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597 recordsStructured records (JSON) ↗
James J. Hill, 1916 (Pach Bros.).
CA-K811Economy & trade

James J. Hill, railway builder

James Jerome Hill, born near Rockwood, Upper Canada, moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1856. He organized the Red River Transportation Company linking St. Paul and Winnipeg and by 1878 was building a railway empire. A CPR board member from 1880 to 1883, he became a major competitor, organized the Great Northern system by 1889, and built many feeder lines to the Canadian border.

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Photo: Pach Bros. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Coles, 1865 (William Notman).
CA-K807History

George Coles, premier of Prince Edward Island

George Coles, a native Prince Edward Islander, represented Queen’s in the House of Assembly from 1842 to 1868. Co-founder of the Liberal Party with Edward Whelan and a strong advocate of responsible government, he became premier when it was granted in 1851 and held office three times. A Father of Confederation, he attended the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Thomas Heath Haviland, 1879 (William James Topley).
CA-K805History

Thomas Heath Haviland, Island Father of Confederation

Thomas Heath Haviland, born in Charlottetown, represented Georgetown in the Prince Edward Island legislature and held posts including Colonial Secretary and Speaker. A delegate to the Quebec Conference of 1864, he was one of three who arranged the Island’s entry into Confederation in 1873. He was then named to the Senate, and later became the province’s Lieutenant-Governor.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Daniel David Palmer, portrait.
CA-K796Culture & sport

D.D. Palmer, founder of chiropractic

Daniel David Palmer, raised in Port Perry, Ontario, was self-educated and interested in spiritualism and alternative medicine. Working as a magnetic healer in the United States, he promoted the theory that spinal alignment could restore health. Despite legal and financial setbacks, he wrote on chiropractic treatment and founded schools, and he is recognized as the founder of chiropractic.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Wilson Bengough, 1900.
CA-K795Culture & sport

J.W. Bengough, cartoonist of Grip

John Wilson Bengough of Toronto was a cartoonist, journalist, poet and lecturer working in several literary and visual forms. In 1873 he founded Grip, a weekly humour magazine where many of his best-known cartoons first appeared. He later drew for the Montreal Star and the Globe, and published A Caricature History of Canadian Politics (1886) and two books of poems.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Kinder Labatt, about 1864.
CA-K794Economy & trade

John Kinder Labatt and the London brewery

John Kinder Labatt, born in Ireland, came to Canada in 1834 and farmed near London, Ontario. In 1847 he bought into Samuel Eccles’ London brewery and in 1854 became its sole owner; under his son and grandson it grew into one of Canada’s largest. He also helped establish London’s early financial institutions and promoted local roads and railways.

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Photo: The Labatt Brewing Company Archival Collection · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, about 1900.
CA-K793Institutions

Sir Wilfred Grenfell, doctor to northern Newfoundland and Labrador

Wilfred Grenfell, an English-born doctor and minister, gave 50 years of service to the people of northern Newfoundland and Labrador. He and those he inspired brought medical, spiritual and material aid to fishers and coastal residents, and he raised funds for projects such as the hospital at St. Anthony. The International Grenfell Association, founded in 1912, carried on his programs.

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Photo: Bain News Service, publisher · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Cyril Genik, portrait.
CA-K791History

Cyril Genik and Ukrainian settlement in the West

During the first wave of Ukrainian immigration (1896–1914), Cyril Genik helped thousands of Ukrainians settle in the western provinces. Named an immigration agent soon after reaching Winnipeg in 1896, he was the first Ukrainian in the federal civil service, and for 18 years advised newcomers while strengthening the community’s cultural life.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Louis-Honoré Fréchette, 1900.
CA-K790Culture & sport

Louis Fréchette, poet of French Canada

Louis Fréchette, born at Lévis, was a noted polemicist and a prominent French-Canadian poet of the 19th century. His collections Les Fleurs boréales and Les Oiseaux de neige won the Académie française’s Prix Montyon in 1880, and he also wrote the epic La Légende d’un peuple. He sat in the House of Commons for Lévis and later was Clerk of the Quebec Legislative Council.

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Photo: Royal Society Portraits · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
James Creighton, 1902 (William James Topley).
CA-K787Culture & sport

James Creighton, “father” of organized hockey

On March 3, 1875, James Creighton and his teammates played the first indoor public hockey game at Montréal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Over the next two years he brought together pucks, sticks, goals and skates with standardized rules and promoted the game. Captain of the first regular hockey club in Canada, he is often called the father of organized hockey.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Henri Bourassa, 1917.
CA-K785Culture & sport

Henri Bourassa, founder of Le Devoir

Henri Bourassa, a noted orator and writer, sat in the House of Commons and the Quebec Legislative Assembly. He broke with Laurier and the Liberals over the Boer War, founded the Montréal daily Le Devoir in 1910 and edited it until 1932. Throughout his career he championed a nationalism based on Canada’s autonomy and cultural duality.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir Robert Borden, 1911 (Notman studio).
CA-K784History

Sir Robert Borden, wartime prime minister

Sir Robert Borden, born at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, led the Conservative Party from 1901 and was Prime Minister from 1911 to 1920. He guided Canada through the First World War, imposed conscription for overseas service in 1917 and formed a Union government of Liberals and Conservatives. He is remembered above all for insisting that Canada act as an autonomous nation in international diplomacy.

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Photo: Notman, Boston · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George A. Cox, portrait published in 1907.
CA-K782Economy & trade

George Cox, banker and insurance magnate

George Cox, after a business career in Peterborough, moved to Toronto as it challenged Montréal as Canada’s banking capital. President of the Canadian Bank of Commerce from 1890 to 1906, he expanded it into Western Canada, and as head of Canada Life he dominated the insurance industry from the mid-1890s until his death in 1914.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Arthur Sturgis Hardy, about 1900 (Archives of Ontario).
CA-K780Institutions

Arthur Hardy, premier of Ontario and Algonquin Park

Arthur Sturgis Hardy, a Brantford lawyer of Loyalist descent, entered Ontario’s legislature in 1873 and served as Provincial Secretary and Commissioner of Crown Lands. He succeeded Oliver Mowat as premier from 1896 to 1899, and his most lasting contribution was the creation of Algonquin Provincial Park.

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Photo: Unknown photographer (about 1900); Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Octave Crémazie, published in 1905.
CA-K779Culture & sport

Octave Crémazie, national poet of French Canada

Octave Crémazie of Québec, a founder of the Institut canadien de Québec, ran a bookstore with his brother that became the cradle of a literary movement inspired by French Romanticism. His poem “Le Drapeau de Carillon” made him French Canada’s national poet; financial trouble exiled him to France in 1862, where he wrote his Journal du siège de Paris.

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Photo: Albert Ferlland · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Henry Marshall Tory, first president of Carleton College.
CA-K775Institutions

Henry Marshall Tory, university builder

Henry Marshall Tory of Port Shoreham, Nova Scotia, taught at McGill and was the first president of the University of Alberta from 1908 to 1928. A distinguished scientist, he led the National Research Council from 1923 to 1935 and founded Carleton College in Ottawa, devoting his life to spreading scientific knowledge.

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Photo: The original uploader was Kristoferb at English Wikipedia. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Statue of La Vérendrye on the façade of the Parliament Building, Québec City.
CA-K759Places & geography

La Vérendrye and the posts of the West

Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye of Trois-Rivières, soldier, trader and explorer, founded with his sons between 1731 and 1743 a series of posts beyond Lake Superior that became bases for French exploration of the West. They included Forts Saint-Pierre, Rouge and La Reine, at today’s Fort Frances, Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie.

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Photo: sculpteur:Jean Bailleul / photo: Jean Gagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Charles Fitzpatrick, Chief Justice of Canada (Supreme Court of Canada).
CA-K755Institutions

Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, chief justice of Canada

Charles Fitzpatrick held Université Laval’s chair of criminal law for nearly 30 years and served Laurier as Solicitor General and Minister of Justice. He became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1906 and was lieutenant-governor of Quebec from 1918 to 1923.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert Duncan Wilmot, May 1868 (Topley Studio).
CA-K752History

Robert Duncan Wilmot, New Brunswick Father of Confederation

Robert Duncan Wilmot of Saint John sat in New Brunswick’s legislature from 1846 to 1861. Elected in 1865 as an opponent of Confederation, he changed sides and attended the London Conference in 1866; he was then appointed to the Senate, became its Speaker in 1878 and was lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick from 1880.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Percy Girouard in 1899 (Wm. Notman & Son, McCord Museum).
CA-K749History

Sir Percy Girouard, railway engineer of empire

Percy Girouard of Montréal, a graduate of the Royal Military College in Kingston, joined the Royal Engineers in 1888. He built the Wadi Halfa–Khartoum railway from 1896, directed railways in South Africa and oversaw the line to Kano in Northern Nigeria, later serving as governor of Northern Nigeria and of East Africa and as Britain’s director general of munitions supply.

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Photo: Studio Wn. Notman & Son · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Frederick B. T. Carter, Premier of Newfoundland, June 1869 (Topley Studio).
CA-K746History

Sir Frederick Carter, Newfoundland Father of Confederation

Frederick Carter of St. John’s, Speaker of Newfoundland’s House of Assembly, was a delegate to the Québec Conference in 1864 and, convinced of the merits of union with Canada, formed a coalition government in 1865 to pursue it. Defeated by Charles Fox Bennett’s anti-Confederates in 1869, he later returned as premier and became chief justice of Newfoundland in 1880.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
James Garfield Gardiner (Alexandra Studio, Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K739Institutions

Jimmy Gardiner, voice of the Prairie farmer

James Garfield “Jimmy” Gardiner, first elected to Saskatchewan’s legislature as a Liberal in 1914, was twice premier of the province and federal Minister of Agriculture from 1936 to 1957. A combative, intensely partisan politician, he was for years his party’s bulwark in the West and the voice of the Prairie farmer in Ottawa.

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Photo: Alexandra Studio / Library and Archives Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Browne, 1875 (Studio Inglis, BAnQ).
CA-K736Culture & sport

George Browne, architect of Kingston City Hall

George Browne, who emigrated from Belfast in 1830, became one of the most gifted architects of 19th-century Canada, known for an original mastery of Neoclassicism. His many commissions adapted the major styles of his time to local settings, and his imposing Kingston City Hall and civic buildings in Montréal and Québec City projected prosperity and strength.

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Photo: Studio of Inglis (Montréal, Québec) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Onésime Dorval (seated) with her adopted daughter Georgine d’Amours, late 1800s.
CA-K721Institutions

Onésime Dorval, Saskatchewan’s first certified teacher

Onésime Dorval, born in Quebec, came west in 1877 and became Saskatchewan’s first certified teacher. For over 40 years she taught at Oblate missions in Manitoba and at St-Laurent-Grandin, Battleford, Batoche and Duck Lake, was a talented painter and woodworker, and is fondly remembered in Métis and francophone communities.

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Photo: Unspecified; from St. Vital Parish, Battleford, Saskatchewan. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context