The Dominion Institute and Canwest News Service challenge Canadians’ knowledge of their past with the annual Canada Day quiz. (The answers)
LAND and LANDSCAPE
1) Which province or territory has the smallest land mass?
2) Name Canada’s newest territory, created on April 1, 1999.
3) What three oceans border Canada?
4) In 1898, this Yukon city’s population was approximately 16,000. In 2006, its population was 1,327. Name this city.
5) What was the first permanent English settlement in Canada?
6) What latitudinal line forms the part of the U.S.-Canada border between British Columbia and Manitoba?
7) True or false: Canada has the longest coastline in the world.
8) What Canadian city is known as the “Paris of the Prairies?”
9) Natural resources account for seven per cent of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Rank these three types of natural resources, in terms of their share of Canada’s GDP: energy, forestry, minerals.
10) What three-peaked mountain gives its name to the city of Montreal?
11) What is the most easterly point in North America?
12) Located in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, what was the first national park to be established in Canada?
CITIZENSHIP and GOVERNMENT
1) Who is Canada’s head of state?
2) What is the name of the speech given by the Governor General at the beginning of each parliamentary session?
3) Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, claimed that the Senate was meant to be a house of “—— second thought.”
4) What is a law called in the federal Parliament before it is passed?
5) Name the 1931 law that granted Britain’s former colonies full legislative freedom, except in those areas where they chose to remain subordinate.
6) How many members of Parliament currently sit in the House of Commons?
a. 294
b. 305
c. 308
d. 316
7) In what year did slavery become illegal in Canada?
8) Name the part of the Constitution that legally protects the basic rights and freedoms of all Canadians.
9) The record for highest voter turnout in a federal election is 79.4 per cent. When did this election occur?
a. Jan. 22 1874
b. Nov. 3 1904
c. Oct. 14 1935
d. March 31 1958
10) In what year did Canadian status aboriginals gain the right to vote?
POLITICS and POLITICIANS
1) Which prime minister led Canada throughout the Second World War?
2) Canada is NOT a member of which of the following groups:
a. OECD
b. OPEC
c. NATO
d. G20
3) In 1885, Louis Riel – founder of the province of Manitoba and leader of the Metis nation – was sentenced to hang for his role in a rebellion. What was that rebellion called?
4) Which party leader – who later became prime minister – famously said “You had an option, sir!” to his opponent in a televised debate, landing a knockout blow in the election campaign of that year?
5) Who was the first sitting monarch to visit Canada?
a. Victoria
b. Edward VII
c. George VI
d. Elizabeth II
6) Which province was the first to introduce Medicare?
7) What was the name of the economic plan introduced by Sir John A. Macdonald’s Conservative party which called for high tariffs on imported items to protect manufacturing industries?
8) In what year was the Constitution patriated?
9) Name the Father of Confederation and Premier of Nova Scotia who later became Canada’s shortest-serving prime minister, having served for just over two months.
10) Who was Canada’s only female prime minister?
CONTROVERSY and SCANDAL
1) In the wake of the controversy that followed the RCMP’s pepper-spraying of demonstrators at an APEC conference in Vancouver in 1997, Jean Chretien controversially said: “Pepper? I like it on my ——-“
2) Which prime minister, accused of public drunkenness after vomiting during election debates, claimed: “I get sick sometimes not because of drink or any other cause, except that I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honourable opponent.”
3) After more than a decade of construction and a string of political scandals, which great Canadian engineering feat was completed in 1885 with the hammering of the Last Spike?
4) Which prime minister was photographed performing a pirouette behind Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace?
5) What was the name given to the victims of a scheme that saw several thousand orphaned children falsely determined to be mentally ill by the government of Quebec, and confined to psychiatric institutions?
6) What is the name given to the forcible resettlement by the British government of many of the original French colonists of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and P.E.I.?
7) The 1896 federal election was largely influenced by this controversy, which concerned the right of students to be educated in French, Manitoba’s minority language.
FAMOUS CANADIANS
1) In 1857, Alexander Dunn became the first Canadian to receive this honour, awarded for his participation in military action at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.
2) Name the American-born Canadian writer and activist famous for her grassroots campaigns to block the construction of expressways in several North American cities.
3) Who was the first Canadian in space?
4) Which hockey star’s suspension led to days of riots in Montreal?
5) Name the Canadian physician, medical innovator, and Chinese national hero best known for his service in the Spanish Civil War and the Sino-Japanese Wars.
6) In 1980, Terry Fox set out to run across Canada to raise money for what disease?
7) Officially credited with 72 victories, this First World War flying ace recently became the namesake of Toronto’s island airport.
8) In the 1960s, Canadians Ernest McCulloch and James Till were the first to demonstrate the existence this type of cell, capable of differentiating itself into a diverse range of specialized cell types.
9) Name the American slave who fled to Canada and established a community for fugitive slaves near Dresden, Ont., and who is said to have inspired the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
10) Appointed in 1999, who was Canada’s first Governor General to be a member of a visible minority?
PRE-CONFEDERATION HISTORY
1) In 1535, which famous European explorer charted the St. Lawrence River, with assistance from indigenous peoples, and claimed the region for France?
2) What was the main trade controlled by the early Hudson’s Bay Company?
3) Where did British forces led by Gen. Wolfe defeat French forces under the Marquis de Montcalm for control of Quebec?
4) In 1763, which Ottawa (or Odawa) chief captured many of the British forts west of Niagara in resistance to expanding English settlement?
5) Name the now-extinct people who once inhabited Newfoundland.
6) What was the name given to the women of marriageable age who were shipped to New France under royal auspices in the 17th Century?
7) Name the British general who became known as “the Hero of Upper Canada” for his roles in leading attacks on Amherstburg and Detroit and at the Battle of Queenston Heights.
8) In 1791, the colony of the Province of Quebec was divided into Upper and Lower Canada, in reference to the two territories’ relative positions along what major river, which flows from Lake Ontario toward the Atlantic Ocean?
9) The Battle of St. Eustache of 1837 took place during what insurrection?
10) These two politicians – one English, one French – were famous for forming an alliance of liberals and reformers in Lower and Upper Canada, and for leading Canada after it was first granted “responsible government.”
11) Which American war sped the move toward Confederation?
12) In what year did Confederation occur?
13) Which two British North American colonies joined with the Province of Canada (present-day Ontario and Quebec) to create the Dominion of Canada at the time of Confederation?
POST-CONFEDERATION HISTORY
1) What was the name of the group of Irish radicals who attempted several times to invade Canada, with the ultimate goal of blackmailing Britain into granting Irish independence?
2) Who was Canada’s first francophone prime minister, who claimed that “the 20th Century will belong to Canada”?
3) In 2006, Parliament passed a motion declaring what people to be a nation within a united Canada?
4) During the Great Depression, many people who couldn’t afford to buy gasoline removed their cars’ engines and windows and hitched them to horses. What were these vehicles called?
5) In 1942, the government of Mackenzie King held a plebiscite on what controversial issue?
6) What was the name of the flag unofficially used as Canada’s national flag before its replacement in 1965 by today’s Maple Leaf?
7) In 1949, which province became the last to join Confederation?
8) Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte was taken hostage and killed during the October Crisis initiated by which extremist separatist group?
9) Canada played a role in the establishment of an international body for investigating genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, which came into effect in 2002. What is it?
10) During the Second World War, politicians invoked the War Measures Act to order the removal of all members of which ethnic group residing within 100 miles (161 kilometres) of the Pacific coast?
11) What was the name given to the almost 50,000 women who came to Canada after the Second World War to join their Canadian servicemen husbands?
12) In 1919, Canada’s best-known general strike took place in what city?
WAR and REMEMBRANCE in the 20th CENTURY
1) Some 7,368 Canadians served in this turn-of-the-century conflict; the best-known Canadian engagement of the conflict was the Battle of Paardeberg.
2) Every Nov. 11, Canadians commemorate the service and sacrifice of our veterans. What is the common symbol of Canadian remembrance?
3) Why was Nov. 11 chosen as Remembrance Day?
4) John McCrae wrote what is considered Canada’s most famous war poem. What is it called?
5) In Operation Jubilee (1942), nearly 1,000 Canadian troops died in an attack on a French seaside town. Name that town.
6) What is the name of the battle in Italy, fought in December 1943, at which the 1st Canadian Division fought and won an engagement that was known to those who fought it as the “Italian Stalingrad”?
7) True or False: During the Second World War, Canada was subject to both Japanese and German attacks in home waters.
8) Name the Cold War armed conflict in which more than 26,000 Canadians served as part of a United Nations operation.
9) Which Canadian prime minister is credited with the invention of peacekeeping, and received a Nobel Prize for his intervention in the Suez Crisis of 1956?
10) Name the province in Afghanistan where Canadian forces are based as part of a NATO mission.
CULTURE, SPORTS and the ARTS
1) This major music award began as a reader poll conducted by Canadian music industry trade magazine RPM Weekly in December 1964.
2) Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean was criticized by some, and praised by others, for eating the raw heart of what animal, traditionally hunted by the Inuit?
3) Name Canada’s national animal.
4) Name the three Canadians cities that have hosted Olympic Games.
5) This famous teacher, essayist, economist, political scientist, and historian – author of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town – was also one of the best-known humorists in the English-speaking world.
6) What is the popular name given to the Canada-Soviet hockey series of 1972?
7) What Canadian poet has been called the “Canadian Kipling” and the “Bard of the Yukon”?
8) What is Canada’s national anthem?
9) Three Canadians have won the annual Booker Prize for an English-language novel. Name two of them.
10) Which two current Canadian teams were among the NHL’s “Original Six” teams?
11) The Canadian men’s national soccer team has participated once in the FIFA World Cup finals. In what year did this occur?
12) What is the name given to the famous group of Canadian landscape painters of the 1920s whose members included A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris?
13) Which two of Canada’s present NHL teams have NOT won the Stanley Cup?
14) This Canadian actor is known for going back to the future, several television roles, and his battle with Parkinson’s disease.
15) What is the name of the trophy awarded every year to the champion of the Canadian Football League?
16) Who is the top-selling Canadian recording artist of all time?
a. Celine Dion
b. Sarah McLachlan
c. Neil Young
d. Bryan Adams
Answers
LAND and LANDSCAPE
1) P.E.I.
2) Nunavut
3) Pacific, Arctic, Atlantic
4) Dawson City
5) Cupids, N.L.
6) 49th parallel
7) True
8) Saskatoon
9) Energy, minerals, forestry
10) Mount Royal/Mont Royal
11) Cape Spear, N.L.
12) Banff
CITIZENSHIP and GOVERNMENT
1) Queen Elizabeth II
2) Speech from the throne
3) Sober
4) Bill
5) Statute of Westminster
6) 308
7) 1834
8) Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
9) March 31, 1958
10) 1960
POLITICS and POLITICIANS
1) Mackenzie King
2) OPEC
3) North-West Rebellion, aka North-West Resistance, formerly called the Riel Rebellion
4) Brian Mulroney
5) George VI
6) Saskatchewan
7) The National Policy
8) 1982
9) Charles Tupper
10) Kim Campbell
CONTROVERSY and SCANDAL
1) Plate
2) Sir John A. Macdonald
3) Canadian Pacific Railroad
4) Pierre Trudeau
5) Duplessis orphans
6) Acadian Expulsion
7) Manitoba Schools Question
FAMOUS CANADIANS
1) Victoria Cross
2) Jane Jacobs
3) Marc Garneau
4) Maurice “˜Rocket’ Richard
5) Norman Bethune
6) Cancer
7) Billy Bishop
8) Stem cells
9) Josiah Henson
10) Adrienne Clarkson
PRE-CONFEDERATION HISTORY
1) Jacques Cartier
2) Fur
3) Plains of Abraham
4) Pontiac
5) Beothuk
6) Filles du Roi
7) Isaac Brock
8) St. Lawrence
9) Lower Canada Rebellion, Rebellions of 1837
10) Baldwin and Lafontaine
11) American Civil War
12) 1867
13) Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
POST-CONFEDERATION HISTORY
1) Fenians
2) Laurier
3) The Quebecois
4) Bennett Buggies
5) Conscription
6) Red Ensign
7) Newfoundland
8) The FLQ – Front de liberation du Quebec
9) International Criminal Court
10) Japanese-Canadians
11) War Brides
12) Winnipeg
WAR and REMEMBRANCE in the 20th CENTURY
1) The South African War, aka Second Anglo-Boer War
2) The poppy
3) First World War Armistice Day
4) In Flanders Fields
5) Dieppe
6) Ortona
7) True
8) Korean War
9) Pearson
10) Kandahar
CULTURE, SPORTS and the ARTS
1) Junos
2) Seal
3) The beaver
4) Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver/Whistler
5) Stephen Leacock
6) The Summit Series
7) Robert Service
8) O Canada
9) Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel
10) Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens
11) 1986
12) Group of Seven
13) Vancouver, the current Ottawa franchise
14) Michael J. Fox
15) Grey Cup
16) Celine Dion
This quiz was developed by The Historica-Dominion Institute, Canada’s largest charitable organization dedicated to history and citizenship, and The Canadian Encyclopedia, the definitive source on all things Canadian. Visit historica-dominion.ca to find out more.
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