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Once upon a Time... Early Governments

People have always organized their communities by creating forms of government to provide leadership and direction within and among groups. Types of governments have varied greatly over time, and from one place to another; each one, however, had the responsibility to ensure that the community functioned well.

For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, First Nations and Inuit communities practised their own forms of government. Each community developed a form of government that responded to their particular needs and, as a result, many different systems were to be found. The type of government a community chose was influenced by their geographic, economic and social conditions, as well as by spiritual beliefs tied to the community's ancestral lands. Some nations had monarchs or hereditary chiefs with great authority and power. Other communities had chiefs chosen by the nation for their personal attributes and abilities as leaders, and used persuasion and consensus to lead their people. Some communities were small kin groups with informal leadership; others were a group of bands or villages; others still were vast confederacies and empires with formal class structures.

In Europe, during the Age of Discovery (the time when Western European explorers encountered and began to explore the Americas), kings and queens directly ruled over the people in their countries through royal prerogative, which gave him or her absolute power to rule. In distant colonies, however, they had governors—the Monarch's eyes and ears—to rule in their place. Governors were under no legal obligation to listen to the advice or opinions of the people, unless the smooth running of the colony was at risk.

This practice was how the portion of the New World that would become Canada was governed, when Samuel de Champlain was appointed governor in 1612 by the King of France. After 1763, when these lands were transferred to British control, a succession of British governors likewise ran the colonies of British North America on behalf of their Monarchs.