Who We Are: A Memory Guide for the Citizenship Test

Study the Who We Are chapter of Discover Canada: Canadian identity, the three peoples the guide calls founding, the First Nations, Inuit and Métis, the history of treaties and residential schools, the two official languages, and the diversity of today’s Canada. Allow about 12 minutes to read, with extra time for the cards.

Where the guide gives a figure, this page gives the guide’s figure, because the test is based on it; the Who We Are lesson notes what has changed since. The guide’s older wording is “Aboriginal peoples” and, in one place, “Indian”. Today the usual collective term is Indigenous peoples, meaning First Nations, Inuit and Métis; First Nations is one of the three, not a name for all of them (Government of Canada). This page uses today’s terms; test questions and their answer options may still say “Aboriginal”.

Discover Canada, Who We Are

1. Canadian identity and founding peoples

The chapter opens with how Canada sees itself. Canada is known around the world as a strong and free country, and Canadians are proud of a unique identity. Canada has inherited the oldest continuous constitutional tradition in the world. It is, the guide says, the only constitutional monarchy in North America. Its institutions uphold a commitment to Peace, Order and Good Government, a key phrase from Canada’s original constitutional document of 1867, the British North America Act. A belief in ordered liberty, enterprise, hard work and fair play, the guide says, let Canadians build a prosperous society in a rugged environment, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and to the Arctic Circle, so that poets and songwriters hailed Canada as the “Great Dominion”. Read this section of the lesson.

The guide then introduces its central framing: to understand what it means to be Canadian, it is important to know about the three founding peoples, Aboriginal, French and British. Treat this as the guide’s way of telling the story, not as a ranking of Canadians. The chapter itself goes on to credit “other groups” with laying the country’s foundations, and its last section is about a society made of many peoples.

Practise this: Canadian identity and diversity · Founding peoples and immigration

2. First Nations, Inuit and Métis

The guide begins with the first of its founding peoples, and this part follows the guide’s facts while using today’s names. The ancestors of Indigenous peoples are believed to have migrated from Asia many thousands of years ago, and they were well established here long before European explorers came. Diverse, vibrant First Nations cultures were rooted in religious beliefs about their relationship to the Creator, the natural environment and each other. In today’s Canada, the guide says, Indigenous peoples enjoy renewed pride and confidence and have made significant achievements in agriculture, the environment, business and the arts. Read this section of the lesson.

The guide says the term “Aboriginal peoples” refers to three distinct groups. What it says about each, with a present-day note where one is needed:

• First Nations. The guide uses the word “Indian” for all Aboriginal people who are not Inuit or Métis, and says the term First Nations began to be used in the 1970s. Today, it says, about half of First Nations people live on reserve land in about 600 communities, and the other half live off-reserve, mainly in urban centres. These are communities and homes across the whole country, not a region.
• Inuit. The name means “the people” in the Inuktitut language. Inuit live in small, scattered communities across the Arctic, the guide says, and their knowledge of the land, sea and wildlife enabled them to adapt to one of the harshest environments on earth. Inuit also live elsewhere in Canada, including in cities: in the 2021 Census, 31% of Inuit lived outside Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit homeland in the North (Statistics Canada).
• Métis. A distinct people. The guide describes the Métis as being of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry, from both French- and English-speaking backgrounds, and says the majority live in the Prairie provinces. Two things to understand beyond that description. Mixed ancestry alone does not make a person Métis: the Métis National Council defines a Métis person as someone who self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Indigenous peoples, has historic Métis Nation ancestry and is accepted by the Métis Nation, an identity rooted in distinct historic communities and culture (Métis National Council). And Michif is a Métis language; Discover Canada describes it as a “dialect” (Métis National Council).

The guide’s shares: about 65% of Aboriginal people are First Nations, 30% Métis and 4% Inuit. Elsewhere, in its chapter on government, the guide notes that First Nations have band chiefs and councillors with major responsibilities on reserves, including housing and schools, and that provincial, regional and national Aboriginal organizations are a voice for First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in their relationships with the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

What has changed since the guide. In the 2021 Census, 1.8 million people identified as Indigenous: 58% First Nations, 35% Métis and 4% Inuit (Statistics Canada). There are more than 630 First Nations communities (Government of Canada). The Métis figure has moved too: in the 2021 Census, fewer than half of the people who identified as Métis lived in the Prairie provinces, and Ontario had the largest Métis population, followed by Alberta. That is a census self-identification count, not a count of Métis Nation citizens (Statistics Canada). Learn the guide’s figures for the test; know that the country has changed.

Practise this: First Nations, Inuit and Métis

3. Treaties and residential schools

Aboriginal and treaty rights are in the Canadian Constitution. Territorial rights were first guaranteed through the Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III, and that proclamation established the basis for negotiating treaties with the newcomers. The guide adds the essential qualification: treaties that were not always fully respected. Read this section of the lesson.

From the 1800s until the 1980s, the guide says, the federal government placed many Indigenous children in residential schools to educate and assimilate them into mainstream Canadian culture. The schools were poorly funded and inflicted hardship on the students; some were physically abused. Indigenous languages and cultural practices were mostly prohibited. In 2008, Ottawa formally apologized to the former students.

What the guide’s summary leaves out. Over more than 150 years, more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were taken from their families and communities to attend schools that were often far from home; many never returned. The first church-run school opened in 1831, and by the 1880s the federal government was funding residential schools across Canada, with the explicit intent of separating children from their families and cultures. Children were harshly punished for speaking their own languages, and thousands suffered physical and sexual abuse. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the schools were “a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples”, an intent it called cultural genocide. The harm to families and communities continues today (National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation). The recall cards below ask for the guide’s wording, because that is what the test uses.

What has changed since the guide. The guide’s end date, the 1980s, understates the span: the federally run schools operated between 1867 and 1996 (Government of Canada). The apology of 2008 is the fact the test asks for; the lesson has more on what followed.

Practise this: Indigenous treaties and residential schools

4. English and French: languages and communities

The guide treats language as both an official fact and a story of peoples. The official facts first. Canadian society, it says, stems largely from the English-speaking and French-speaking Christian civilizations brought from Europe by settlers. English and French are the country’s official languages, and the federal government is required by law to provide services throughout Canada in both. The guide counts 18 million Anglophones, people who speak English as a first language, and 7 million Francophones. While the majority of Francophones live in Quebec, one million live in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, with a smaller presence in other provinces. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province. Read this section of the lesson.

Parliament passed the Official Languages Act in 1969; it has three main objectives: to establish equality between French and English in Parliament, the Government of Canada and institutions subject to the Act; to maintain and develop official language minority communities; and to promote equality of French and English in Canadian society. Anglophones and Francophones, the guide says, have lived together in partnership and creative tension for more than 300 years. And you must have adequate knowledge of English or French to become a citizen; adult applicants 55 and over are exempt. Read the Official Languages section of the Symbols lesson.

Then the peoples. The Acadians are the descendants of French colonists who began settling in what are now the Maritime provinces in 1604. Between 1755 and 1763, during the war between Britain and France, more than two-thirds were deported from their homeland, the ordeal known as the Great Upheaval; the Acadians survived and maintained their unique identity, and today Acadian culture is flourishing, a lively part of French-speaking Canada. Quebecers are the people of Quebec, the vast majority French-speaking, most of them descendants of 8,500 French settlers of the 1600s and 1700s. In 2006 the House of Commons recognized that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada. One million Anglo-Quebecers have a heritage of 250 years. The basic way of life in English-speaking areas was established by hundreds of thousands of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers, soldiers and migrants from the 1600s to the 20th century, which is why Anglophones are generally called English Canadians.

Don’t mix these up. Federal bilingualism and provincial bilingualism are different: the Official Languages Act of 1969 is federal and applies across Canada, while New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province. Two sets of numbers: 18 million and 7 million are Anglophones and Francophones; one million is both the Francophones in Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba and the Anglo-Quebecers. A settler count and a recognition date for Quebec: 8,500 settlers in the 1600s and 1700s, and the 2006 recognition.

Practise this: Official languages, in Who We Are · Official languages, in Symbols · Founding peoples and immigration

5. Immigration and diversity

John Buchan, the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, was a popular Governor General from 1935 to 1940. Immigrant groups, he said, “should retain their individuality and each make its contribution to the national character”; each could learn from the other, and while they “cherish their own special loyalties and traditions, they cherish not less that new loyalty and tradition which springs from their union”. The guide dates the words to the Canadian Club of Halifax, 1937. Read this section of the lesson.

The guide carries that idea into today. The majority of Canadians were born in this country, and have been since the 1800s, yet Canada is often called a land of immigrants because over the past 200 years millions of newcomers helped to build and defend its way of life. The largest groups the guide lists are the English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian and Scandinavian; since the 1970s, most immigrants have come from Asian countries. Chinese languages are the second most-spoken at home, after English, in two of the biggest cities: 13% of Vancouver’s population and 7% of Toronto’s. The great majority of Canadians identify as Christians; the largest affiliation is Catholic, followed by various Protestant churches, and the numbers of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, members of other religions and people stating “no religion” are growing. The state, the guide says, has traditionally partnered with faith communities to promote social welfare, harmony and mutual respect, to provide schools and health care, to resettle refugees, and to uphold religious freedom, religious expression and freedom of conscience. Canada’s diversity includes gay and lesbian Canadians, who enjoy the full protection of and equal treatment under the law, including access to civil marriage. Together, these groups, sharing a common Canadian identity, make up today’s multicultural society. Read this section of the lesson.

On becoming Canadian, the guide is direct: some Canadians immigrate from places where they experienced warfare or conflict, and such experiences do not justify bringing violent, extreme or hateful prejudices to Canada. Newcomers are expected to embrace democratic principles such as the rule of law. Read this section of the lesson.

What has changed since the guide. In the 2021 Census, 53% of Canadians reported a Christian religion and 35% reported no religion; Catholicism remained the largest religious affiliation (Statistics Canada). Same-sex marriage has been legal across Canada since the Civil Marriage Act of 2005 (Justice Laws), and the Canadian Human Rights Act also prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression (Justice Laws).

Practise this: Canadian identity and diversity · Founding peoples and immigration

The confusion clinic

These cards hold the laws, documents and numbers that most often land in the wrong place. Sort each one, then read the reason.

The chapter’s terms, one line each

Hide the meanings and explain each visible term; then hide the terms and name each term from its meaning. The meanings follow the guide, with today’s terms.

How to remember Who We Are

• Recall before you look. The cards on this page ask first and show the answer second, because trying to remember strengthens memory more than reading again.Karpicke & Roediger, 2008
• Practise both directions. Ask “What does Inuit mean?” and also “Which people’s name means ‘the people’?”. Varied practice helps with questions you have not seen before.Butler et al., 2017
• Space your reviews. Spread-out reviews last longer than one long session. The plan below is one practical routine, not the only interval that works.Cepeda et al., 2008

Your next step

Read the Who We Are lesson for the guide’s full text, with checks after each section and its notes on what has changed since 2012. Then take a Smart Quiz on Who We Are, or the Who We Are quiz to go through the chapter in order.

The Loyalists, including the Black Loyalists of the 1780s, and the vote of 1960 are told in Important Dates in Discover Canada. The Quiet Revolution and multiculturalism continue in the Modern Canada memory guide.

Official sources

Use Discover Canada as your primary guide. Its figures and its terms are the ones the test is based on; the lesson notes where today’s facts and terms differ.

• Discover Canada, Who We Are · English
• Découvrir le Canada, Qui sont les Canadiens · Français
• Discover Canada, Canadian Symbols · English, for the Official Languages Act