Canada and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) established diplomatic relations in 1960, following the DRC's independence. Canada maintains an embassy in Kinshasa, and the DRC has one in Ottawa.

Although Canadian links to the Congo date back to the Victorian era, formal involvement began in the 1940s with a push for closer commercial ties. In 1948, Canada appointed a trade commissioner to Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), and in the decades since, relations have generally been characterized by Canadian investment, development assistance, technical cooperation, and ongoing diplomatic engagement.

History

Victorian era In 1887, William Henry Faulknor, a young Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario, who had joined the Plymouth Brethren evangelical movement, arrived at Bunkeya, in Katanga, a centralized state ruled by Msiri. Msiri employed Faulknor and other missionaries as "errand boys," symbols of his influence, while Faulknor taught and converted a small group of redeemed slaves.

William Grant Stairs (1863–1892), a Canadian born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and educated at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, was a civil engineer, explorer, and mercenary who was appointed by Belgium's King Leopold II to lead an expedition in 1891 of four hundred men which captured the Katanga (Shaba) copper territories for Belgium. Contemporaneous accounts of the expedition reported that during a confrontation, Katanga's king Msiri was shot dead and then decapitated, the head placed on a stake by Stairs's forces.de Pont-Jest, René. 1893. "L'Expédition du Katanga, d'après les notes de voyage du marquis Christian de Bonchamps", in: Edouard Charton (editor): Le Tour du Monde magazine, http://collin.francois.free.fr/Le_tour_du_monde/textes/Katenga/katengatexte.htm (accessed March 4, 2011)Saffery, David. 2007. "Introduction to 2007 edition", in: Joseph A. Moloney. With Captain Stairs to Katanga: Slavery and Subjugation in the Congo 1891–92, London: Jeppestown Press, p. x-xi, . Stairs then began reorganising affairs, appointing Msiri's son Mukandavantu (Mukanda Bantu) to replace Msiri, and securing the Congo State's authority over a fifty-mile radius.Slade, Ruth. 1962. King Leopold's Congo: aspects of the development of race relations in the Congo Independent State, Oxford University Press, p. 134-135, . Stairs himself died of malaria only six months later while on trek to the coast, in Chinde, Mozambique, and was buried there. The Brethren missionaries including Faulknor made no attempt to obstruct Stairs's campaign and relied on the Belgian military following Msiri's defeat. Faulknor left Katanga in 1892, and returned to Canada.Stairs, William G. 1998. African exploits: the diaries of William Stairs, 1887–1892, Roy Maclaren, ed., McGill-Queen's University Press, p. 374m 379, . The Canadian Baptist Mission (Mission des Baptistes Réguliers du Canada) established a presence in the Congo in 1926,Carpenter, George Wayland. 1952. Highways for God in Congo: commemorating seventy-five years of Protestant Missions 1878–1953, La Librairie Evangelique au Congo, p. 27. and had two missions in southern Léopoldville Province in 1946.Johnson, Hildegard Binder. 1967. "The Location of Christian Missions in Africa The Location of Christian Missions in Africa", Geographical Review, 57(2):168-202.

Possibly the earliest Canadian woman to live and work in the Congo was a Catholic missionary and book printer from Quebec: Mère Marie-Bernadette (née Bernadette Beaupré) was born in 1877 in Saint-Raymond, entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in 1894, and died in Boma, Congo Free State in 1908,Actes de la Congregation Générale des Franciscaines Missionnaires de Marie Tenue à Rome du 2 juin au 24 juin 1911, Vanves près Paris: Imp. Franciscaines missionnaires de Marie, p. 119.Anonymous. 1908. "Mère Marie-Bernadette", Annales of the Franciscaines missionnaires de Marie, Tome XXII, juin 1908, p. 192. from trypanosomiasis.Anonymous. La Grâce du travail: L'imprimerie, la peinture, la chasublerie, filage et tissage, tapis et tentures, la dentelle, la broderie, chez les Franciscaines missionnaires de Marie, Vanves: Impr. franciscaine missionnaire, 1937, p. 9-10, 17.Rade, Paul. 1932. Dans la fôret congolaise, Grande Allée, Québec: Stella Maris, Imprimerie des Franciscaines Missionnaires de Marie, p. 289-290. On her departure for the Congo, Soeur Marie-Bernadette was destined for an orphanage to be founded at the mission station of Stanley-Falls, however she was posted downriver at Nouvelle-Anvers instead, arriving there on 27 July 1900. Having received training in typesetting while at the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary institute in Vanves, France, De Blarer, M -T. 1932. À vol d'oiseau : récits missionnaires : suivis de Comment s'est fondée une mission chez les antropophages [sic], Québec (Province): s.n., Collection Stella Maris, p. 215. Marie-Bernadette was designated in 1901 by Égide De Boeck (1875–1944), the Scheut missionary and vice-director of the colonial boarding school at Nouvelle-Anvers,Wolters, Eug. 1958. "Boeck (De) (Égide) (Mgr.)", in: Biographie Coloniale Belge, Bruxelles: Librairie Falk fils, Vol. V, p. 87-89.Storme, M. 1967. "Boeck (De) (Égide)", in: Biographie Coloniale Belge, Bruxelles: Librairie Falk fils, Vol. VI, p. 74-77. to undertake the printing and binding of the very first books to be published in the Lingala language; these grammars, lexicons, religious tracts and hymn books were authored by De Boeck,Michael Meeuwis. 2009. "Involvement in Language: The Role of the Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae in the History of Lingala", The Catholic Historical Review 95(2): 240-260. and by Father Camille Van Ronslé.Starr, Frederick. 1908. A Bibliography of Congo languages, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 25-26, 63. With a very limited supply of type, only one page could be printed at a time, however at least eight volumes in Lingala were published under Marie-Bernadette's guidance, beginning in 1903 with Mambi makristu [Things Christian] by Van Ronslé and Buku moke moa kutanga Lingala [Little book for reading Lingala] by De Boeck.Bontinck, F. 1988. Les Missionnaires de Scheut au Zaire, 1888–1988, Limete-Kinshasa: Epiphanie, p. 26, 29. One century later, Lingala, which De Boeck had constructed from elements of Bangala and other Bantu languages including Bobangi, Mabale, and Iboko, has 25 million speakers worldwide, and has become a lingua franca in both the D.R. Congo and the Republic of the Congo.

In Canada, church groups in Victoria and Ottawa contributed to the European condemnation of the atrocities committed by King Leopold II against Congolese slave labourers, in the form of a letter written to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, calling upon Britain to "secure to the people of the Congo Free State due protection and justice," and this public pressure ultimately led in 1908 to Leopold's relinquishment, and creation of the Belgian Congo colony.Spooner, Kevin A. 2009. "Canada, the Congo crisis, and UN peacekeeping, 1960–64", Vancouver, UBC Press, p. 13-16, 128-130, 224 n.13.

1940s and the Second World War In 1939,Bothwell, Robert. 1984. Eldorado, Canada's national uranium company, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 107-116, 434. the United States purchased 1,200 tons of uranium oreRotter, Andrew J. 2008. Hiroshima: The World's Bomb, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 63, 112. from the Union Minière du Haut Katanga's Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo,Groves, Leslie R. 1962. Now it can be told: the story of the Manhattan Project, New York, N.Y. : Da Capo Press, 1962. that was warehoused on Staten Island, New York City.Gray, Earle. 1982. The Great Uranium Cartel, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, p. 19-29.McNamara, Pat. 2008. "CAO Radioactive waste cleanup in Port Hope, Ontario", Petition: No. 232, Office of the Auditor General of Canada, 4 January 2008, http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/pet_232_e_30304.html (accessed April 19, 2011) The Canadian municipality of Port Hope, Ontario was site of the former radium producer and, at that time, sole North American uranium refiner, Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, which between 1941 and 1946 provided a steady supply of refined uranium oxide to the Manhattan Project.Eggleston, Wilfred. 1966. Canada's Nuclear Story, London: Harrap Research, p. 44. In 1942, the Canadian government acquired Eldorado, making it a crown corporation in 1944. Eldorado's initial supplies were derived from uranium concentrates at Port Hope that had accumulated as tailings from its past radium operations, and, beginning in 1942, refined from newly mined ore shipped from its re-opened Great Bear Lake pitchblende mine in the Northwest Territories.Nixon, Alan. Canada's Nuclear Fuel Industry: An Overview, Science and Technology Division, November 1993, Depository Services Program, BP-360E, http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp360-e.htm (accessed April 19, 2011). Eldorado in addition refined at Port Hope the US's Congolese ore stockpile that had been shipped from the New York storage facility, and further shipments of ore from the Congo. The 1,100 tons of Canadian-mined uranium, and 3,700 tons from the Congo that were refined in Canada, along with 1,200 tons from Colorado, comprised the six thousand tons of uranium oxideNorris, Robert S. 2002. Racing for the bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's indispensable man, South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press, p. 327. that formed the Manhattan Project's raw materials for the fissionable cores of the uranium-235 and plutonium-239 atomic bombs that were released and exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, immediately killing an estimated thirty percent of Hiroshima's civilian and military population,Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. "U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, June 19, 1946.", President's Secretary's File, Truman Papers. 2. Hiroshima., p. 6 (page 11 of 51), http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=11 (accessed April 19, 2011). and resulting in an estimated total of 293,000 fatalities in the two cities, from both the immediate blast and long-term radiation exposure.Cheek, Dennis W. 2005. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki", in: Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics, Ed. Carl Mitcham, Vol. 2, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, p.921-924.

Post-WW2 After the Second World War, the Belgian Congo became one of the first of Canada's commercial partners in Africa, the first trade post outside the British Commonwealth, with a trade commissioner posted in Léopoldville in 1948,Brown, J. C. Gordon. 2000. Blazes along a diplomatic trail: a memoir of four posts in the Canadian foreign service, Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, p. 158, 163, 165, . and ranking it among Canada's top dozen trading partners. In the mid-1950s the Canadian company Aluminum Limited attempted to gain control of the construction of the Inga hydro-electric power project at Matadi on the Congo River, however they "anxiously preferred to remain discreet" to avoid "antagoniz[ing] Belgian business interests."