Who discovered Canada?

Technically, it was the first ancient ancestors of Canada's First Nations and Inuit Peoples, who crossed into what's now Canada from Beringia (a land bridge linking Asia and North America) tens of thousands of years ago following the last Ice Age.

In terms of rediscovery, the first Europeans to reach North America were Vikings, 500 years before Columbus.

The archaeological remains of a Viking village in Canada (at L'anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland) are incontrovertible proof of this.

Excluding the First Nations who already were living here before the arrival of the Europeans the credit has to be given to Lief the Lucky, a Viking. However there are stories that say St Brendan, in a coracle sailed to N America sometime between the 6th and 7th centuries AD.

While Columbus sailed to N America in 1492 he didn't discover Canada. John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in 1497.

The story of St Brendan is very uncertain, and is possibly a compilation of the stories of several expeditions by Irish people. It might be true, but it most likely is not, or it might be that one of those voyages sighted Iceland or Greenland, not anywhere in the Americas.

Indeed the Vikings landed in about AD 1000 and had a settlement for a few months on the coast of what we now call Newfoundland, but they soon departed, and no knowledge of that coast or that voyage circulated to the generality of Europe 500 years before Columbus.

Colombus discovered some Caribbean Islands, and part of Central America. John Cabot, sailing from Bristol in western England, was the first recorded European to make anything in the way discovery of the Canadian coast - in 1497. He was Italian. It is possible, indeed probable, that fishermen from Bristol had discovered the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia about 20 years earlier - for commercial reasons they did not wish to share the knowledge of where they had gone for such good hauls of fish. It is not known whether they sighted continental land during those fishing expeditions.

The history of Canada covers the period from the arrival of Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day.

European colonization of the Americas began as early as the 10th century, when Norse sailors explored and settled limited areas on the shores of present-day Greenland and Canada.

Extensive European colonization began in 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by Genoese Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but inadvertently found the Americas.

Paleo-Indians entered Canada through Beringia by way of the Bering land bridge thousands of years ago.

Do you mean ''Which European first reached North America? No one these days asks a question like you did

Lief Erickson and later John Cabot his men explored as far as Maine

The first Asians who crossed the land-bridge from Siberia tens of thousands of years ago

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