Virtual Museum Canada

Sir SandFord Fleming - The Knight Of Time

Glossary

Colony
In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distant state.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony

Charles Robert Darwin
(February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882) was an English naturalist who achieved lasting fame by producing considerable evidence that species originated through evolutionary change, at the same time proposing the scientific theory that natural selection is the mechanism by which such change occurs. This theory is now considered a cornerstone of biology.
Darwin's observations on his five-year voyage on the Beagle brought him eminence as a geologist and fame as a popular author. His biological finds led him to study the transmutation of species and in 1838 he conceived his theory of natural selection.
His 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (usually abbreviated to The Origin of Species) established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

Craft Production
Craft production is the process of manufacturing by hand with or without the aid of tools. The term craft production refers to a manufacturing technique applied in the hobbies of handicraft, but was also the common method of manufacture in the pre-industrialized world.
Source: From Wikipedia

Dominion
By the mid 1800s, the term Dominion was most commonly used for wholly or virtually self-governing states of the former British Empire (today the Commonwealth of Nations), such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Prior to attaining dominion status these states had always been Crown colonies, under direct rule from the UK and/or a self-governing colony, or they have been formed from groups of such colonies.
Canada was called a "Dominion" upon the confederation of the colonies of the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, in 1867
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion

Economic boom
Sudden, unstable growth
Source: translation of the  Robert dictionary

Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a major technological, socioeconomic and cultural change. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and manufacturing by machinery, using norms and standards that produces uniform, consistent products.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution

Longitude
The longitude of a point may be defined as its angular distance east or west of the prime meridian that is located through Greenwich, England. It is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds.
Souce: translation of the  Robert dictionary

Lower Canada
Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower St. Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Lower Canada was created by the Constitutional Act of 1791 from the partition of the British colony of the Province of Quebec into the Provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada.
Lower Canada, Upper Canada and their legislatures were abolished in 1841 with the enactment of The Union Act, passed on July 23, 1840.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower Canada

Mechanical production
Production using machines and manpower. Production was large-scale and concentrated in factories.

John A. Macdonald
The Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of Canada from July 1, 1867 to November 5, 1873, and from October 17, 1878 to his death on June 6, 1891.
As Prime Minister, Macdonald had a vision: the expansion and unification of the country. While he was in power, Canada acquired the Northwest Territories from the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1871 the British Parliament added British Columbia to the Canadian Confederation, making it the sixth province. Macdonald promised British Columbia a transcontinental railway to convince the province to join Canada.
In the wake of the Pacific scandal of 1873, whereby Macdonald was accused of having accepted bribes to grant government contracts for the construction of the railway, the Conservatives were ousted from power. Macdonald was re-elected in 1878. The railway was completed in 1885.
Source: translation of the site Wikipedia: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Macdonald

Middle class
The "middle class" describe the professional and business class.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class

Pier
A support made of masonry supporting the spans of a bridge

Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism rejected the hierarchy of the clergy of the Catholic Church (priest, bishop, cardinal, etc.) substituting decisional levels in their stead at the local, regional and national levels. Within each level, all members are considered equal. Presbyterianism gave rise to the reformed churches.
Source: Translation of the site Wikipedia: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbytérianisme

Primary Industry
Primary industry revolves around the collection and direct exploitation of natural resources (materials, energy, and some foodstuffs).

Puritan
A member of a strict Presbyterian sect with a hard-line approach to Christianity.
Puritanism designated a concept of Christian faith developed in England by a community of radical Protestants after the Reform. This movement rejected the episcopate, wishing to substitute government by elected church elders. The only theological movement that may seriously be defined by the word puritan is undoubtedly Calvinism, which led to the emergence of the Presbyterian Church.
Source: Translation of the site Wikipedia: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritanisme

Patent
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a person (the patentee, usually the inventor) for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent

Secondary Industry
Secondary industry revolves around the transformation of materials.

Solar time
Solar time is a measurement of time based on the definition of Noon, the time of day when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky at a given place on earth.

Survey
Basically, a survey is the determination of the position of a permanent or temporary point marked on the ground. It also includes written entries of all measurements needed to determine this position.
Source: Natural Resources Canada, Centre canadien de gestion cadastrale
Souce: translation of the  site: www.lsd.nrcan.gc.ca/francais/glossary_f.asp

Surveyor’s Chain
Chains and tapes are used to measure horizontal distances.
An engineer’s chain has 50 or 100 links, and measures 50 or 100 feet overall.

Township
In Canada, two kinds of townships occur in common use. In Eastern Canada a township is one form of the subdivision of a county. In Western Canada townships exist only for the purpose of land division by the Dominion Land Survey and do not form administrative units. These townships are ten miles by ten miles.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township
Source: Oxford English Reference Dictionary (2003)

Upper Canada
Upper Canada was a British territory in what is now the Canadian province of Ontario. Upper Canada officially existed from 1791 to 1841 and generally covered present-day Southern Ontario.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Canada

Victorian Era
Victoria, born Alexandrina Victoria of Hanover (May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India from June 20, 1837 until her death. She reigned for more than sixty-three years, the longest of all British monarchs.
Victoria’s reign was marked by the huge expansion of the British Empire. The Victorian Era took place at the height of the Industrial Revolution, a period of tremendous social, economic and technological upheaval in the United Kingdom.
Source: Translation of the site Wikipedia: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reine_Victoria

Royal Society of Canada
The Society was founded in 1882 by the Marquis of Lorne, then Governor General of Canada. Succeeding governor generals have served as patrons of the Society. The founding members included Sir Sandford Fleming, the originator of the world system of Standard Time, and Sir William Osler, one of the great physicians of the century. The original Society was subsequently incorporated by an act of Parliament and granted its Royal Charter in 1883.
The Royal Society of Canada (French: Société royale du Canada), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (Académies des Arts, des Lettres et des Sciences du Canada), is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scientists and scholars. Its primary objective is to promote learning and research in the natural and social sciences and in the humanities.
Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Canada

Theodolite
A theodolite is an instrument for measuring both horizontal and vertical angles, as used in triangulation calculations of position.

Richard Trevithick
(April 13, 1771 - April 22, 1833) was born in the heart of one of the rich mineral (former) mining areas of Cornwall, United Kingdom. He was a British inventor, engineer and builder of the world's first working steam locomotive.
As he became more experienced, he realised that improvements in boiler technology now permitted the safe production of high pressure steam, and that this could be made to move a piston in a steam engine on its own account, instead of using a pressure of close to one atmosphere in a condensing engine.
He was not the first to think of so-called "strong steam," but he was the first to make it work, in 1799.
Trevithick built a full-size steam road carriage in 1801 on a site near the present day Fore Street at Camborne. He named the carriage 'Puffing Devil' and, on Christmas Eve that year, he demonstrated it by successfully carrying several men up Camborne Hill and then continuing on to the nearby village of Beacon with his cousin and associate. This event is widely believed to be the first demonstration of transportation by (steam) automotive power in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick