Canada became a country in 1867

Question

The Province of Lower Canada inherited the mixed set of French and English institutions that existed in the Province of Quebec during the 1763–91 period and which continued to exist later in Canada.

Canada became a legal country in 1867.

Answer 1

Yes it did!

What is now Ontario, Canada started out as part of New France. After the British conquest it was part of the Province of Quebec. This was separated into Upper and Lower Canada in 1792, Upper Canada being the future Ontario. It went through one more name change, changing to Canada West in 1841 before becoming the Province of Ontario when Confederation created Canada on July 1 1867.

Comments

Thank  you.  Put this in as some people keep putting Province of Ontario or Quebec before 1867 and it should not be like that.

Answer 2

Yes, however in Quebec in the earliest days, it was Canada, Nouvelle-France until 1763, separate from Acadie, Nouvelle-France.   Then it became Province of Québec until 1791 and after that used Bas-Canada until 1867.  See the Quebecois project page which gives more details including some information about Ontario names.  So Canada is allowed in the earlier records as well as part of the Bas-Canada name.  But Canada as a standalone country was not until 1867, which is true as well for Nova Scotia and the Maritime provinces.

Answer 3

'' mixed set of French and English institutions that existed in the Province of Quebec during the 1763–91 period and which continued to exist later in Canada.'' 

Not exactly.  Bas-Canada is basically what is now the province of Québec, earlier was Canada, Nouvelle-France, which was the French colony in the St-Lawrence valley.  There were other parts of New France, such as the ''Pays d'en Haut'' (now Ontario and various US territories such as Détroit etc), the ''Pays des Illinois'' and ''Louisiane''.  These last two are both now part of the USA, what they consisted of was pretty broad.

The institutions that existed during New France days were operating under the French laws of the time.  When the English conquest happened, there was a fair bit of wrangling as to which institutions would change and which would stay the same.  What we finally wound up with was that civil law was based on the old French system, obviously altered over time, and to this day Québec's civil law is different than that of the other provinces.  Criminal law was established under the English system after the conquest, which is probably why to this day it is under federal jurisdiction.

Comments

Thank you for the comments.  Did not know that Quebec had different names especially about Canada, Nouvelle-France.  Think I have a couple of Robichaud's that I will look at as may have labelled them wrong.

I knew about the criminal law and also that the civil law was different from the rest of Canada.  You explained it quite well. Thank you again.