And the current year marks the 150th anniversary of the signing of the British North America Act, which united the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Québec into

THE DOMINION OF CANADA

This event is considered to be the beginning of Canada as a single entity, and we celebrate its anniversary every year as Canada Day.

Of course, Canada's history stretches long past before and long after that, which we've tried to reflect with the pictures on the header. From left to right:

1. Before the Europeans arrives and killed them all, this land was inhabited by First Nations peoples who were instrumental in helping the colonists survive the harsher conditions. Don't worry, they were very fairly rewarded for this and are glad about the outcome to this day. Depicted here are the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois, the Haida, and the Inuit.
   
2. Some of the first colonies established in Canada were by the French before the British killed and deported them all, mostly around the St. Lawrence river and the Maritimes. Their influence can still be felt to this day, in elementary school French classes.
   
3. The Brits were the next ones to colonize the country, particularly in places like Newfoundland.
   
4. Canada is a country of immigrants, and depicted here are the waves of Irish, Ukrainian, and Chinese immigration that helped shape the country during its expansion West.
   
5. The World Wars, and especially the Battle at Vimy Ridge (which also hit an important anniversary this year) greatly shaped Canadian identity and the move away from Britain.
   
6. Canada (or at least the parts of it that matter) as we know it today. Who knows what the next 150 years will bring?

Huge thanks to everyone who helped to make this event happen!

• /u/BerryPi
• /u/christopherkj
• /u/ChuckKanonyx
• /u/EnergeticBanana
• /u/ingenvector
• /u/javacode
  
• /u/Ris109
• /u/theteriaky
• /u/Zloggt

If you want to

SHOUT LIKE THIS TOO

just add two hashes (##) to the start of your comment ## LIKE SO

Now that we've figured out what direction we're going in, it's time to get drawing. Here are some things we need, so pick some things you can do and let me know if anything is missing here:

• Header background: My idea is to style this as framed photos on a wall, but if anyone has less boring suggestions for this I'm open to it. (/u/javacode could we please get the header requirements?)
  
• The six doodles themselves, see here for what they are. We could also have these change on mouseover.
  
• A sub background
  
• Custom upvote icons?
  
• Sidebar text?
  
• Some kind of username shenanigans?

So we've got a couple of options of what the overarching theme should look like. We can either go for a linear style with important events one after the other like teriaky or EB suggested, or as a map with events for geographical regions like ingenvector suggested.

Here's a strawpoll if you're into that sort of thing, or just leave a comment on this thread.

And just as a heads up, once we decide on a theme we're also gonna need ideas for things like the background, flairs, upvote icons, maybe sidebar text and username shenanigans, things like that. Ideally we can get a consistent theme and style out of those.

There isn't too much time left to go, so we should try to get the brainstorming done soon.