National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks Canada, a federal agency, manages the National Historic Sites program. As of July 2023, there were 1,004 National Historic Sites, 171 of which are administered by Parks Canada; the remainder are administered or owned by other levels of government or private entities. The sites are located across all ten provinces and three territories, with two sites located in France (the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial and Canadian National Vimy Memorial).
There are related federal designations for National Historic Events and National Historic Persons. Sites, Events and Persons are each typically marked by a federal plaque of the same style, but the markers do not indicate which designation a subject has been given. For example, the Rideau Canal is a National Historic Site, while the Welland Canal is a National Historic Event.
History
Early developments
Emerging Canadian nationalist sentiment in the late 19th century and early 20th century led to an increased interest in preserving Canada's historic sites. There were galvanizing precedents in other countries. With the support of notables such as Victor Hugo and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the Commission des monuments historique was created in France in 1837; it published its first list of designated sites, containing 934 entries, in 1840. In the United Kingdom, the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty was created in 1894 to protect that country's historic and natural heritage. While there was no National Park Service in the United States until 1916, battlefields of the Civil War were designated and managed by the War Department: Chickamauga and Chattanooga (created 1890), Antietam (1890), Shiloh (1894), Gettysburg (1895), Vicksburg (1899), and Chalmette (1907).
Domestically, Lord Dufferin, the Governor General from 1872 to 1878, initiated some of the earliest, high-profile efforts to preserve Canada's historic sites. He was instrumental in stopping the demolition of the fortifications of Quebec City, and he was the first public official to call for the creation of a park on the lands next to Niagara Falls.
The 1908 tricentennial of the founding of Quebec City, and the establishment that same year of the National Battlefields Commission to preserve the Plains of Abraham, acted as a catalyst for federal efforts to designate and preserve historic sites across Canada. At the same time, the federal government was looking for ways to extend the National Park system to Eastern Canada. The more populated east did not have the same large expanses of undeveloped Crown land that had become parks in the west, so the Dominion Parks Branch (the predecessor to Parks Canada) looked to historic features to act as focal points for new national parks. In 1914, the Parks Branch undertook a survey of historic sites in Canada, with the objective of creating new recreational areas rather than preserving historic places. Fort Howe in Saint John, New Brunswick was designated a national historic park in 1914, named the "Fort Howe National Park". The fort was not a site of significant national historic importance, but its designation provided a rationale for the acquisition of land for a park. Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia was also designated in 1917.
In 1919, William James Roche, the Minister of the Interior, was concerned over the fate of old fur trade posts in Western Canada, and he was also being lobbied by historical associations across Canada for federal funds to assist with the preservation and commemoration of local landmarks. At the same time, the Department of Militia and Defence was anxious to transfer old forts, and the associated expenses, to the Parks Branch. Roche asked James B. Harkin, the first Commissioner of Dominion Parks, to develop a departmental heritage policy. Harkin believed that the Parks Branch did not have the necessary expertise to manage historic resources; he was troubled by the relatively weak historic value of Fort Howe, the country's first historic park, and feared that the Branch's park improvements were incompatible with the heritage attributes of Fort Anne, the second historic park.
