<P> The first inhabitants of North America arrived in Canada at least 15,000 years ago , though increasing evidence suggests an even earlier arrival . It is believed the inhabitants entered the Americas pursuing Pleistocene mammals such as the giant beaver , steppe wisent , musk ox , mastodons , woolly mammoths and ancient reindeer ( early caribou ) . One route hypothesized is that people walked south by way of an ice - free corridor on the east side of the Rocky Mountains , and then fanned out across North America before continuing on to South America . The other conjectured route is that they migrated , either on foot or using primitive boats , down the Pacific Coast to the tip of South America , and then crossed the Rockies and Andes . Evidence of the latter has been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of metres following the last ice age . </P>
<P> The first inhabitants of North America arrived in Canada at least 15,000 years ago , though increasing evidence suggests an even earlier arrival . It is believed the inhabitants entered the Americas pursuing Pleistocene mammals such as the giant beaver , steppe wisent , musk ox , mastodons , woolly mammoths and ancient reindeer ( early caribou ) . One route hypothesized is that people walked south by way of an ice - free corridor on the east side of the Rocky Mountains , and then fanned out across North America before continuing on to South America . The other conjectured route is that they migrated , either on foot or using primitive boats , down the Pacific Coast to the tip of South America , and then crossed the Rockies and Andes . Evidence of the latter has been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of metres following the last ice age . </P>
when did the first nations arrive in canada
when did the first nations arrive in canada
at least 15,000 years ago
at least 15,000 years ago