Population Study In Canada
What was the demographic situation in Canada prior to contact with Europe?
There is no clear evidence on historical population estimates as the existing evidence is rare and incomplete. The population estimates vary widely and are estimated to be between 200 000 and 1000 000 people. However, the best guess is usually considered to be around 500 000. The available evidence is believed to have been collected from the records of the trading post, the traders and the census takers who were mainly after the facts. With such scenarios, we are forced to rely on informed guesses. The informed guesses focus on the ecological estimates of the carrying capacity and demographic estimates based on the fertility and mortality rates (Weeks, 2020). The first people of Canada were made of potentially hundreds of distinct and unique groups. They possessed different religions, technologies and forms of social organization. The groups were made up of just a few family setups with sprawling and complex civilizations. Conservatively, they were made of 50+ unique languages from around 11 language groups.
Population distribution
The highest population numbers are believed to be at the northwest coast of Canada. Most people there were aquatic hunters and foragers. There are no agricultural activities traces even though many villages were out there. They were not agriculturalists despite the abundance of water and land resources and diverse fauna and flora. The eastern woodland in southern Ontario/Quebec also experiences higher population densities. Most people here are believed to practice shift cultivation with permanent settlement (Weeks, 2020). From the records, the population was lowest at the far north arctic, which uniquely nomadic hunters and gatherers made. It was also lower in northern boreal forests (subarctic) and plains. People living in these areas lived a wide range of life but primarily practised nomadic hunting and other economic activities.
Before contact
Historians and anthropologists have given varying estimates of the sustained population before the contact; however, a given tentative range between 200 000 and 1000 000 in the 16th century. The population is estimated to grow up to two million by 1867. The indigenous people of Canada continued to decline until the early 20th century. The dramatic population decrease resulted from infectious diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and typhoid. The indigenous wars over and properties also led to the loss of people (Weeks, 2020). Other causes of population decline included starvation, poor health, low life expectancy and warfare resulting from European encroachment and practices. There was a higher infant mortality rate in this era due to poor delivery health. The preexisting drought diseases outbreak and starvation led to the immigration of people to other localities.
What happened to the Indigenous population with contact?
The population of indigenous people experienced 300 years of staggering decrease. Due to different pandemics, Canada experienced a loss of between 50 per cent to 95 per cent loss of the population, with the averages best guess is 80 per cent. The lowest point of the population was in the late 19th century, with only a hundred thousand people left in Canada. Europeans started arriving in Canada around 1000 AD. Vikings and Norse were the first to arrive and establish the supply camps in Nfld. They were followed by the Basques and Portuguese, who found themselves in Maritimes (Weeks, 2020). There were various trade relations between the first people besides limited connections and a lack of permanent settlement with contact. Europe came with various infectious diseases from the virgin soil epidemics such as TB, smallpox and typhoid. With increased scrabble for land, different kinds of wars erupted, leading to more loss of the indigenous people (Kerr, & Beaujot, 2016). Many indigenous people participated in the European based war.
The industrial and agricultural revolutions in Western Europe and the consequent rise of the European inhabitants prompted Europeans to settle in Canada beginning in the 17th century. The French were among the first explorers of Canada, and the founding of New France was predominantly motivated by military and political concerns and the desire of the Roman Catholic Church to convert Indigenous peoples (Kalbach, 2019). Besides conflict of indigenous groups in Canada and the European Canadian, early interaction leads to the spread of infectious diseases to which the first people were not naturally immune. However, during the 18th and 19th centuries, Canada experience intense population growth. With improved medical care and fertility rate, the indigenous population increased significantly. Still due to heavy immigration of Europeans to settle in Canada (Kerr, & Beaujot, 2016). Even though there are no accurate records of the number of British citizens who moved to Canada, at least 20 000 went to Nova Scotia, 6000 to Ontario, 1500 to PEI, and 14 000 to Brunswick. During the American revolutionary war, approximately 60 000 people moved to Canada.
The colony’s growth was further aided by immigration. New France, for example, attracted around 25,000 immigrants between 1608 and 1650, although only about 15,000 remained permanently. Approximately 10,000 immigrants intermarried and left their descendants in the Canadian colony. The settlers comprised soldiers, some prisoners, slaves, clerics and indentured workers. The majority of the early settlers came from west-central France, Paris, and Normandy. On the other hand, the French Crown financed the migration of many marriageable young women from 1663 to 1673 (Kerr, & Beaujot, 2016). Those women were the king’s daughters known as Filles and ROI. The primary purpose of these immigrations of women was to provide sex ratio balance in the colony. Most European immigrants were British loyalists and moved from the US to Canada after the American Revolution. They intermarried, and the population grew.
Outline some of those factors most important in explaining the population decline among Canada’s First Nations, beginning in the 16th century through to the 19th century.
Three factors determine whether a population grows or shrinks mortality, migration, and fertility. Mortality rates in the North Atlantic region began to fall in the early nineteenth century. This was not immediately apparent in British North America, where the crude death rate (CDR) fluctuated downward. This inverse tendency was most likely since it was an era of urbanization, and death rates in cities are often higher. The research implies that life expectancy in rural Lower Canada improved, whereas Montreal’s numbers distorted the colony’s overall pattern. Lower Canada had a CDR of 25.86 per thousand in 1821-30, while Montreal had a CDR of 44.30 per thousand. Twenty years later, the values were 22.99 and 51.1, respectively (Kalbach, 2019). The situation improved slightly in the 1850s, but the CDR bounced back in the decade following Confederation.
The difficulties of surviving childhood contributed significantly to mortality rates in the nineteenth century. The first five years of existence were fraught with danger. Infants were prone to contracting the different germs in circulation and suffering (often fatally) from diarrhoea in regions where the water supply was inconsistently safe — which is to say, most towns and cities. The life expectancy at birth for a child born in 1851 was 43 years (roughly half of what it is today). However, if they could make it to the age of 15, there was a better chance of surviving longer (Trovato, & Aylsworth, 2015). Female mortality rates were similarly altered by the dangers connected with childbirth. Two-thirds of girls born in 1801 lived to adulthood, but only around half of the initial cohort lived to be 45, with childbearing being the most prominent risk they faced in the subsequent 25 years.
This demographic decline is estimated to have begun in the 16th century. Highly contagious diseases such as typhoid, smallpox, and measles were introduced to Aboriginal populaces, who lacked developed immunity to such devastating illnesses. These epidemics, mainly smallpox, decimated Indigenous people in the US and Canada over the 300 years after European contact. In 1761, the population in Canada was hardly above 76 000; however, by 1771, it rose to almost 102 000 (Trovato, & Aylsworth, 2015). Because of the high immigration rate and high fertility, the population grew fast between 1761 and 1811, with an average annual growth rate of 3.9 per cent. Growth accelerated from 1811 to 1861, averaging 3.7 per cent per year, but declined significantly in the latter four decades of the nineteenth century. This could result from a diminishing birth rate and high migration levels to the US. Despite the uncertainties surrounding these numbers, most researchers believe that a significant decline of Indigenous depopulation occurred after European arrival (Trovato, & Aylsworth, 2015).
Following the First World War, unrest reigned and the conclusion of the 1930s Great Depression. During this time, there were a low immigration rate and low fertility rate. The rate of population increase has slowed significantly. The Second World War, however, halted the long-term drop in infertility. Following the war, Canada experienced an era of sustained economic expansion, which fueled huge increases in fertility and immigration, primarily from Europe. The population of Canada was 3.4 million at the time of Confederation in 1867. New Brunswick, Ontario (Upper Canada), Nova Scotia, and Quebec (Lower Canada) made up the country (Trovato, & Aylsworth, 2015). As the twentieth century approached, the population’s mortality and birth rates began to decline, albeit it continued to rise in absolute terms.
In the nineteenth century, epidemics of extraordinarily infectious and contagious diseases caused considerable increases in mortality. Cholera was the most serious of these. In 1832, 1834, 1849, 1851, and 1854, epidemics struck the Canadas. Each of these outbreaks originated in Quebec City, where cholera-carrying immigrant ships arrived; most of the epidemics spread upriver and into the Great Lakes. In Montreal, which had a population of over 32,000 people at the time, the deadliest year was 1832, when nearly 2,000 people died (Trovato & Aylsworth, 2015). That is, cholera claimed the lives of one out of every 16 Montrealers. The statistics are frightening enough, but the disease itself was even more so. According to Michael Bliss, a historian of disease epidemics in Canada, the condition is as follows:
Work cited
Kalbach, W. (2019). Population of Canada. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/population
Weeks, J. R. (2020). Population: An introduction to concepts and issues. Cengage Learning. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FQfFDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Weeks,+J.+R.+(2020).+Population:+An+introduction+to+concepts+and+issues.+Cengage+Learning&ots=PUDWrktMos&sig=eWSzF6Px7LI2Pn8QFGHXCRLJnhw
Kerr, D., & Beaujot, R. (2016). Population change in Canada. Canadian Studies in Population, 43(3-4), 287. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/issue/download/Vol%2043%2C%20No%203-4%20%282016%29/124#page=117
Trovato, F., & Aylsworth, L. (2015). Demography of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-demography