Canadian History
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50 free Canadian History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Canadian history has a reputation for being polite and uneventful. It is neither. The story includes rebellions, gold fever, invasions from the south, wartime disasters at home and abroad, and a prime minister who took advice from the dead. This quiz covers the long sweep: the first European visitors, the fur trade and New France, the wars for the continent, the road to Confederation, the railway and the settling of the West, two world wars, and the constitutional fights of the late twentieth century. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a miss still teaches you something. It suits curious players, students revising for a test, and anyone hosting a trivia night who wants questions with checked answers. The opening round is the gentlest; later rounds reward people who paid attention in class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which seafarers built a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows about a thousand years ago, centuries before Columbus sailed?
The Norse
The Norse left eight sod-and-timber buildings and more than 800 objects at the site, which a Norwegian husband-and-wife team excavated in the 1960s.
Q 02Which British Columbia runner with an artificial leg began the 1980 Marathon of Hope to raise money for cancer research?
Terry Fox
Terry Fox covered 5,373 kilometres in 143 days before cancer in his lungs forced him to stop outside Thunder Bay.
Q 03Which fur-trading enterprise, chartered by King Charles II in 1670, once controlled the vast territory of Rupert's Land?
Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company was the oldest corporation in North America, and it acted as the territory's de facto government until it gave up the land to Canada in 1869.
Q 04Which Nova Scotia port was devastated in December 1917 when the explosives-laden ship Mont-Blanc blew up in the harbour?
Halifax
Halifax suffered the largest human-made explosion the world had seen up to then, which killed at least 1,782 people and injured an estimated 9,000 more.
Q 05Which gold rush drew an estimated 100,000 fortune seekers north after a strike on Bonanza Creek in 1896?
Klondike
The Klondike stampede was brutal: only 30,000 to 40,000 of those who set out reached the goldfields, and just a few hundred got rich.
Q 06At which April 1917 battle in France did all four divisions of the Canadian Corps first fight together?
Vimy Ridge
Vimy Ridge was held by three divisions of the German 6th Army, and its capture became a lasting symbol of Canadian national achievement and sacrifice.
Q 07Which railway was finished in 1885 when financier Donald Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie?
Canadian Pacific
Canadian Pacific kept a promise made to British Columbia when it joined Confederation in 1871, and Smith bent the iron spike badly as he hammered it in.
Q 08Which Glasgow-born lawyer from Kingston, Ontario, became the first prime minister at Confederation in 1867?
John A. Macdonald
John A. Macdonald went on to serve 19 years in the office, a total that only one later prime minister has beaten.
Q 09Which animal's pelt, prized in Europe for making felt hats, became the driving force of the fur trade?
Beaver
Beaver fur felted so well that Europe's hat makers could not get enough of it, and the animal that built the fur trade is now Canada's national animal.
Q 10Which city, founded as Bytown in 1826, did Queen Victoria select as the capital of the Province of Canada?
Ottawa
Ottawa took its present name in 1855, two years before the Queen's letter, and the first session of Parliament in its new buildings was held in 1866.
Q 11Which French explorer planted a cross at Gaspé in 1534 and claimed the land for King Francis I?
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier also put the name Canada on the map, applying an Iroquoian word he heard to the shores of the great river he explored.
Q 12Which navigator and mapmaker, remembered as the Father of New France, founded Quebec in July 1608?
Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain crossed the Atlantic more than 20 times and drew the first accurate maps of the eastern coastline and the Great Lakes region.
Q 13Which British general was killed at the moment of victory on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec in 1759?
James Wolfe
Q 21Which 1867 law passed in London joined New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada into one federal country?
British North America Act
The British North America Act kept that name until 1982, when it was restyled the Constitution Act, 1867; United Kingdom records still use the original title.
Q 22Which Métis leader headed the Red River Resistance of 1869–70 and was hanged for high treason in Regina in 1885?
Louis Riel
Louis Riel is also remembered as a founder of the province of Manitoba, which grew out of the first resistance he led.
Q 23Which Normandy beach did the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division storm on D-Day, 6 June 1944?
Juno
James Wolfe was struck by three musket balls at the height of the battle, and the French commander Montcalm died of his own wounds the next day.
Q 14Which French-speaking people did the British deport from the Maritimes from 1755, many of them later reaching Louisiana?
Acadians
Acadians became the Cajuns of Louisiana; about 11,500 of an estimated 14,100 were deported, and some 5,000 of them died of disease, starvation or shipwreck.
Q 15Which refugees of the American Revolution arrived in such numbers that New Brunswick was split from Nova Scotia?
Loyalists
Loyalists poured into Nova Scotia after 1783, some 35,000 to 40,000 of them, and those who settled around the Bay of Fundy soon had a colony of their own.
Q 16Which Upper Canada woman walked 32 km through American-held territory in 1813 to warn the British of a coming attack?
Laura Secord
Laura Secord's warning helped the British and their Mohawk allies repel the invaders, and a chocolate company took her name on the centennial of her walk.
Q 17Which Shawnee chief joined forces with the British and helped capture Detroit in August 1812?
Tecumseh
Tecumseh was killed fighting American troops at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada in October 1813, a little over a year after his greatest success.
Q 18Under which name was Toronto known when American forces captured it and razed its parliament building in April 1813?
York
York was the capital of Upper Canada, yet its capture settled little, because the British warships on Lake Ontario were based at Kingston.
Q 19Which island rejected Confederation in an 1869 election but finally joined in 1949 as the tenth province?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland had stood apart within the British Empire for 80 more years, and no province has joined Confederation since.
Q 20Which territory was separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999 to give Inuit self-government?
Nunavut
Nunavut has a land mass almost as large as Mexico, yet the 2021 census counted fewer than 37,000 people there, most of them Inuit.
Juno had stronger defences than many other landing sectors, yet by the evening halt the Canadians had pushed farther inland than any other D-Day landing force.
Q 24Which French port did a mostly Canadian force of about 6,000 raid on 19 August 1942, retreating within six hours?
Dieppe
Dieppe cost the raiders dearly: of the 5,000 Canadians who took part, 3,367 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
Q 25Which Guelph-born army physician wrote the poem In Flanders Fields after a friend's burial at Ypres in 1915?
John McCrae
John McCrae wrote the poem on May 3, 1915, after presiding at the funeral of his friend Alexis Helmer, and Punch magazine printed it anonymously that December.
Q 26Which wartime prime minister, Canada's longest-serving, secretly used mediums to contact his dead mother?
Mackenzie King
Mackenzie King held the office for a total of 21 years and 154 days, spread over three separate periods, and led the country through the Second World War.
Q 27Which prime minister, winner of the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize, oversaw the adoption of the Maple Leaf flag?
Lester Pearson
Lester Pearson won the prize for proposing the United Nations Emergency Force that resolved the Suez Crisis, and as prime minister he also unified the armed forces.
Q 28Which prime minister brought the constitution home from Britain in 1982, with a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau signed the proclamation with Queen Elizabeth II on Parliament Hill on April 17, 1982; until then, key parts of the constitution could be changed only by the British Parliament.
Q 29Which city, founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie, hosted the Expo 67 world's fair and the 1976 Summer Olympics?
Montreal
Montreal takes its name from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked mountain the first settlement was built around, and no other Canadian city has hosted the Summer Games.
Q 30Which Irish-born poet, journalist and Father of Confederation was assassinated in April 1868?
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Thomas D'Arcy McGee was killed by a single handgun shot, and Patrick Whelan, convicted largely on forensic and circumstantial evidence, was hanged the following February.