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804 recordsStructured records (JSON) ↗
Susan Louisa Moir Allison, portrait.
CA-K876Culture & sport

Susan Allison, memoirist of the BC interior

Susan Allison wrote a memoir of settler life in the interior of British Columbia, describing the experiences of women, children and Indigenous people. As an amateur ethnographer, she also recorded Similkameen and Okanagan stories. Her writings are historical sources that should be read in the context of European settlement and colonial relations.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Plaque honouring Wilmot at the New Brunswick Legislative Building.
CA-K874History

Lemuel Allan Wilmot, reformer and Lieutenant-Governor

Lemuel Allan Wilmot, born in Sunbury County, entered politics as a Reformer and represented York County from 1835 to 1851. As Attorney General he was in effect the head of New Brunswick’s first government under responsible government. Named to the Supreme Court in 1851, he resigned in 1868 to become Lieutenant-Governor until 1873.

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Photo: JJonahJackalope · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Alfred Ernest Cross, 1920 (Curlette).
CA-K872Economy & trade

A.E. Cross, rancher, brewer and Stampede founder

Alfred Ernest Cross, born in Montréal and trained in agriculture and veterinary medicine, came west in 1884 and took up ranching. In 1892 he founded the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company, and he was an early investor in Turner Valley oil and gas. He sat in the North-West Territories Assembly from 1898 to 1902 and was one of the founders of the Calgary Stampede.

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Photo: Curlette · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William Francis Ganong, April 1913.
CA-K871Places & geography

William Francis Ganong, scholar of New Brunswick

William Francis Ganong, born in Saint John, was a scientist, cartographer, geographer and historian. During 38 years as professor of botany at Smith College in Massachusetts (1894–1932), he gathered and published historical and scientific material on New Brunswick and became a leading authority on the mapping of North America’s east coast. He died in Saint John in 1941.

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Photo: White · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Reverend George McDougall, before 1876.
CA-K867Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Reverend George McDougall and Methodist missions in the West

George McDougall was an influential Methodist missionary in the Prairie West from 1860 until his death in 1876, founding the Victoria mission in 1862 and leading others as part of colonization efforts. He urged First Nations to abandon traditional ways, removed the sacred stone Manitou Asinîy in 1866 with damaging results, and carried word of the coming Treaty Six talks in 1875. Missions linked to him at Norway House and Morley later developed residential schools.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Maurice Cullen, R.C.A., 1931 (Archives of Ontario).
CA-K866Culture & sport

Maurice Cullen, painter of the Canadian winter

Maurice Cullen, born in St. John’s, studied sculpture in Montréal under Philippe Hébert and painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Returning in 1895, he taught at the Art Association of Montreal and in the First World War served overseas as an official war artist. His international reputation rests mainly on his impressionist views of the Canadian winter.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
David Laird, 1894 (The Canadian Album).
CA-K864Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

David Laird, the Indian Act and the Numbered Treaties

As Minister of the Interior from 1873 to 1876, David Laird helped shape policies that treated First Nations as wards and sought their assimilation, and was the main figure in consolidating earlier laws into the Indian Act of 1876. He negotiated Treaties 4, 7 and 8, whose meaning remains disputed. As Indian commissioner he restricted ceremonies and at times worked to dispossess First Nations of promised reserves. He also founded the Charlottetown Patriot.

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Photo: Unknown photographer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Duncan Campbell Scott, 1916.
CA-K860Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Duncan Campbell Scott and the residential school system

As Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, Duncan Campbell Scott aggressively pursued policies meant to assimilate First Nations, banning cultural practices and restricting political activity, which did widespread, lasting harm. He was the chief federal official responsible for expanding and running the residential school system, whose neglect and abuse caused hunger, illness and death. In his day he was also celebrated as a Confederation poet.

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Photo: Photographer not named. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William Henry Steeves, portrait.
CA-K857History

William Henry Steeves, New Brunswick merchant and Father of Confederation

William Henry Steeves, born in Hillsborough, was a leading merchant and lumberman before entering politics. He sat in New Brunswick’s Assembly and Legislative Council and was almost continuously in cabinet from 1854 to 1865. Bringing a reform-minded business outlook, he supported the Intercolonial Railway and Confederation to aid the province’s economy, and was named to the Senate in 1867.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Vilhjálmur Stefánsson (Bain News Service).
CA-K855Places & geography

Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, Arctic explorer

Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, born at Arnes, Manitoba, in 1879 to an Icelandic family, made three expeditions to the Canadian Arctic between 1906 and 1918 and wrote widely about the land and its Indigenous Peoples. Inuit support was essential to his success; his Iñupiaq partner Panigavluk worked as informant, hunter and seamstress, yet he abandoned his family. A controversial figure, he promoted the idea of a “friendly Arctic”.

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Photo: Unknown (Bain News Service, publisher) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir William Price, about 1924 (Fonds Dubuc).
CA-K853Economy & trade

Sir William Price, from lumber to pulp and paper

William Price joined his family’s lumber business in 1885 and took control in 1899, when it was close to failing. To diversify, he bought a pulp mill at Jonquière and helped lead the shift from lumber to pulp and paper, a sector in which Canada became a world leader by the 1920s. His mill at Kénogami was for years Canada’s top newsprint producer.

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Photo: Fonds Dubuc · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Charles Sherwood Noble, 1918.
CA-K845Economy & trade

Charles Noble and the Noble Blade

Charles Sherwood Noble, farmer, inventor and entrepreneur, showed the farming potential of the drought-prone Palliser Triangle. During the Great Depression he worked with the Dominion Experimental Farm to promote dry-land farming methods, and in 1936 invented the Noble Blade, a cultivator that cut weeds at the roots without disturbing the soil, greatly reducing erosion. His company became Alberta’s largest maker of such implements.

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Photo: unknown (Life time: 1910s) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William Aberhart, 1920 (Curlette Studio).
CA-K840History

William Aberhart, Social Credit premier of Alberta

William “Bible Bill” Aberhart, a Calgary high school principal and evangelical preacher, led the founding of Alberta’s Social Credit party and became premier in 1935, winning re-election in 1940. He used radio to reach audiences first as an evangelist and then as a politician.

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Photo: Curlette Studio · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Adam Shortt, about 1920.
CA-K837Institutions

Adam Shortt, economist and historian

Adam Shortt, born near London, Ontario, founded the department of political economy at Queen’s University and advised governments. In 1908 he joined the first Canadian Civil Service Commission. In Ottawa he worked with Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty to build the national archives’ collections, and from 1913 to 1917 the two co-edited the historical series Canada and Its Provinces.

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Photo: Bain News Service, publisher · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert Harris, C.M.G., R.C.A. (Archives of Ontario).
CA-K835Culture & sport

Robert Harris, painter of the Fathers of Confederation

Robert Harris, born in Wales, came to Prince Edward Island in 1856 and studied art in Charlottetown, Boston, London, Paris and Rome. One of Canada’s leading portrait painters and a long-time teacher, he was an original member of the Royal Canadian Academy and its president from 1890 to 1903. He is best known for his painting of the Fathers of Confederation.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Edward Blake, portrait.
CA-K832History

Edward Blake, Ontario premier and Liberal leader

Edward Blake, a lawyer born in Middlesex County, Upper Canada, and a leading member of the Canada First movement, was the second premier of Ontario (1871–72). In 22 years in the House of Commons he was Minister of Justice under Alexander Mackenzie and led the federal Liberals from 1880 to 1887. A constitutional authority, he later sat in the British Parliament as an Irish Nationalist.

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Photo: Ewing · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Andrew Archibald Macdonald, 1892 (William James Topley).
CA-K829History

Andrew Archibald Macdonald, note-taker at Quebec

Andrew Archibald Macdonald, a Prince Edward Island merchant and shipbuilder, sat in the Legislative Assembly and Council. He attended the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864, and his notes from Quebec are one of the few original records of that conference. After the Island joined Confederation he became its Lieutenant-Governor and was later named to the Senate.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, 1863.
CA-K826Culture & sport

Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, author of Les Anciens Canadiens

Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, son of the seigneur of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, gave up his legal career because of debt in 1822. In long retirement he gathered anecdotes and popular traditions that became the basis of his historical novel Les Anciens Canadiens (1863). That novel and his Mémoires (1866) are landmarks of Canadian literature and valued sources for historians and folklorists.

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Photo: Jules-Isaïe Benoît · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Louis St. Laurent, 1948 (George Nakash).
CA-K820History

Louis St. Laurent, prime minister

Louis St. Laurent, born in Compton, Quebec, was a leading corporate lawyer before entering politics as Minister of Justice in 1941. He served as Secretary of State for External Affairs and then as Prime Minister from 1948 to 1957. A strong advocate of national unity, he helped shape the new Commonwealth, signed the United Nations Charter and promoted NATO.

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Photo: George Nakash · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Joseph E. Atkinson, 1910s (City of Toronto Archives).
CA-K818Culture & sport

Joseph Atkinson of the Toronto Star

Joseph E. Atkinson became managing editor of the Toronto Star in 1899 and its majority owner by 1913. He sought to make the paper a tool of social reform, and his innovations changed Canadian journalism and made the Star the country’s largest-circulation newspaper by the 1930s. He left his fortune to the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, which supports cultural, medical and educational institutions in Ontario.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; City of Toronto Archives · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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
Col. Sam Hughes, 1905 (William James Topley).
CA-K801History

Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia

Sam Hughes, soldier, journalist and Member of Parliament for Lindsay from 1892 to 1921, helped create a distinctly Canadian army. As Minister of Militia and Defence from 1911 to 1916, he raised the Canadian Expeditionary Force that fought in the First World War and was knighted, but disputes with colleagues and subordinates forced him from Cabinet in 1916.

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Photo: William James Topley · 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