Architecture of Canada

However, design has long needed to be adapted to Canada's climate and geography, and at times has also reflected the uniqueness of Canadian culture.

The semi-nomadic peoples of the Maritimes, Quebec, and Northern Ontario, such as the Mi'kmaq, Cree, and Algonquin generally lived in wigwams.

These were wood-framed structures, covered with an outer layer of bark, reeds, or woven mats; usually in a cone shape although sometimes a dome.

Further south, in what is today Southern Ontario and Quebec, Iroquoian society lived in permanent and semi-permanent agricultural settlements holding several hundred to several thousand people.

An example of a long house settlement is within Crawford Lake Conservation Area On the Prairies the standard form of life was a nomadic one, with the people often moving to a new location each day to follow the bison herds.

The Thule adopted a design similar to the pit houses of the BC interior, but because of the lack of wood they instead used whale bones for the frame.

The surroundings forced enough differences that a unique style developed, and the house of the New France farmer remains a symbol of French-Canadian nationalism.

However, the influence of the Foreign Protestants was also felt as the architecture of the region also borrowed some techniques and styles from Germany and Switzerland, notably at Lunenburg.

The English speaking population of Canada grew dramatically with the influx of United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution.

Throughout British North America the Georgian style was mostly used by the middle and upper classes, and also for institutional buildings such as churches and government structures.

In the long run, however, the second and third generation immigrants tended to embrace the more British styles: the churches remained distinctly Eastern, but the houses largely conformed to the rest.

This became the dominant architectural style for churches, especially Anglican and Roman Catholic ones, which both embraced Gothic Revival as evidence of their conservatism.

The bay-and-gable was a housing form that emerged in 19th century Toronto, that incorporated Gothic Revival elements throughout its front façade.

Romanesque Revival buildings such as the British Columbia Legislature, Old Toronto City Hall, and Langevin Block were erected in this period.

Neoclassicism and Beaux-Arts architecture became the dominant style for banks and government buildings, with the latter style being frequently used from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1930s for monumental public buildings such as Toronto's Union Station by John M. Lyle and structures like the massive Princes' Gates at Exhibition Place in Toronto.

In part because of the prominence of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and the CPR's "railway Gothic", Gothic architecture had become closely associated with Canada and while the United States embraced Art Deco Canadian architects returned to the Middle Ages for inspiration, by way of John Ruskin's writings on Neo-Gothic, the most Victorian of all styles.

When the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings burnt down in 1916 it was rebuilt in a similar Gothic style to that that had been used fifty years earlier.

At the same time, Modernism inspired the Gothic style employed, and the Neo-Gothic buildings of the era often saw more sparse ornamentation and incorporated steel frames in their construction.

Toronto closely followed Chicago and New York as the home of skyscrapers employing new steel framed construction and elevators.

In Vancouver during the 1950s and 1960s, Modernist architectures inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and fostered by the unique building materials and physical setting resulted in various daring new styles of housing, particularly on Vancouver's ritzy North Shore, featuring open beams, glass walls, and innovative floor plans.

Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson, more known for grandiose exercises in institutional concrete such as Robson Square and Simon Fraser University, pioneered the British Columbia version of the "West Coast style", variations of which are also common in Washington, Oregon and California.

A lesser, though much more common, form of Modernist architecture developed during the 1960s was the Vancouver Special, a two-story stuccoed box which took up most of a city lot, and typically featured two suites, one upstairs and one downstairs.

International Style skyscrapers came to dominate many of Canada's major cities, especially Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Toronto.

The Modernist styles had mixed results when applied to residential structures, such as the large housing projects constructed in this era.

The postwar period saw the rise of massive and low density suburbs surrounding most Canadian cities, with Don Mills being Canada's first community constructed on rigidly Modernist lines.

Architects produced what they perceived to be more meaningful buildings with pluralism, double coding, flying buttresses and high ceilings, irony and paradox, and contextualism.

Skyscrapers like 1000 de La Gauchetière in Montreal, Brookfield Place in Toronto, and Bankers Hall in Calgary define the style in terms of high-rise corporate architecture.

It makes reference to local farm architecture around the suburban area of Mississauga as well as a clocktower—a feature associated with traditional city centres.

The Vancouver Public Library similarly evokes Postmodern aesthetic ideals, though references a different architectural past, demonstrating the eclectic nature of the style in Canada.

Lowrise residential subdivision architecture became more strongly focused on imitating traditional styles from the likes of the Georgian and Victorian eras, though low-rise infill projects in cities demonstrated an increased popularity of the Modern aesthetic.