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The commemorative plaque to Louis-Guillaume Verrier in Québec City, 2021.
CA-K501Institutions

Louis-Guillaume Verrier and the first law courses in Canada

Louis-Guillaume Verrier, born in France, was attorney general of New France and a member of the Council of Quebec for 30 years from 1728. He founded the first school of law in Canada, and from 1735 many future lawyers took his courses; he also assembled a library of some 4,000 volumes.

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Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
R. B. Bennett, prime minister (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K499Institutions

R. B. Bennett, prime minister in the Depression

Richard Bedford Bennett, born at Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, moved to Calgary in 1897 and sat in the North-West Territories and Alberta legislatures before entering the House of Commons in 1911. Conservative leader from 1927, he was prime minister from 1930 to 1935, and his government’s association with the Depression contributed to its defeat.

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Photo: Library and Archives Canada / C-008098 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Marshall McLuhan in 1945 (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K491Culture & sport

Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message”

Marshall McLuhan, a University of Toronto professor and pioneer of media studies, became famous in the 1960s for his theories about how print and electronic media shape human perception and behaviour. His ideas of the “global village” and “the medium is the message” made him one of the most celebrated scholars in the Western world.

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Photo: Josephine Smith · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Peter McArthur, portrait published in 1916.
CA-K486Culture & sport

Peter McArthur, farmer and essayist

Peter McArthur of Appin, Ontario, edited the New York magazine Truth from 1896, encouraging Canadian and American writers. Returning to his birthplace in 1908, he combined farming with journalism, and his best-known collection of essays is In Pastures Green.

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Photo: Photographer not named. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Frederick Varley, probably in Vancouver, 1927 (John Vanderpant).
CA-K484Culture & sport

Frederick Varley, painter of the Group of Seven

Frederick Varley, a founding member of the Group of Seven, helped establish a national style of painting the Canadian landscape. A masterful portraitist and an official First World War artist, he moved to teach on the West Coast in 1926, and his unconventional use of colour to convey emotion is a singular contribution to Canadian art.

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Photo: John Vanderpant · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Hunt in 1898 (Harlan I. Smith, BC Archives).
CA-K482Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

George Hunt, Kwakwaka’wakw ethnographer

George Hunt, born at Fort Rupert to English and Tlingit parents and fully accepted into Kwakwaka’wakw society, was one of the most outstanding ethnographers of West Coast Indigenous peoples. He worked to preserve and share his people’s traditional knowledge, recording, translating and interpreting material that revealed the richness of Kwakwaka’wakw culture.

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Photo: Harlan Ingersoll Smith · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Stephen Willison, portrait published in 1913.
CA-K479Culture & sport

Sir John Willison, editor of the Globe

As editor of the Toronto Globe from 1890 to 1902, John Stephen Willison made it the most influential Liberal newspaper in Canada. Disenchanted with Laurier’s government, he took over the independent Toronto News in 1902, later became Canadian correspondent of The Times of London, and wrote a significant study of Laurier and the Liberal Party.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, September 1900 (Topley Studio).
CA-K478Institutions

Clifford Sifton and settlement of the Prairies

Clifford Sifton, a lawyer, politician and principal owner of the Manitoba Free Press, was Laurier’s Minister of the Interior from 1896 to 1905. He was chiefly responsible for the plan to populate the Prairies with farmers through immigration, and earlier in the Manitoba cabinet he helped reach the compromise on the schools question.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George MacKinnon Wrong, around 1920.
CA-K477Institutions

George Wrong, first professor of modern history in Toronto

George MacKinnon Wrong became the University of Toronto’s first Professor of Modern History in 1895. He saw Canadian history through its British and French origins and the American presence, and as a teacher, writer and early leader of the Canadian Historical Association he helped give an intellectual base to a developing Canadian identity.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
Georges-Antoine Belcourt, around 1860.
CA-K476Economy & trade

Father Belcourt and the Farmers’ Bank of Rustico

Georges-Antoine Belcourt, a former missionary at Red River, led his parishioners in Rustico, Prince Edward Island, to found one of Canada’s first people’s banks, chartered in 1864 and run by farmers and fishers until 1894. By providing cheap credit it helped this mainly Acadian community gain economic independence and foreshadowed the credit union movement.

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Photo: Jules-Isaïe Benoît · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Dr. Robert Bell aboard the S.S. Diana in 1897 (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K475History

Robert Bell, explorer of the Canadian Shield

Robert Bell joined the Geological Survey of Canada as a 15-year-old summer student and served it full-time from 1867 to 1908, becoming one of Canada’s leading explorers with extensive surveys of the North and the Canadian Shield. A founding member of the Royal Society of Canada, he was acting director of the Survey from 1901 to 1906.

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Photo: Graham Drinkwater · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Philip Francis Little, from D. W. Prowse’s History of Newfoundland (1896).
CA-K474Institutions

Philip Francis Little, Newfoundland’s first premier

Philip Francis Little, elected to Newfoundland’s Assembly in 1850, campaigned for responsible government and united the Liberal Party behind it. In 1855 he became the colony’s first premier under responsible government, and he advanced Newfoundland’s interests through the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Enos Collins, around 1870 (Notman Studio, Nova Scotia Archives).
CA-K472Economy & trade

Enos Collins, privateer and Halifax financier

Enos Collins, a seaman from Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and sometime privateer, was reputed to be the richest man in British North America when he died. His fortune from shrewd mercantile and financial investments helped develop Halifax, and he sat on the governor’s council from 1822 to 1838; a Tory, he nonetheless opposed Confederation.

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Photo: Notman Studio/Reference no.: 1983-310/ 10 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir William Edmond Logan in Montréal, 1865 (William Notman).
CA-K470History

Sir William Logan, first director of the Geological Survey

Sir William Edmond Logan of Montréal, a mapmaker and geologist in the mining districts of Wales, became the first director of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1842. He led much of the early scientific mapping of the province, built the mineral collection that became the basis of the National Museum, and earned international recognition for his geological work.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Charles Mair, portrait published in 1916.
CA-K468Culture & sport

Charles Mair, poet of Canada First

Charles Mair, born at Lanark, Upper Canada, was a journalist, poet, advocate of western expansion and an original member of the Canada First movement. A controversial figure during the Red River Resistance of 1869–1870, he later worked in business in the West and for the immigration service, and wrote works including Tecumseh and Through the Mackenzie Basin.

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Photo: Photographer not named. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Alexander Mackenzie in March 1878 (Topley Studio).
CA-K467Institutions

Alexander Mackenzie, second prime minister

Alexander Mackenzie came to Canada from Scotland in 1842 and worked as a building contractor in Kingston and Sarnia. Elected for Lambton in 1861 and to the first House of Commons in 1867, he was Canada’s second prime minister from 1873 to 1878 and worked to consolidate the new Dominion.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Monro Grant, principal of Queen’s College (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K466Institutions

George Monro Grant, principal of Queen’s

George Monro Grant, born at Albion Mines (Stellarton), Nova Scotia, was an educator and writer, author of Ocean to Ocean and minister of St. Matthew’s Church in Halifax. He was principal of Queen’s University from 1877 to 1902 and president of the Royal Society of Canada in 1901.

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Photo: Government of Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Guido Nincheri, around 1945.
CA-K462Culture & sport

Guido Nincheri, church artist of Montréal

Guido Nincheri had a major impact on church decoration in Canada in the first half of the 20th century, mastering buon fresco, painting on fresh plaster, which was rarely used in North America, and designing many church interiors and stained-glass windows. Detained during the internment of Italian Canadians in the Second World War, he later worked in the United States while keeping his Montréal studio.

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Photo: Paul Provencher [2] (dead link) [3] (1902-1982) [4] · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Marius Barbeau, salon portrait by Joseph-Alexandre Castonguay, 1942 (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K461Culture & sport

Marius Barbeau, ethnographer and folklorist

Marius Barbeau, born at Sainte-Marie in the Beauce, was a pioneer Canadian ethnographer and folklorist who wrote hundreds of books and articles over a lifetime at the National Museum of Canada. His studies of West Coast totem poles brought them worldwide attention, and his collections of Quebec folk arts, songs and legends stirred pride in traditional French-Canadian culture.

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Photo: Joseph-Alexandre Castonguay · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Dr. Healey Willan in 1930 (Archives of Ontario).
CA-K457Culture & sport

Healey Willan, composer of sacred music

Healey Willan came to Canada in 1913 to teach at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, now the Royal Conservatory. As organist and choirmaster of St. Mary Magdalene in Toronto from 1921 to 1968, he composed the sacred music for which he is particularly remembered.

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Photo: Unknown photographer (1930); Archives of Ontario, I0001735 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Helena Gutteridge in 1911 (City of Vancouver Archives).
CA-K456Institutions

Helena Gutteridge, suffragist and labour organizer

Helena Gutteridge, a feminist reformer who had campaigned for the vote in Britain, came to Vancouver in 1911 and brought wage-earning women into Canada’s mostly middle-class suffrage movement. She helped organize women workers through the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, and in 1937 became the first woman elected to Vancouver City Council, helping lay the foundations of social housing in British Columbia.

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Photo: Matthews, James Skitt, Major · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Mary Southcott, portrait published in The Distaff, 1917.
CA-K455Institutions

Mary Southcott and nursing in Newfoundland

Mary Southcott, an educator, suffragist and nursing leader, led the campaign to professionalize nursing in early 20th-century Newfoundland. Trained in London, she founded the St. John’s General Hospital School of Nursing in 1903, the only one in Newfoundland until 1929, and helped raise standards, train midwives and found a professional association of nurses.

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Photo: The Distaff, 1917 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Portrait of Lady Aberdeen (Toronto Public Library).
CA-K447Institutions

Lady Aberdeen, the National Council of Women and the VON

Lady Aberdeen (Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks), wife of Governor General Lord Aberdeen (1893–1898), devoted her life to social causes. In Canada she founded the National Council of Women, helped establish the Victorian Order of Nurses and led the Aberdeen Association, which sent reading material to settlers; she also served for years as president of the International Council of Women.

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Photo: Special Collections Toronto Public Library from Toronto, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Charles Edenshaw, Haida artist (Canadian Museum of History).
CA-K445Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Charles Edenshaw (Tahayren), Haida artist

Charles Edenshaw (Tahayren), born at Skidegate, was the foremost Haida carver at the time Haida art first won international recognition. Trained by his uncle, he worked in argillite and silver in a personal style that extended the traditional range of Haida art, and his work is held in museums in North America and Europe.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context