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hetalia2009-05-21 01:27 pm
omicheese.livejournal.com) wrote in hetalia2009-05-21 01:27 pm
Entry tags:
[Fanart] Canadian History Corner
Title: Canadian Westward Expansion
Author/Artist: me
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Canada, England, Ukraine, Iceland, Sweden, Russia, Alexander Mackenzie, Mr. Newspaper (designed by me)
Rating: G
Warnings: Slight historic racism
Summary: A comic about Canada and two related sketches
Notes: Another research paper provides a lot of material to work with. Also, I'm not Canadian, so forgive me beforehand if I mess anything up.
Just wondering what Canada would look like as a métis (half First Nations, half French). After all, they're Canadian, too.
1856, before confederation, Canada was kind of the most useless of all British colonies. America was long gone, free trade was the big popular thing, India was the jewel of the crown, and Canada was just kind of there being cold. No one really wanted fur anymore anyway. In 1849, The Times even complained that "Our colonies are rather too fond of us, and embrace us, if anything, too closely." It was kind of sad. But confederation in 1867 made Canada mostly self-sufficient and competent, and from there they were able to look outward.
There was a settlement on the Red River somewhat outside of Canada proper. The land belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, which was a fur-trapping company, but America had been expanding for a damn long time and Canada kind of wanted to catch up. The newspaper in Red River was run by a bunch of Canadian expansionists that had moved there relatively recently, and they kept writing a ton of articles about how awesome Red River was and how desperately it wanted to be annexed by Canada. Eventually Canada believed it and moved to incorporate it. While the newspaper was going on and on about how much Red River ought to be part of Canada, Louis Riel and the métis were really adamant about not being part of Canada, because they were worried about losing their land, freedom, and right to religion and language (the expansionists were almost exclusively English-speaking Protestants, while the métis spoke French and were Catholics). When Canada moved to assume control over Red River, Louis Riel led an organized resistance movement in an attempt to preserve a decent amount of métis autonomy. Not very many people were killed, since that wasn't the point, but people got really pissed off. In the end a compromise was reached. The métis would keep most of their rights (for now), and the Red River area would be incorporated into Canada as a separate province, rather than as something subordinate to Ontario. Riel was run out of the country, though. He'd be back later for another resistance movement that didn't turn out nearly so well. Well, it turned out ok for the Canadians, but not so much for the métis or the First Nations.
I know most people think that Canada's glasses are Alberta, due to regional similarities to Texas, but I personally think that they're Manitoba, due to similarities in their acquisition. The USA fought a war to get Texas, Canada put down an armed resistance movement to get Manitoba... I dunno, seems similar to me.
British Columbia was originally its own Royal Colony over on the other end of North America. It grew up with little to nothing to do with Canada, mostly interacting with the United States due to their sharing Oregon Country. It became an official colony when the US started taking over more of Oregon Country than they were really expected to. British Colmbia had its own government and everything, run more directly by the Hudson's Bay Company (because they still owned all the land over there). There was a huge gold rush, which brought in a ton of settlers, but when it was over, there were a lot of debts and the economy was kind of screwed, so it was incorporated into Canada as a province because it couldn't really manage on its own anymore without the risk of getting subsumed by the USA.
One of the conditions for letting British Columbia into the confederations was that they would build a railroad from the Eastern Seaboard where most of Canada was to the Pacific coast so that British Columbia would actually be connected to something. At the time, Canada had been building a whole lot of railroads and pretty much thought that they were the best invention since sliced bread. However, there was a depression going on, and building the railroad would have been freaking expensive due to the horrible terrain it had to get through. They were supposed to get it done really quickly, but the Prime Minister put it on the backburner, hoping for better economic times to get working on it. No one liked that, and he wasn't reelected. The Canadian Pacific Railway was finished in 1885, about 4 years later than it was supposed to be done.
In 1871, the Tsar kicked the Mennonites out of Russia. Technically, not too many of these Mennonites were actually in Russia, as most were in Ukraine, but most of Ukraine was at this time part of Russia. Meanwhile, Canada had a acquired a whole lot of land but no one to live on it. The Mennonites needed somewhere to go, and they were good farmers used to working land similar to the Canadian prairies (which no one else wanted to farm, because it had no trees on it--not only no apparent fuel, but they all figured that since it had no trees, it must not be fertile enough for them.) Therefore, an agreement was worked out with the Canadian government that would bring the entire colony of Mennonites out to Manitoba and give them certain privileges (such as exemption from military service and tweaking the homesteading law to allow for whole communities.)
In 1875, a whole bunch of Icelanders left for Canada, founding a town called Gimli. It...didn't start very well. They got there too late to plant anything, and weren't really prepared to anyway (not much money or farming knowledge), and then right off the bat everybody got smallpox, and in the end there wasn't anything to eat. They ended up fishing in Lake Winnepeg out of necessity. When people finally found them, there was a really well-developed fishing industry there, and a whole bunch of hungry Icelanders. It got better from there, luckily.And yes, I do seem to pick on Iceland at every given opportunity. But hey, the kid keeps setting himself up for it.
A whole bunch of Swedish and other Scandinavian immigrants settled over in the forested area on the eastern Canadian frontier and did really well for themselves while the immigrants in the middle that tried to farm were starving. Finnish immigrants did similarly over on the British Columbia end. Forestry works really well in Canada, and it's good to work with the skills you've got, right? There were a lot of immigrants from a lot of places, but the book I was working off of specifically mentioned Swedes, so that's why he's here in this comic.
Late 19th to early 20th centuries, Canada was getting a lot of immigration from Japan and China and India and they didn't like it (yes, it's racist, but everybody was racist back then, especially against Japan and China and India.) However, Canada was still part of the British Empire. When the USA didn't want any more Chinese people coming in, they passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and when they didn't want any more Japanese people, they worked out the Gentlemen's Agreement, but Canada hadn't the luxury to pass this sort of legislation. Britain was very concerned with keeping good relations with Japan, especially, and so Canada just had to sit there and pout while immigrants kept coming (although they did ban the Chinese in 1923).I don't think I drew England very well here, sorry.
The Doukhobors were a religious group that had been generating a lot of headaches in the Russian Empire toward the end of the 19th century. The main issue was that they refused military conscription, which was pretty much what the empire ran on while it fought all its wars with Europe, but there were other complaints as well. As it did with the Mennonites, the Russian Empire shipped all the Doukhobors to Canada. There they lived on similar conditions as the Mennonites, but it didn't go as well. Now that they weren't protesting in Russia, the Sons of Freedom, an offshoot of the Doukhobors, started protesting in Canada instead. They didn't like compulsory education or materialism, and they protested with arson, and often in the nude. So Russia pretty much just passed the headache to Canada instead. And Canadians started getting sick of Russians.
However, at the time, Ukraine was split between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so technically the huge wave of Ukrainian immigrants weren't necessarily Russian. Most of them were from Galicia, which belonged to Austria-Hungary. But then, from there, Ukrainians just kind of kept coming. Canada currently has the largest population of Ukrainians outside of Russia and Ukraine itself.
Did I mention that I think Canada having a huge geeky crush on Ukraine is cute? After all, they get along so well. I don't know whether Ukraine's outfit is historically accurate or not--I only had a very few black and white photos to look off of. I tried, though.
All of these can be found at DeviantArt.
Any and all criticism is welcome! ^-^
Author/Artist: me
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Canada, England, Ukraine, Iceland, Sweden, Russia, Alexander Mackenzie, Mr. Newspaper (designed by me)
Rating: G
Warnings: Slight historic racism
Summary: A comic about Canada and two related sketches
Notes: Another research paper provides a lot of material to work with. Also, I'm not Canadian, so forgive me beforehand if I mess anything up.
Just wondering what Canada would look like as a métis (half First Nations, half French). After all, they're Canadian, too.
1856, before confederation, Canada was kind of the most useless of all British colonies. America was long gone, free trade was the big popular thing, India was the jewel of the crown, and Canada was just kind of there being cold. No one really wanted fur anymore anyway. In 1849, The Times even complained that "Our colonies are rather too fond of us, and embrace us, if anything, too closely." It was kind of sad. But confederation in 1867 made Canada mostly self-sufficient and competent, and from there they were able to look outward.
There was a settlement on the Red River somewhat outside of Canada proper. The land belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, which was a fur-trapping company, but America had been expanding for a damn long time and Canada kind of wanted to catch up. The newspaper in Red River was run by a bunch of Canadian expansionists that had moved there relatively recently, and they kept writing a ton of articles about how awesome Red River was and how desperately it wanted to be annexed by Canada. Eventually Canada believed it and moved to incorporate it. While the newspaper was going on and on about how much Red River ought to be part of Canada, Louis Riel and the métis were really adamant about not being part of Canada, because they were worried about losing their land, freedom, and right to religion and language (the expansionists were almost exclusively English-speaking Protestants, while the métis spoke French and were Catholics). When Canada moved to assume control over Red River, Louis Riel led an organized resistance movement in an attempt to preserve a decent amount of métis autonomy. Not very many people were killed, since that wasn't the point, but people got really pissed off. In the end a compromise was reached. The métis would keep most of their rights (for now), and the Red River area would be incorporated into Canada as a separate province, rather than as something subordinate to Ontario. Riel was run out of the country, though. He'd be back later for another resistance movement that didn't turn out nearly so well. Well, it turned out ok for the Canadians, but not so much for the métis or the First Nations.
I know most people think that Canada's glasses are Alberta, due to regional similarities to Texas, but I personally think that they're Manitoba, due to similarities in their acquisition. The USA fought a war to get Texas, Canada put down an armed resistance movement to get Manitoba... I dunno, seems similar to me.
British Columbia was originally its own Royal Colony over on the other end of North America. It grew up with little to nothing to do with Canada, mostly interacting with the United States due to their sharing Oregon Country. It became an official colony when the US started taking over more of Oregon Country than they were really expected to. British Colmbia had its own government and everything, run more directly by the Hudson's Bay Company (because they still owned all the land over there). There was a huge gold rush, which brought in a ton of settlers, but when it was over, there were a lot of debts and the economy was kind of screwed, so it was incorporated into Canada as a province because it couldn't really manage on its own anymore without the risk of getting subsumed by the USA.
One of the conditions for letting British Columbia into the confederations was that they would build a railroad from the Eastern Seaboard where most of Canada was to the Pacific coast so that British Columbia would actually be connected to something. At the time, Canada had been building a whole lot of railroads and pretty much thought that they were the best invention since sliced bread. However, there was a depression going on, and building the railroad would have been freaking expensive due to the horrible terrain it had to get through. They were supposed to get it done really quickly, but the Prime Minister put it on the backburner, hoping for better economic times to get working on it. No one liked that, and he wasn't reelected. The Canadian Pacific Railway was finished in 1885, about 4 years later than it was supposed to be done.
In 1871, the Tsar kicked the Mennonites out of Russia. Technically, not too many of these Mennonites were actually in Russia, as most were in Ukraine, but most of Ukraine was at this time part of Russia. Meanwhile, Canada had a acquired a whole lot of land but no one to live on it. The Mennonites needed somewhere to go, and they were good farmers used to working land similar to the Canadian prairies (which no one else wanted to farm, because it had no trees on it--not only no apparent fuel, but they all figured that since it had no trees, it must not be fertile enough for them.) Therefore, an agreement was worked out with the Canadian government that would bring the entire colony of Mennonites out to Manitoba and give them certain privileges (such as exemption from military service and tweaking the homesteading law to allow for whole communities.)
In 1875, a whole bunch of Icelanders left for Canada, founding a town called Gimli. It...didn't start very well. They got there too late to plant anything, and weren't really prepared to anyway (not much money or farming knowledge), and then right off the bat everybody got smallpox, and in the end there wasn't anything to eat. They ended up fishing in Lake Winnepeg out of necessity. When people finally found them, there was a really well-developed fishing industry there, and a whole bunch of hungry Icelanders. It got better from there, luckily.
A whole bunch of Swedish and other Scandinavian immigrants settled over in the forested area on the eastern Canadian frontier and did really well for themselves while the immigrants in the middle that tried to farm were starving. Finnish immigrants did similarly over on the British Columbia end. Forestry works really well in Canada, and it's good to work with the skills you've got, right? There were a lot of immigrants from a lot of places, but the book I was working off of specifically mentioned Swedes, so that's why he's here in this comic.
Late 19th to early 20th centuries, Canada was getting a lot of immigration from Japan and China and India and they didn't like it (yes, it's racist, but everybody was racist back then, especially against Japan and China and India.) However, Canada was still part of the British Empire. When the USA didn't want any more Chinese people coming in, they passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and when they didn't want any more Japanese people, they worked out the Gentlemen's Agreement, but Canada hadn't the luxury to pass this sort of legislation. Britain was very concerned with keeping good relations with Japan, especially, and so Canada just had to sit there and pout while immigrants kept coming (although they did ban the Chinese in 1923).
The Doukhobors were a religious group that had been generating a lot of headaches in the Russian Empire toward the end of the 19th century. The main issue was that they refused military conscription, which was pretty much what the empire ran on while it fought all its wars with Europe, but there were other complaints as well. As it did with the Mennonites, the Russian Empire shipped all the Doukhobors to Canada. There they lived on similar conditions as the Mennonites, but it didn't go as well. Now that they weren't protesting in Russia, the Sons of Freedom, an offshoot of the Doukhobors, started protesting in Canada instead. They didn't like compulsory education or materialism, and they protested with arson, and often in the nude. So Russia pretty much just passed the headache to Canada instead. And Canadians started getting sick of Russians.
However, at the time, Ukraine was split between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so technically the huge wave of Ukrainian immigrants weren't necessarily Russian. Most of them were from Galicia, which belonged to Austria-Hungary. But then, from there, Ukrainians just kind of kept coming. Canada currently has the largest population of Ukrainians outside of Russia and Ukraine itself.
Did I mention that I think Canada having a huge geeky crush on Ukraine is cute? After all, they get along so well. I don't know whether Ukraine's outfit is historically accurate or not--I only had a very few black and white photos to look off of. I tried, though.
All of these can be found at DeviantArt.
Any and all criticism is welcome! ^-^
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And I agree Canada/Ukraine is VERY cute. Never thought of it before ^^
*huggles Matt*
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I hadn't until I read about it, and then I thought about it, and it ended up really cute. ^^;
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I still love you, Canadaaaaa. Also, the strips were really good.
Pouting Canada is so cute!no subject
intended as a joke, not an offenseThanks! ^___^
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*Goes off to ship Canada/Ukraine*
Thanks for the educational material! It made my night!
(P.S. You used Mr. Newspaper! You have a ridiculous amount of awesome points for that!)
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You're welcome! Thanks for reading!
(To my knowledge the only one who technically had an official design was Austria's, right? Thanks for the awesome points! :D)
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GJ :D
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Oh, the cute. XD .... >_> Fluff and cute enough to rival even SuFin perhaps!? *thinks of ideas*But. Oh Canada. XDD Canada-Iceland was the best. Haha.
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I dunno, but it's cute. ^-^ I think SuFin is probably still cuter, though. ^^;Thanks. ^______^
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We get a lot of immigrants; they make up at least 60% of the population growth per annum, which is pretty sad, seeing as Canadian pop only grows about 1-1.5%/yr (1.1 around 2004-6). Ah, this small and super multicultural population with lots of waterways... pretty much only good for fresh water and polar bears, sigh. XD
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And the polar bears sadly may not last too long, if the climatologists are right. ^^;
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Sigh, Kumajirou-kun. They've been dying out for a while, the entire artic region.
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D: I took a climate class that brought that up a lot. Poor Kumajiro-san. But, hey, Northwest Passage?
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Anything I know about climatology, geography, geology whatnot is from at least 4 years ago or APH, so I can't say too much! XD
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I only know about Global Warming, and that'll only last me until more immediately useful knowledge takes its place. ^^;
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Canadian history from 1814 to the First World War is a bit of a gray area for me, but I learned so much thanks to this!
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Thanks! ^___^ Most Canadian history is sadly a grey area for me, except for Westward expansion, since that was the only thing I researched. ._.; I might get to research more later, though.
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...I think the content will suit perfectly for a history textbook!
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Maybe some day I'll write one. ^-^
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thanks for sharing ^^
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D: Awww. Poor dear.
Very cute and interesting!
:3 Canada/Ukraine needs more love!