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Assiniboine Park and Zoo was established in Winnipeg in 1904. The park, designed by Frederick Todd, was the centrepiece of the city’s expanding urban park system and remains an example of a combined public park and zoo.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Reid Campbell · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
In 1880, Canada became the first country of the British Empire to establish a high commission in London, mainly to promote trade and immigration, with former finance minister Sir Alexander Galt as the first high commissioner. Canada’s oldest diplomatic posting moved in 1925 to Canada House on Trafalgar Square, now a symbol of Canada in the British capital.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: PAUL FARMER · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The Chinese Immigration Act (Chinese Exclusion Act), which took effect on 1 July 1923, imposed discriminatory restrictions on Chinese immigration and replaced the head tax. All Chinese people in Canada, including those born here, had to register or risk fines, detention or deportation. Chinese Canadians challenged the law until its repeal in 1947.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Kyle Lawrence · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
In September 1931, coal miners in Bienfait, Saskatchewan, went on a 30-day strike when mine owners refused to recognize their union. A motor cavalcade of strikers and supporters turned deadly in Estevan when police shot and killed three miners and injured 23 others; known as Black Tuesday, it remains a tragic legacy of the Depression.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Quintin Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
Ducks Unlimited Canada was founded in Winnipeg in 1938 by Canadian and American sportsmen responding to declining waterfowl populations and wetland loss. The organization helped develop wetland restoration and carried out one of the first large-scale surveys of breeding waterfowl, an early example of international, grassroots conservation.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
The Toronto Maple Leafs trace their origins to one of the first National Hockey League teams, formed in 1917; co-owner Conn Smythe renamed the St. Patricks the Maple Leafs in 1927 and built Maple Leaf Gardens during the Depression. Foster Hewitt’s broadcasts brought the team national attention, and it won 13 Stanley Cups between 1918 and 1967.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jeff Hitchcock · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Sara Jeannette Duncan (1861–1922), a pioneering late-19th-century journalist, challenged norms by examining women’s changing roles, the need for a national culture and Canadian politics. After leaving Canada in 1890 she lived in India and England and wrote more than 20 popular books, including The Imperialist (1904), a Canadian classic set in a fictionalized Brantford.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: not stated · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Kathleen Blake Coleman (1856–1915), writing as “Kit,” ran the “Woman’s Kingdom” pages of Toronto’s Daily Mail, later the Mail and Empire, from 1889 to 1911, winning a wide following with her witty, irreverent style. As the first American-accredited woman war correspondent, she covered the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Photographer unidentified · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Larry Gains (1900–1983), a Black boxer born and trained in Toronto’s Cabbagetown, was one of the world’s best heavyweights in the 1920s and 1930s, winning the Canadian and British Empire heavyweight titles. Racism limited his chances in North America and barred him from a world heavyweight title fight despite wins over future champions.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Lieutenant-Colonel John By (1779–1836), who built the Rideau Canal, is recognized as one of the greatest early engineers in Canada. He was designated a National Historic Person in 1954.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hayden Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
After the Second World War, nearly 187,000 people fled devastated Europe for Canada, including Holocaust survivors, former prisoners of war and thousands unable or unwilling to return home; most arrived by ship between 1947 and 1952. Many first worked as labourers despite professional training, and their arrival strengthened calls to recognize Canada’s growing cultural diversity.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: E.A. Bollinger · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The RCMP Musical Ride, a precision performance by scarlet-uniformed police on horseback set to music, was first performed in Regina in 1887 by the North-West Mounted Police. The RCMP has bred and trained black horses for the Ride since the 1940s, and it is one of the distinctive symbols of Canadian identity at home and abroad.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Andrea_44 from Leamington, Ontario , Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Canadian military nurses have cared for the sick and wounded in battle since 1885. In 1904, professional nurses joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps as Nursing Sisters, the first women in the British Empire to receive military rank; in the two world wars hundreds were decorated and dozens died from enemy action.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William Rider-Rider · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
When Saskatchewan’s Medical Care Insurance Act took effect on 1 July 1962, most of the province’s doctors went on strike for 23 days. Perhaps the most significant Canadian doctors’ strike of the 20th century, it exemplified conflicts in the development of medicare between state intervention and physicians’ independence, and between doctors as entrepreneurs and patients’ right to care regardless of income.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Quintin Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
The Examination Unit (1941–1945) was Canada’s secret civilian cryptographic bureau in the Second World War, working within the National Research Council; women made up about 40% of its staff. It helped the Allies decrypt French, German and Japanese messages and paved the way for the Communications Security Establishment, founded in 1975.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Suwannee.payne · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
On 23 February 1909, more than 100 people watched the Silver Dart lift off the ice of Baddeck Bay, Nova Scotia, and fly 800 metres: the first successful powered flight in Canada. Piloted by J. A. D. McCurdy, the biplane was built by the Aerial Experiment Association, founded by Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell (see CA-K154).
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Miguasha National Park, on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, preserves fossils from about 370 million years ago, when the coast was a tropical estuary. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, it is described as the world’s most outstanding fossil site for illustrating the Devonian “Age of Fishes,” including lobe-finned fish linked to the evolution of four-limbed animals.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: James St. John · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
In 1931, the Rotary Clubs of Alberta and Montana proposed uniting Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the first such park in the world. It was meant to promote peace and goodwill between nations and to underline the international nature of wilderness; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Royalbroil · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Old Town Lunenburg, on Nova Scotia’s south coast, is the best surviving example of the British colonial policy of founding settlements on a pre-designed “model town” plan, with straight streets and square corners. Of at least 21 North American settlements laid out this way, none survives in such pristine condition; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The Historic District of Old Québec, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, covers 135 hectares, and close to half its buildings were built before 1850. Québec has retained almost all its fortifications, a defining feature of the historic district.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: DXR · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Dinosaur Provincial Park in eastern Alberta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, preserves fossils from about 75 million years ago, when the area was a coastal plain where about 35 species of dinosaur lived. Its badlands are outstanding for the number and variety of high-quality specimens representing every known group of Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hirgax · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
In 1905, explorer and surveyor Mina Hubbard (1870–1956) led an expedition across Labrador, travelling 900 kilometres from North West River to Ungava Bay. Her continuous latitude measurements established the positions of the Naskaupi and George rivers, and her map was immediately recognized by the American and British geographical societies.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Botanist and geneticist Carrie Derick (1862–1941) overcame strong opposition to become one of the first women appointed to a full professorship in Canada, at McGill University from 1912 to 1929. A suffragist and reformer, she promoted political and educational equality for women; Parks Canada’s 2024 review also notes that she held eugenic views widely shared in her academic circles.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sculptors Frances Loring (1887–1968) and Florence Wyle (1881–1968) were important in the development of Canadian sculpture, creating works from portraits to First World War memorials. For nearly 50 years they shared a Toronto home and studio known as “The Church,” a gathering place for artists; both were founding members of the Sculptors Society of Canada in 1928.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: JRB76D · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context