Does anyone know the story of Canada? Did it ever seek independence from Great Britain? I know hardly anything at all about it.
Was there a left and a right in the Canada of the late 1800s? I know it became a country somewhere around 1867, right?
Canada became a (mostly independent) nation in 1867 as a result of the end of the U.S Civil War when many Canadians feared that the United States would try and invade Canada to make it part of the United States.
Canada originally had just four provinces: Quebec and Ontario (I believe one of these was previously known as Upper Canada and the other was known as Lower Canada) along with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, however most of the other provinces agreed to join Canada shortly after in exchange for a national rail line that would connect the country. I believe the settlement in the United States into the Northern west and Pacific North West was also going on around this time.
Like the United States at this time, the federal government didn't necessarily do a lot except for infrastructure (like the railroad)/promoting economic development through natural resource extraction/promotion of immigration and law enforcement. The infrastructure was financed through a high tariff policy that was fully implement in 1879 by the Conservative Government of Sir John A MacDonald. This was known as the National Policy. After this policy, for most of the next 100 years, the Liberal Party was the Pro-free trade party and the Conservative Party was the pro-tariff party.
What is less known, however, is that Sir John A MacDonald only implemented the National Policy after the United States rebuffed the previous Liberal Party government's efforts to negotiate a free trade agreement, which he supported.
English/French relations was always a major issue for the government and this became a partisan issue from 1886 when Sir John A MacDonald refused to commute the death sentence of the Manitoba Francophone Metis rebellion leader Louis Riel. After that, the Liberal Party became the dominant party in Quebec and, after winning the election in 1896, the Liberal Party became the dominant party in Canada until 1984.