canadian landscape painting?
- The Fathers of Confederation
- The Group of Seven
- The United Empire Loyalists
- The Famous Five
Answer: The Group of Seven. The Group of Seven developed an influential style of Canadian landscape painting.
Who discovered insulin as a treatment for diabetes?
- Banting and Best
- Bell and Marconi
- Naismith and Fox
- Pearson and Suzuki
Answer: Banting and Best. Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin, saving millions of lives.
Who invented basketball?
- Terry Fox
- James Naismith
- Wayne Gretzky
- Joseph-Armand Bombardier
Answer: James Naismith. Canadian James Naismith invented basketball in 1891.