This post ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it would be, but thanks must go to
@Turquoise Blue who helped me make sense of my ramblings about the ALT Canadian political situation, and
@CanadianTory for letting me bounce ideas off of him (again)! This is the revamped version of Canada from
Hail, Britannia - I hope you like it:
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The
Dominion of the Canada is a constituent country of the United Kingdom located in the northern half of Britain-in-America on the North American continent. Its eight provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 10.6 million square kilometres (4.09 million square miles), making it the largest British Home Nation by area. Canada borders Oregon in the southwest, Missouri, the Great Lakes and Ohio in the south, Columbia and New England in the southeast, and Newfoundland in the east.
Inhabited for millenia by Aboriginal peoples, much of the territory that makes up Canada today was gradually claimed by the English (later British) and French colonial empires beginning in the 15th and 16th centuries, although Alaska was colonised by the Russian Empire much later in the 18th century. Much of the inland territory which now makes up the prarie provinces was part of the territory of Rupert's Land, with the St. Lawrence valley being part of the French colony of Canada. Britain gained undispute control of the entirety of modern Eastern and Central Canada after conquering New France in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), reorganising the territory as the Province of Quebec.
The Quebec Act of 1774, which expanded the province's borders to include all of modern Quebec, Labrador, Ontario and Ohio, was viewed unfavourably by colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, who sent delegates to the Philadelphia Congress to oppose it and the other Intolerable Acts. The Petition to the King, drafted by the Congress, successfully persuaded King George III and the British Parliament to revoke the acts and returned Quebec's borders to their pre-1774 borders, opening the Northwest Territory (modern Ohio) for settlement. Quebec joined the Colonial Congress in 1776 before being split into Upper and Lower Canada in 1791, to separate the Anglophone west from the Francophone east. The Rebellions of 1837, part of the Emancipation Crisis (1834-1839), led to both provinces being merged into the United Canadas in 1841.
Canada was formed as a dominion on 1 July 1867, when the governing structure of the United Canadas was reorganised to create a federal structure between the two provinces. Since then Canada has expanded across the northern part of North America and in the 21st century Canada is one of the most developed parts of the UK, with the fourth largest economy and the third highest nominal per capita income.
The
2015 Canadian federal election was held on 13 July 2015 to elect under the instant run-off voting system the 284 members of the House of Commons of Canada. The centre/centre-left
United Democratic Federation, led by
Liberal Party leader Gerard Kennedy, won 143 seats allowing it to form a (slim) majority government, whilst the centre-right
Canadian Alliance, under
Reform Party leader, and incumbent First Minister, Stephen Harper lost 67 seats, the worst loss suffered by a political party since the PC collapse in 2002. The
Commonwealth Party, under new leader Isaac Taylor-Brock (yes those Taylor-Brocks!), outperformed expectations with some pundits on election night predicting them as the largest party in the House.
The
Progressive Conservatives under long time leader Jim Prentice doubled their seats, largely at the expense of Reform in Ontario and Quebec. The nationalist
Bloc Québécois and
Yedinaya Alyaska ("United Alaska") both lost seats, widely attributed to the generational lull in support for separation, although the increasingly separatist
Wildrose Party in Alberta did gain a seat. The UDF-affiliated
Progressives and the non-aligned
Greens both marginally increased their popular vote, although only the Progressives were able to translate this into seat gains.
The
United Democratic Federation, the
Canadian Alliance, and the
Progressive Conservative Party are the three largest "parties" in Canadian politics with all three having emerged in the 1940s and dominated the political scene in Canada throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Although all three are classified as political parties, the UDF and the Canadian Alliance are in fact broad-tent alliances of federal and provincial parties on the left and right of the spectrum respectively. The UDF, currently the largest party in the Commons, traces its origins to the Liberal split in 1876 over imperial federation and the subsequent Lib-Lab agreement which existed throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the Liberals, Commonwealth (successors to Labour) and the Progressives formed the UDF in 1945.
The Alliance was formed as an electoral alliance between the
National Party, factions of the Conservative Party, and
Social Credit in 1941. The former two had split from the main Conservative Party over William Howard Hearst's handling of the Alaskan Uprising. Although none of the original parties still exist at a federal level, the Alliance continues to dominate the right of Canadian politics in the form of the Reform party, which displaced Social Credit after it collapsed at the 2007 election. The PCs have largely taken the role of third-party in Canada, occassionally forming governments under John Diefenbaker (1950-58), Joe Clark (1976-80) and Jean Charest (1998-2002) although they have seen a resurgence in support in recent years as Reform shifts to the right and lets it's dominance slip.
The
Alaskan Uprising, or the
Communist Revolution in Alaska, was a uprising that took place primarily in Alaska between July 1917 and February 1918 against the British and Canadian governments. Although the uprising primarily involved Alaskan communists, socialist, republican and other anarchist groups took the opportunity to rise up. The aim of the uprising was to break away from the British government and institute a communist government in Alaska, with the goal of seeking support from the Russi.
Beginning at a time when the British military and much of the Royal National Guard were distracted by the First World War, specifically the American Theatre, the rebels were able to gain control in several cities including Vasilya and Novoarkhangelsk, forcing the Alaskan provincial government to flee into exile in the town of Prince Rupert. With the winding down of hostilities on the Mexican Front in October 1917, Britain was able to redeploy its forces to deal with the uprising, spending the next five months engaged in urban combat on the streets of many of Alaska's cities, as well as Russian settlements in northern Oregon. The uprising is generally considered to have ended on 3 February 1918 when the surviving leadershp of the Alaska Communists surrendered in Vasilya, after members of the British Corps of Royal Rangers infiltrated the city and assassinated Igor Petrov and Krzysztof Racz two days prior, both men having been the leaders of the communst movement.
The Alaskan Uprising led to communist organisations in the United Kingdom being made illegal, the province of Alaska was placed under martial law until 1931, with limited responsible government, whilst the government of William H. Hearst declared a state of emergency in Canada which lasted until 1919. His controversial actions in response to the uprising, as well as the questionable legality of postponing the 1917 election, led to the split of the Conservative Party and the collapse of the Hearst Government at the 1919 election.
North American French is the various varieties of the French langauge spoken in North America, particularly the Canadian province of Quebec and the Louisianian state of Acadiana, where French-speakers make up the majority of the population. In 2011 the total number of individuals who spoke French as their first language was approximately 13.3 million, with another 7 million reporting it as a second language. At the federal level in Canada it has co-official status alongside English and Russian, in Louisiana it has co-official status with English, and in New England it is a recognised naional language. Ohio, Missouri and the Republic of Texas all recognise French as a minority language. At the provincial level of government French is the sole official language in Quebec and Acadiana, is co-official with English in Maine, New Hampshire, and New Orleans, and is co-official with English and Gaelic in New Brunswick.
Hail, Britannia
UK SDP leadership spill, 2004 & leadership election, 2011
American Theatre of World War I
Federation of India
Oregonian general election, 2011
Kingdom of Hanover; Hanoverian general election, 2012
Kingdom of Scania; King Valdemar V; Crown Prince Christoffer
Spanish State (1936-1945)
National Republic of China (1927-1947)
Florida; Floridian general election, 2013; Floridian, Texan & Californian Spanish
Britain-in-America; North American Dutch; Daniel Taylor; Isaac Brock; Taylor-Brock family; Dukedom of Manhattan
Kingdom of Hawai'i; Hawaiian general election, 2015; King Kūhiō; Native Hawaiians
Hawaiians in the United Kingdom (Hawaiian British)
Russian America; Province of Alaska; Orthodox Church in America; Alaskans; North American Russian; Russian-American Company
Mexican Empire; Mexican federal election, 2013; Emperor Agustín V; President of the Government; Josefina Vázquez Mota
First Minister of Florida; Order of the Star of Florida; 2015 Floridian independence referendum; Viceroy of Florida; Carlos López-Cantera; Juan Taylor-Brock y Menendez
Dominion of Newfoundland; Newfoundland general election, 2016; Newfoundland Gaelic; New Labrador Party; Order of Newfoundland
Kingdom of the Californias; Californians; Californian general election, 2013; King Ramón IV; Wasatch Autonomous Region; Jon Huntsman Jr.
Nova Scotia (& 2013 provincial election); New Brunswick (& 2014 provincial election)
