The narrative we Canadians tell ourselves about our history is wrong, and ultimately harmful. "We're a peaceful country, and our history is largely peaceful and cooperative" is what we like to tell ourselves, but here's the reality:
The Beaver Wars (1609-1701)
The Acadian Civil War (1635-1654)
King William's War (1689-1697)
Queen Anne's War (1702-1713)
Father Rale's War (1722-1725)
King George's War (1744-1748)
Father Le Loutre's War (1749-1755)
The French and Indian War (1754-1763)
The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783)
The War of 1812 (1812-1815)
The Rebellions of 1837–1838
The Fenian raids (1866-1871)
The Red River Rebellion (1869-1870)
The North-West Rebellion of 1885
The Second Boer War (1899-1902)
The First World War (1914–1918)
The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (1919-1925)
The Second World War (1939-1945)
The Korean War (1950-1953)
The Gulf War (1990-1991)
The Yugoslav Wars (1992-1995)
The Somali Civil War (1993-1995)
The Kosovo War (1998-1999)
The War in Afghanistan (2001-2014)
Operation Mobile (2011)
The Mali War (2012-Present)
Operation Impact (2014-2020)
If we arbitrarily use the founding of Quebec City in 1608 as the "start" of Canadian history in terms of continual habitation of colonies, then that means that in 412 years of history, Canada has been at peace for only 123 years. In other words, we've only spent 30% of our entire history at peace.
