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First Nations peoples were here for thousands of years before France planted a toehold on the Atlantic in 1605. When Britain acquired New France (1763), the toehold was a foothold on what are now the Atlantic Provinces, Quebec, and Ontario. Loyalists arrived and a tradition began: people fleeing poverty, prejudice, and famine would be given refuge. In 1812, evicted Scottish farmers came to what is now Manitoba. Germans and Scandinavians, as well as persecuted Hutterites, Jews, and Mennonites, were among the million or so prairie pioneers who arrived between 1875 and 1914. To open the West, Canada bought Rupert’s Land and made treaties with native peoples. In the 1880s, Chinese immigrants helped build a transcontinental railway.
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