The French and the British had both wanted to control New France for years. They went to war against each other in Europe, and it continued in New France as well. During September 1759, on the Plains of Abraham in New France, the British defeated the French and took control of the colony during the Seven Years' War. The town had been ravaged by the ongoing battle, leading up to September. Homes and public spaces were burned down, their new British government now spoke English instead of French, and their previous way of life was now threatened.

At first, the British government guaranteed that the French settlers who lived in New France would not be deported or mistreated, although they could leave and return to France if they wished. They could continue to practice their Catholic religion and could continue to be a part of the fur trade.

Everyday life in New France changed in 1763 when the Royal Proclamation was created, which was the new British law. As a result of this new law, English laws were now in effect, and those who practiced the Catholic religion could not get public service positions. The British planned to bring more British settlers into the area to outnumber the French settlers. They wanted to force the French settlers to assimilate to British ways.

The Royal Proclamation also created a set of laws and boundaries for First Nations communities. In it, King George III established rights for Indigenous peoples and made the Crown responsible for protecting Indigenous lands from settler encroachment. It also recognized that all land belonged to Indigenous Peoples, unless negotiated through treaties. The Royal Proclamation provided the guidelines for the treaty-making process. However, as more and more settlers arrived in what is now commonly referred to as Canada, the treaty-making process was not followed.

To assimilate means to adapt to the customs and attitudes of a group.

The promise of freedom, land, and equal rights led about 3,000 Black Loyalists to move to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Many of these Loyalists settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia.

Unfortunately, when the Black Loyalists arrived in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, they did not get the same support as the white Loyalists. They either received land with poor soil or they were given no land at all. They were also the last people to be given supplies, tools, and land, if they even received any at all. In total, only one-third of the Black Loyalists who arrived were given land. Many became labourers on farms or indentured servants, which meant they were under contract to work for someone else for a certain amount of time without getting paid. Sometimes the conditions they worked under were similar to being enslaved in the United States.

There were racial tensions between white Loyalists and Black Loyalists. This led to one of the first recorded race riots in North America, where homes were burned down, and Black Loyalists were attacked. Black Loyalists also faced other types of discrimination. They were not allowed to vote and were not allowed to have a jury trial. Some were kidnapped and returned to slavery in the United States or sent to the Caribbean. There were even laws that stopped them from having social gatherings.

Many Black Loyalists moved to Birchtown, Nova Scotia. Birchtown became the largest Black settlement in North America. They built a community with their own schools and churches, with Black Loyalists becoming shoemakers, teachers, woodcutters, or ministers. However, one-third of the Black Loyalists decided to move to Sierra Leone in Africa after their experiences dealing with discrimination.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected the leader of Germany. His rise to power can be connected to antisemitism. Antisemitism is the hatred of Jewish people. Antisemitism is a type of discrimination, or someone being treated unfairly because of their identity. His election as leader not only affected the Jewish community in Eastern Europe but in Toronto, Ontario too. Jewish people in Toronto had dealt with antisemitism long before Hitler was elected. However, it grew more in the 1930s. Acts of antisemitism can happen in a lot of different places in society, from grocery stores and synagogues to schools. At the time, some universities in Canada limited the number of Jewish students that could be admitted each year. In Ontario, Jews were not welcome at some public swimming pools, restaurants, shops, and beaches. They couldn’t stay at some hotels, buy property or even work at certain jobs.

On August 16, 1933, a team of mostly Jewish baseball players were playing a game against a rival team at Christie Pitts Park in Toronto. Some people were carrying a banner with a swastika at the end of the game to provoke the Jewish baseball players. The swastika was appropriated or stolen from other cultures by Nazis and became a symbol of their hatred towards Jews. This sparked a massive fight, with a crowd of over 10,000 people fighting or watching. Italians and other newcomer groups who felt like they were also targets of discrimination fought alongside Jewish people. The fight soon spilled out of the ballpark, injuring lots of people.  

The Christie Pitts Riots is one of Toronto’s worst examples of antisemitic violence.  At the time, Toronto mayor William James Stewart announced that he would charge anyone who publicly displayed swastikas, like in the banner that sparked the riot. This was one of Canada's first-ever policies against hate speech. Hate speech is any speech in public that expresses hatred towards or the intention to harm a group.

In Canada, during World War II, there were thousands of Japanese settlers living on the West Coast, some since the 1870s. They had dealt with racism for a long time, from laws that prevented them from working certain jobs or voting. White settlers and fishers living on the West Coast at the time began to suspect and declare that the Japanese Canadian settlers were spies for the country of Japan and were sharing secrets that could help Japan in the war. The government began to listen to these rumours.

At first, 1,800 Japanese-owned fishing boats were taken away, but the police and government officials could find no proof for these claims of spying. Even without proof, there were politicians and wealthy white settlers who continued to put pressure on the government to either remove or imprison the Japanese Canadians in the area.

In 1942, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King ordered Japanese Canadian adult men to be removed from their homes and put in labour camps. The white settlers continued to pressure the government to remove all Japanese Canadians from their homes because of racism.

By March 1942, 23,000 Japanese Canadians were removed from their homes on the West Coast. This included children and adults. Most of them were placed in internment camps in smaller and more remote areas of British Columbia. Internment camps are detention centres where citizens were kept during the war. Their homes and farmland were taken and sold by the government to pay for the internment camps. Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return to their communities until after the war ended in 1945, or they could return to Japan. In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney officially apologized for placing Japanese Canadians in internment camps.