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Key dates in Canadian history:

15,000-20,000 before today – The first humans in North America migrated from Asia.

11th century – Norse explorers reach North America, establishing the first known European colony in the Americas at Newfoundland.

1497 – The Italian-born navigator John Cabot reached the coasts of Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

1534 – Jacques Cartier explores the Saint Lawrence River, and claims the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence for France.

1583 – Newfoundland becomes England’s first overseas colony.

1600s – Rivalry in the fur trade between the French, the English and the Dutch; Europeans exploit existing rivalries between local populations to form alliances.

1627 – Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France created to govern and exploit “New France” – the French colonies in North America.

1670 – Hudson’s Bay Company created by London traders. The company holds commercial rights for areas whose rivers flow into Hudson Bay.

1756 – Start of the Seven Years’ War between New France and the larger and economically stronger British colonies. After the first French successes, Quebec fell in 1759 and the British advanced on Montreal.

1763 – Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Great Britain acquired all French colonies east of the Mississippi, including New France, which became the colony of Quebec.

1774 – The Quebec Act recognizes the French language and Roman Catholicism in the colony.

From 1776 – Loyalist refugees from the American Revolutionary War settle in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ontario.

1800s – Immigration resumes. Thousands of new arrivals from England, Scotland and Ireland arrive each year.

1812-14 – War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, largely due to the effects on the United States of British blockades of French ports. There were naval battles on the Great Lakes and an American attack on York, now Toronto. But the United States fails to carry out its plan to invade Canada.

1837-38 – Armed rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, caused by disaffection with the ruling elites, poverty and social divisions.

1867 – The British North America Act united Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into the Dominion of Canada.

1870 – Manitoba becomes the fifth province, followed by British Columbia and Prince Edward Island.

1885 – The Canadian Pacific Railway is completed.