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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
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
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
The last conference between Légaré and Sitting Bull (Saskatchewan Archives).
CA-K465History

Jean-Louis Légaré and Sitting Bull

Jean-Louis Légaré, a fur trader from Quebec who came to Wood Mountain in 1870 and founded a post at Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan, in 1880, was a trusted friend and unofficial spokesman for First Nations and Métis people. When Sitting Bull’s Lakota followers sought refuge in Canada, he worked with the North-West Mounted Police to keep the peace and persuade them to return to the United States.

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Photo: Saskatchewan Archives · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Taylor Denison III.
CA-K463History

George T. Denison, Canada First and imperial federation

George Taylor Denison, from a prominent Toronto family, commanded a cavalry regiment that served in the Fenian Raids and the 1885 North-West Resistance, and helped found the nationalist Canada First movement. Believing Canada could keep its sovereignty only within the British Empire, he became a leader of the Imperial Federation League, and he was a Toronto police magistrate for 43 years.

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Photo: Unknown author · 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
Margaret Marshall Saunders (Gauvin & Gentzel).
CA-K451Culture & sport

Margaret Marshall Saunders and Beautiful Joe

Margaret Marshall Saunders of Milton, Nova Scotia, wrote some 25 books, 14 of them animal stories. Her first, Beautiful Joe (1894), the gentle autobiography of a dog, sold about a million copies in 14 languages, and she gave most of her royalties to humane societies.

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Photo: Gauvin & Gentzel · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Portrait of Grace Annie Lockhart.
CA-K450Institutions

Grace Annie Lockhart, first woman graduate in the British Empire

Grace Annie Lockhart was the first woman to earn a university degree in the British Empire. A student at the Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy in Sackville, New Brunswick, she took courses at Mount Allison College, which had become co-educational in 1872, enrolled formally in 1874 and graduated on 25 May 1875 with a Bachelor of Science and English Literature.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Mary Agnes Snively, portrait published in 1901.
CA-K449Institutions

Mary Agnes Snively and the nursing profession

Mary Agnes Snively led the struggle to have nursing recognized as a science-based profession rather than a domestic pursuit. In 1908 she founded the Canadian National Association of Trained Nurses, which became the Canadian Nurses Association in 1924, and she made the Toronto General Hospital School of Nursing a model of nursing education.

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Photo: The American Journal of Nursing · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Portrait of Timothy Eaton, 1903.
CA-K439Economy & trade

Timothy Eaton, department store and mail order

Timothy Eaton, born in Ireland, opened his own store in Toronto in 1869. Innovations such as cash sales at fixed prices made it one of Canada’s first department stores, and in 1884 he introduced a mail-order department that brought low prices and a wide choice of goods to rural Canadians. At his death it was Canada’s largest retail business.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier (Bain News Service).
CA-K438Places & geography

Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier and Arctic sovereignty

Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier of L’Islet, Quebec, a skilled navigator, travelled widely in the Canadian North between 1904 and 1925. On seven of these expeditions he commanded the government ship CGS Arctic, affirming Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic Archipelago.

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Photo: George Grantham Bain Collection · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Joseph-Armand Bombardier at the wheel of a Bombardier military snowmobile, March 1943.
CA-K435Economy & trade

Joseph-Armand Bombardier and the snowmobile

Joseph-Armand Bombardier of Valcourt, Quebec, developed snow vehicles that helped reduce winter isolation in rural areas of Canada and elsewhere. He patented the snowmobile in 1937 and the smaller Ski-Doo in 1960, both designed and built in Valcourt, and after his death the company he founded became a world leader in transportation.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Lionel Conacher as a football player in Toronto, 1933.
CA-K430Culture & sport

Lionel Conacher, the “Big Train”

Lionel “Big Train” Conacher excelled at six professional sports and was voted Canada’s all-round male athlete of the half-century in 1950. A star of football and lacrosse who helped win the 1921 Grey Cup, he played in the National Hockey League from 1925 to 1937 on two Stanley Cup-winning teams, then was elected to the Ontario legislature and, in 1949, to the House of Commons.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Howie Morenz of the Montréal Canadiens, around 1936.
CA-K429Culture & sport

Howie Morenz, the “Stratford Streak”

Howie Morenz of Mitchell, Ontario, joined the Montréal Canadiens in 1923 and helped them win three Stanley Cups, twice leading the league in scoring and winning the Hart Trophy three times. Probably the most exciting player of his day, he died in Montréal of complications from a hockey injury and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Ned Hanlan, world rowing champion, around 1878 (Notman & Sandham).
CA-K427Culture & sport

Ned Hanlan, world rowing champion

Ned Hanlan of Toronto was a champion rower in an era when rowing was a hugely popular spectator sport. He won the world sculling title in 1880 and held it until 1884, and by his retirement in 1897 had lost only about six of some 350 races. Known as “The Boy in Blue”, he was one of Canada’s first national sporting heroes.

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Photo: Notman & Sandham · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Wilder Penfield as a student at Princeton University, 1911.
CA-K425History

Wilder Penfield and the Montreal Neurological Institute

Wilder Penfield founded the Montreal Neurological Institute and directed it for over 25 years, becoming a world leader in neurosurgery and neurology. His pioneering work on epilepsy led to a new surgical procedure and advanced understanding of how the human brain works, and his institute became a renowned centre for research and treatment of nervous system disorders.

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Photo: Bain News Service · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context