Red River Colony in the context of "Lake Winnipeg"

Manitoba is a province of Canada at the longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's fifth-most populous province, with a population of 1,342,153 as of 2021. Manitoba has a widely varied landscape, from arctic tundra and the Hudson Bay coastline in the north to dense boreal forest, large freshwater lakes, and prairie grassland in the central and southern regions. Manitoba's capital and largest city is Winnipeg.

Indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Manitoba for approximately 10,000 years. In the early 17th century, English and French fur traders began arriving in the area and establishing settlements. The Kingdom of England secured control of the region in 1673 and created a territory named Rupert's Land, which was placed under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert's Land, which included all of present-day Manitoba, grew and evolved from 1673 until 1869 with significant settlements of Indigenous and Métis people in the Red River Colony. Negotiations for the creation of the province of Manitoba commenced in 1869, but deep disagreements over the right to self-determination led to an armed conflict, known as the Red River Rebellion, between the federal government and the people (particularly Métis) of the Red River Colony. The resolution of the conflict and further negotiations led to Manitoba becoming the fifth province to join Canadian Confederation, when the Parliament of Canada passed the Manitoba Act on 15 July 1870.

Winnipeg (/ˈwɪnɪpɛɡ/ ) is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. As of 2021, Winnipeg had a city population of 749,607 and a metropolitan population of 834,678, making it Canada's sixth-largest city and eighth-largest metropolitan area.

The city is named after the nearby Lake Winnipeg; the name "Winnipeg" comes from the Western Cree words for "muddy water" – winipīhk. The region was a trading centre for Indigenous peoples long before the arrival of Europeans; it is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe (Ojibway), Ininew (Cree), Oji-Cree, Dene, and Dakota, and is the birthplace of the Métis Nation. French traders built the first fort, Fort Rouge, on the site in 1738. A settlement was later founded by the Selkirk settlers of the Red River Colony in 1812, the nucleus of which was incorporated as the City of Winnipeg in 1873. Being far inland, the city's climate is extremely seasonal (continental) even by Canadian standards, with average January highs of around −11 °C (12 °F) and average July highs of 26 °C (79 °F).

The Convention respecting fisheries, boundary and the restoration of slaves, also known as the London Convention, Anglo-American Convention of 1818, Convention of 1818, or simply the Treaty of 1818, is an international treaty signed in 1818 between the United States and the United Kingdom. This treaty resolved standing boundary issues between the two nations. The treaty allowed for joint occupation and settlement of the Oregon Country, known to the British and in Canadian history as the Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company, and including the southern portion of its sister district New Caledonia.

The two nations agreed to a boundary line involving the 49th parallel north, in part because a straight-line boundary would be easier to survey than the pre-existing boundaries based on watersheds. The treaty marked both the United Kingdom's last permanent major loss of territory in what is now the Continental United States and the United States' first permanent significant cession of North American territory to a foreign power, the second being the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842. The British ceded all of Rupert's Land south of the 49th parallel and east of the Continental Divide, including all of the Red River Colony south of that latitude, while the United States ceded the northernmost edge of the Missouri Territory north of the 49th parallel.

Northern Manitoba (also known as NorMan or Nor-Man) is a geographic and cultural region of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Manitoba originally encompassed only a small square around the Red River Colony, but it was extended north to the 60th parallel in 1912, thus acquiring a large northern region. The region's specific boundaries vary, as "northern" communities are considered to share certain social and geographic characteristics, regardless of latitude.

The Red River Rebellion (French: Rébellion de la rivière Rouge), also known as the Red River Resistance, Red River uprising, or First Riel Rebellion, was the sequence of events that led up to the 1869 establishment of a provisional government by Métis leader Louis Riel and his followers at the Red River Colony, in the early stages of establishing today's Canadian province of Manitoba. It had earlier been a territory called Rupert's Land and been under control of the Hudson's Bay Company before it was sold.

The event was the first crisis the new federal government faced after Canadian Confederation in 1867. The Government of Canada had bought Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869 and appointed an English-speaking governor, William McDougall. He was opposed by the French-speaking mostly-Métis inhabitants of the settlement. Before the land was officially transferred to Canada, McDougall had sent out surveyors to plot the land according to the square township system used in the Public Land Survey System. The Métis, led by Riel, prevented McDougall from entering the territory. McDougall declared that the Hudson's Bay Company was no longer in control of the territory and that Canada had asked for the transfer of sovereignty to be postponed. The Métis created a provisional government to which they invited an equal number of Anglophone representatives. Riel negotiated directly with the Canadian government to establish Manitoba as a Canadian province.