When was canada discovered

What Europeans considered a "New World" was in fact home to Native people for over 15, years before the first Europeans landed on the eastern shores of North America. Around A. At the end of the ninth century, a gradual migration began across the North Atlantic.

Several hundred families left the Norwegian coast aboard knorrs -- rugged cargo vessels three times larger than the coasters then plying the North Sea -- to settle in Iceland.

A century later, Eric the Red led their descendants to Greenland and a few of them followed his son, Leif the Lucky, as far as North America. Since the Norse used open ships offering no protection from the elements and lacked even the most rudimentary navigational devices, they had to cross the North Atlantic island by island, from Norway to North America.

Each leg of the journey was about kilometres. Speculation about the Norse expeditions to North America was based primarily on traditional Icelandic sagas, which are supported by direct evidence uncovered by archaeologists since the s. There, they talked about how best to work together. In , they wrote a request to bring together some of the colonies. It was called the British North America Act. They presented it to Parliament and the House of Lords in England.

The Queen and the British government approved the agreement. Canada's Confederation union was set for July 1, First Nations and Inuit people had already lived on the land for thousands of years. First Nations and Inuit people had treaties agreements between countries with the Crown the Queen. The treaties were not honoured.

The new government took control of much of their land to expand the country. Many First Nations were moved onto smaller areas of land called reserves. The government tried to make the children live like Europeans. Many were taken away from their families to residential schools to be taught the religion and lifestyle of Europeans. A map showing the different colonies when Canada became a country in An indigenous nation in Canada says it has found unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan.

The Cowessess First Nation said the discovery was "the most significantly substantial to date in Canada". It comes weeks after the remains of children were found at a similar residential school in British Columbia.

These are unmarked graves," said Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme. The Marieval Indian Residential School was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from to the s, when the First Nation took over operations, in the area where Cowessess is now located in southeastern Saskatchewan.

It is not yet clear if all of the remains are linked to the school. It was one of more than compulsory boarding schools funded by the Canadian government and run by religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of assimilating indigenous youth.

An estimated 6, children died while attending these schools, according to former Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Murray Sinclair. Students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities. Physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school authorities led others to run away.

Last month, the Cowessess began to use ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves at the cemetery of the Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan. Thursday's announcement marked the first phase of the search efforts. Chief Delorme said there may have been markers for the graves at one point but that the Roman Catholic church, which oversaw the cemetery, may have removed them.