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In 1953, Tom Patterson launched an annual festival of Shakespearean theatre in his hometown of Stratford, Ontario. First artistic director Tyrone Guthrie and designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch created the Festival Theatre’s thrust stage, surrounded by the audience on three sides.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Chris Woodrich · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Canada’s National Arts Centre in Ottawa opened on 2 June 1969, two years after the centennial that inspired it. Built to produce and present music, opera, theatre and dance, it was designed to be bilingual, reflecting Canada’s linguistic duality.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Thelongdarkteatimeofthesoul · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm’s-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957. Its purpose is “to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.”
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Earl Andrew · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
New Brunswick’s first Official Languages Act, enacted on 18 April 1969, made it Canada’s first and only officially bilingual province. The Act made English and French the province’s two official languages and recognized the right to receive provincial government services in either.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Doug Kerr · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was signed on 11 November 1975 by the Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee, the Inuit of Nunavik, Canada, Quebec and Hydro-Québec, after Cree and Inuit court challenges to the James Bay hydroelectric project. The Cree Nation Government describes it as the first modern Indigenous land claim agreement and treaty in Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Peter Van den Bossche · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization formerly called the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, was founded in February 1971 by seven Inuit community leaders. It grew out of shared concern about land and resource ownership in Inuit Nunangat.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: U.S. Department of the Interior · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay (Nan Sdins), on an island at the southern tip of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, bears unique testimony to Haida culture. The 19th-century village keeps the remains of 10 houses and 32 memorial or mortuary poles, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Yvrsigmatech · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (estipah-skikikini-kots in Blackfoot), in southwestern Alberta, is the biggest, oldest and best-preserved buffalo jump in North America. Plains peoples drove bison over its cliffs for perhaps 5,700 years, until the mid-19th century; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Thomas Fuhrmann · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space on Space Shuttle mission STS-41G aboard Challenger, 5–13 October 1984. He was one of the first six Canadian astronauts, selected in December 1983.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NASA · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Canadarm, a Canadian-built robotic arm for NASA’s Space Shuttle, was launched aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-2 on 12 November 1981.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NASA · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
With the launch of Alouette I on 29 September 1962, Canada became the third nation, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to design and build its own satellite.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: User:Captmondo · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Elections Canada is an independent, non-partisan agency of Parliament, headed by the Chief Electoral Officer. The position of Chief Electoral Officer was created in 1920 by the Dominion Elections Act, largely to end political partisanship in the administration of federal elections.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Can Pac Swire · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The Supreme Court of Canada was established in 1875 with six judges. The number rose to seven in 1927 and to the present nine in 1949, and the Supreme Court Act requires that three of the nine be appointed from Quebec.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Rleir · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908. Green Gables Heritage Place in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, preserves the farmstead that inspired her.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hayden Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 and fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953. More than 26,000 Canadians served on land, at sea and in the air, and 516 Canadians died.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Battle of the Atlantic lasted from 3 September 1939 to 8 May 1945 and has been called the longest battle of the Second World War. Canadian naval and air forces helped protect the vital flow of Allied shipping across the Atlantic.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The raid on Dieppe, on the French coast, took place on the morning of 19 August 1942. Canadians made up the great majority of the attackers: nearly 5,000 of the 6,100 troops.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Herbert Frank from Wien (Vienna), AT · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
On 6 December 1917, SS Mont-Blanc, which was carrying explosives, collided with SS Imo in Halifax Harbour. The resulting explosion, tidal wave and fires killed some 2,000 people. Parks Canada describes it as the largest human-made explosion before the atomic bomb.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
In 1996, Canada’s two-dollar paper note was replaced by a coin as a cost-saving measure: a two-dollar note lasted about a year, while coins can last more than 10 years. The coin, known as the toonie, has carried a polar bear by nature artist Brent Townsend since 1996.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: TravelingOtter from Houston, Texas, USA · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
In 1946, Viola Desmond, a successful Nova Scotia businesswoman, refused to leave a whites-only area of a movie theatre; her court case inspired the pursuit of racial equality across Canada. In 2018 she appeared on Canada’s first vertical bank note, the $10 note.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Colin Stepney · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
It was long believed that King George V’s 1921 proclamation of Canada’s coat of arms designated red and white as the national colours, but the proclamation contains no such declaration. Canadian Heritage notes that red and white are not set in law as national colours but have become part of national identity through common use.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Sikander Iqbal · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research, by dipping his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean on 12 April 1980. After 143 days and 5,373 kilometres, he was forced to stop outside Thunder Bay, Ontario, on 1 September 1980 because cancer had appeared in his lungs.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Canada adopted its first federal Official Languages Act in 1969. It declared English and French to be the two official languages of the Parliament and government of Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Takipoint123 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Bank of Canada Act received royal assent on 3 July 1934, and the Bank of Canada opened in March 1935 as a privately owned institution with shares sold to the public. It became publicly owned in 1938 and remains so today.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context