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William Ogilvie, F.R.G.S., portrait.
CA-K995Places & geography

William Ogilvie, surveyor and Commissioner of the Yukon

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.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John William Ritchie, portrait.
CA-K994History

John William Ritchie, Nova Scotia Father of Confederation

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.

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Photo: Unknown artist · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Horatio Walker, R.C.A., 1931 (M.O. Hammond).
CA-K992Culture & sport

Horatio Walker, painter of rural Quebec

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.

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Photo: Melvin Ormond Hammond (1876 - 1934) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Henry Wise Wood, about 1920 (A.L. Hess).
CA-K991Economy & trade

Henry Wise Wood, prairie farm leader

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.

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Photo: Hess, A.L. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Father Henry Carr, C.S.B., 1915.
CA-K990Institutions

Father Henry Carr and St. Michael’s College

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.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
H.R. MacMillan at his desk, 1944.
CA-K989Economy & trade

H.R. MacMillan, forester and lumber industrialist

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.

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Photo: Don Coltman or Steffens Colmer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Anthony Musgrave, 1875.
CA-K986History

Sir Anthony Musgrave and British Columbia’s entry into Confederation

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.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; State Library of South Australia · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Monument to Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, Place d’Armes, Montréal.
CA-K985History

Maisonneuve, founder of Montréal

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.

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Photo: Wilfredor · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
David Milne, New York, 1909.
CA-K983Culture & sport

David Milne, modernist painter

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.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Monument to Archibald Fraser, Edmundston.
CA-K982Economy & trade

Archibald Fraser, pulp pioneer of New Brunswick

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.

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Photo: Bouchecl · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
James Cockburn, 1873 (William James Topley).
CA-K980History

James Cockburn, first Speaker of the House of Commons

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.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Statue of Jonathan McCully by Peter Bustin, Founders Square, Halifax.
CA-K979History

Jonathan McCully, editor and Father of Confederation

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.

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Photo: Hantsheroes · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Joseph-Israël Tarte, about 1890 (Jules-Isaïe Benoît).
CA-K977History

Israël Tarte, architect of Laurier’s 1896 victory

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.

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Photo: Jules-Isaïe Benoît · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Marie Lacoste with Henri Gérin-Lajoie, January 1887.
CA-K976History

Marie Lacoste-Gérin-Lajoie, Quebec feminist

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.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Joseph Howe, 1865 (William Notman).
CA-K973History

Joseph Howe, “Tribune of Nova Scotia”

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.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Theodore August Heintzman, portrait.
CA-K971Economy & trade

Theodore Heintzman, piano maker

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.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert B. Dickey (William James Topley).
CA-K966History

Robert Barry Dickey, Father of Confederation

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.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Brigadier-General Ernest Alexander Cruikshank.
CA-K965Institutions

E.A. Cruikshank, soldier and historian

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.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Thomas Alexander Crerar, official portrait, about 1919.
CA-K964Economy & trade

T.A. Crerar, grain trade leader and Progressive

Thomas Alexander Crerar began as an agrarian reformer at Russell, Manitoba. As head of the Grain Growers’ Grain Company he helped shape Canadian grain marketing, and championing western farmers he led the Progressive movement to great influence in the 1921 election, ending the federal two-party system. He later served in Mackenzie King’s cabinets and was an active Senate leader until 1966.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; Library and Archives Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Skirving Ewart, about 1902.
CA-K962History

J.S. Ewart, lawyer and advocate of Canadian autonomy

John Skirving Ewart, a noted constitutional lawyer born in Toronto, practised in Winnipeg from 1882 to 1904, founding the Manitoba Law Journal and serving on Louis Riel’s appeal defence team. He was counsel for Manitoba’s Roman Catholic minority in the schools dispute of the 1890s, then argued cases before the Supreme Court and Privy Council from Ottawa. He was an early, ardent advocate of Canadian autonomy at home and abroad.

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Photo: Unknown photographer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Percy Erskine Nobbs, 1906 (Wm. Notman & Son).
CA-K961Culture & sport

Percy Erskine Nobbs, Arts and Crafts architect

Percy Erskine Nobbs, a Scottish-born architect, educator, writer and critic, helped advance architecture in early 20th-century Canada. He taught at McGill and wrote on town planning, public housing design and Canadian architecture as a national art. His remarkable, finely built designs, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, reflect his strong commitment to fine craftsmanship.

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Photo: Wm. Notman & Son · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
Captain Sir Leopold McClintock, about 1860.
CA-K960Places & geography

Sir Leopold McClintock and the fate of Franklin

Leopold McClintock sailed as a young lieutenant on the Franklin search expeditions of 1848 and 1850, proving an intrepid sled traveller on Somerset and Melville islands. In 1857 Lady Franklin sent him in the Fox to check the reports of Franklin’s death that Dr. John Rae had received from Inuit. In spring 1859 he found written evidence of Franklin’s fate on the shore of King William Island.

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Photo: John Powles Cheyne · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Alexander Gibson, about 1890.
CA-K959Economy & trade

Alexander “Boss” Gibson, New Brunswick’s Lumber King

Alexander Gibson, lumber and railway baron and generous benefactor, was a pivotal figure in the Maritime economy as it was integrated into the national economy. A leading New Brunswick entrepreneur, he expanded from lumber into cotton, developing Marysville into one of Canada’s first model company towns. Though his business foundered under overproduction encouraged by the National Policy, he left the province important railway and industrial infrastructure.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Robson, portrait (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K957History

John Robson, newspaperman and premier of British Columbia

John Robson, born in Perth, Ontario, came to British Columbia in 1859. In 1861 he founded the British Columbian at New Westminster, a newspaper on the British Columbia mainland, and used it to demand responsible government. Elected in 1867, he urged the colony to join Confederation, held several cabinet posts and was premier from 1889 until his accidental death in London, working to organize schools and regulate resource development.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; Library and Archives Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context