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Waterton Lakes National Park covers 505 square kilometres in southwestern Alberta, where evergreen forests, wind-swept prairies, steep mountains and deep lakes meet. These varied habitats support more than 250 bird species and over 60 mammal species.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: GlacierNPS · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Jasper National Park in Alberta is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies. It is a dark-sky preserve known for its wildlife and extensive trail network.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Joli Rumi · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Elk Island National Park lies about 48 kilometres east of downtown Edmonton, in Treaty 6 territory and the Métis homeland. Its rolling hills, lakes and dark skies form a landscape Indigenous Peoples have long used for sustenance, ceremony, trade and travel. The park supports bison, elk and more than 250 bird species.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Khoshhat · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
The dense forests, glacial waters, high peaks and deep canyons of Banff National Park in Alberta provide habitat for 56 species of mammals, 300 species of birds and more than 800 species of plants. Building on a long history of wildlife research and conservation, Parks Canada works to protect and restore the park for future generations.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Florian Fuchs · Photo licence: CC BY 3.0 · Credit & context
John Norquay, a Métis statesman born at St. Andrew’s in the Red River settlement, was elected to Manitoba’s first assembly in 1870 and became premier in 1878. His government, built on shared French and English participation, won an extended Manitoba boundary and better financial terms from Ottawa, and built railways in defiance of the Canadian Pacific charter and federal disallowance. He resigned as premier in 1887 but sat as a member until his death.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Abraham Albert Heaps, labour leader and politician, fought for workers and spoke for the Jewish community. One of the more moderate leaders of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, he pressed for workers’ rights while seeking a peaceful settlement. As MP for Winnipeg North (1925–40) he fought antisemitism, sought reform of immigration policy and the admission of Jewish refugees, and championed old age pensions and unemployment insurance.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: City of Winnipeg · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William Ogilvie of Ottawa became a Dominion Land Surveyor in 1872. He worked on the Canada–Alaska boundary survey and explored the Mackenzie River, contributing to mapping Canada’s northwest. He wrote The Klondike Official Guide (1898) and served as Commissioner of the Yukon from 1898 to 1901, during the Klondike Gold Rush.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John William Ritchie, a gifted lawyer, legislator and judge, helped pave the way for Nova Scotia’s reluctant entry into Confederation. A member of the colony’s legislature and solicitor general (1864–67), he was a delegate to the London Conference of 1866–67, which finalized the terms of union. After championing Confederation in the Legislative Council, he was named to the first Senate and later sat on the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown artist · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Horatio Walker, born at Listowel, Ontario, learned watercolour in Toronto and was largely self-taught. In 1883 he settled on Île d’Orléans, where for more than fifty years he painted rural life. Elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1918, he became its president in 1925. His traditional portrayals of people and animals won international acclaim and hang in major American galleries and the National Gallery of Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Melvin Ormond Hammond (1876 - 1934) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Henry Wise Wood, born in Missouri, settled in the Carstairs district of Alberta in 1905. He was president of the United Farmers of Alberta from 1916 to 1931, a founder of the prairie wheat pools and first chairman of the Alberta Wheat Pool (1923–37). An advocate of economic group government, he shaped agrarian political thought and helped the United Farmers win and hold power in Alberta from 1921 to 1935.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hess, A.L. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Father Henry Carr, a priest of the Congregation of St. Basil, promoted Catholic colleges within secular universities in Canada. In the early 1900s he modernized St. Michael’s College, turning it into a noted arts college federated with the University of Toronto, and later led similar Catholic colleges at the universities of Saskatchewan and British Columbia. In 1929 he co-founded what became the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Harvey Reginald MacMillan, educated at Yale as one of Canada’s first professional foresters, became British Columbia’s Chief Forester in 1912. In 1919 he founded his own company to sell lumber abroad, taking part in a huge expansion of the industry, and its 1951 merger with Bloedel, Stewart and Welch created one of Canada’s largest forest companies. He was made a CBE for organizing forest production in both world wars.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Don Coltman or Steffens Colmer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Anthony Musgrave, a career imperial civil servant, was governor of Newfoundland (1864–69) and British Columbia (1869–71). In both colonies he worked hard to encourage union with the new Canadian confederation, and under his direction British Columbia entered the Dominion on July 20, 1871. Knighted in 1875, he later governed Natal, South Australia, Jamaica and Queensland.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer; State Library of South Australia · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, a military officer born in Champagne, France, was the first Governor of the Island of Montréal. Inspired by the spiritual climate of his time and the Jesuits’ writings, he answered a call from the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal to found a missionary colony, and in May 1642, he and about fifty people founded Ville-Marie. Despite years of hardship, he laid the foundations of the city of Montréal.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Wilfredor · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
David Milne was one of the first Canadian artists to explore modernist styles and subjects, in paintings, watercolours and prints built on subtle arrangements of colour, space and line. He left Paisley, Ontario, for New York in 1903 and showed at the Armory Show in 1913, then became a Canadian war artist in the First World War. Returning to Ontario in 1929, he painted at Temagami, Palgrave, Six Mile Lake, Toronto, Uxbridge and Bancroft.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Archibald Fraser started in his family’s small sawmill in the 1880s and became a leading pioneer of New Brunswick’s pulp industry. As the lumber trade declined he looked for new uses of the province’s forests, and in 1918 opened a modern pulp mill at Edmundston. He soon became an industry giant, and by his death pulp and paper had replaced lumber as the province’s most important manufacturing industry.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bouchecl · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
James Cockburn came to Montréal from England in 1832, was educated in Toronto and set up a law practice in Cobourg. Elected for Northumberland West in 1861, he attended the Quebec Conference of 1864 as a cabinet minister and is one of the Fathers of Confederation. When the first Parliament of Canada met in November 1867, he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, serving until 1874.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Jonathan McCully, born in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, practised law in Amherst and from 1848 sat in the Legislative Council, serving as Solicitor General and government leader there. As editor of the Halifax Morning Chronicle, the Novascotian and later the Unionist, he championed Confederation and attended the Charlottetown, Quebec and London conferences. Named to the Senate in 1867, he became a judge of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in 1870.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hantsheroes · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Joseph-Israël Tarte, a brilliant polemicist, journalist and politician, took part in every major political battle of his time, working under various banners to protect French and Catholic minorities and strengthen Canada’s place in the Empire. Elected in 1891, he engineered Laurier’s 1896 triumph in Quebec. As Minister of Public Works (1896–1902) he improved St. Lawrence navigation and made Montréal the country’s leading port.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jules-Isaïe Benoît · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
For more than 40 years Marie Lacoste-Gérin-Lajoie worked to improve the lives of women in Quebec. In 1907 she co-founded the Fédération nationale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, an important French-Canadian feminist association, which she led from 1913 to 1933 while writing for its review La Bonne Parole. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, access to higher education and, through the 1931 Civil Code reform, the rights of married women.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Joseph Howe, born in Halifax and largely self-taught, became publisher of the Novascotian and by 1836 was his province’s leading journalist and orator. Elected that year, he led the struggle that won responsible government in 1848. An eloquent opponent of Confederation in the 1860s, he joined the federal cabinet in 1869 after negotiating “better terms” for Nova Scotia, and shortly before his death in 1873 became its lieutenant governor.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Theodore August Heintzman, a German immigrant and experienced craftsman, worked in a piano factory in the United States before his own business there failed. Arriving in Toronto almost penniless in 1860, he built a piano in his daughter’s home and used the proceeds to start a factory. His company grew quickly into one of Canada’s longest-lived piano makers, selling across the country and abroad.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert Barry Dickey, born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, practised law there and sat in the province’s Legislative Council from 1858 to 1867. A Father of Confederation, he attended the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences but would not endorse the Quebec Resolutions until better financial terms were granted in 1866. A successful businessman, he was named to the Senate in 1867.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Ernest Alexander Cruikshank, born in Bertie Township, Ontario, was a journalist and translator before joining the militia in 1877, rising to brigadier-general in 1915 and directing the general staff’s historical section. He chaired the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada from its creation in 1919 until his death, and wrote many papers and books on Ontario and Canadian history.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context