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54 recordsStructured records (JSON) ↗
J. A. D. McCurdy, 1911 (Library of Congress).
CA-K626History

J. A. D. McCurdy, pilot of the Silver Dart

John A. D. McCurdy of Baddeck, an early associate of Alexander Graham Bell, piloted the Silver Dart on 23 February 1909 in Canada’s first successful powered flight. A pioneer of the aircraft industry, he later oversaw aircraft production in the Second World War and served as lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia.

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Photo: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Lieutenant-Colonel William George Barker, VC, 1918–1919.
CA-K595History

Billy Barker, VC, air ace

William “Billy” Barker of Dauphin, Manitoba, joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914 and later the Royal Flying Corps, becoming one of the great air aces of the First World War. He downed 50 enemy aircraft, was the leading fighter pilot on the Italian front, and with the Victoria Cross and eight other gallantry medals is one of Canada’s most decorated servicemen.

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Photo: not identified · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
A. Y. Jackson, 1930 (Archives of Ontario).
CA-K574Culture & sport

A. Y. Jackson, painter of the Group of Seven

A. Y. Jackson, born in Montréal, studied painting there and in Paris, served overseas in the First World War and was a member of the Group of Seven from 1920 to 1933. His simple, rounded forms in wilderness landscapes gave a powerful image of Canada, and he greatly influenced a generation of Canadian artists.

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Photo: Unknown photographer (1930); Archives of Ontario, I0007815 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Georgina Pope, head nurse of the first Canadian contingent, around 1898.
CA-K520History

Georgina Fane Pope and Canadian military nursing

Georgina Fane Pope of Charlottetown was chosen in 1899 to lead Canada’s military nurses in the South African War and became the first Canadian to receive the Royal Red Cross. Appointed to the permanent Army Medical Corps in 1906, she became Canada’s first military nursing matron in 1908, in charge of all Canadian military nurses.

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Photo: A.G. Pittaway · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Rear Admiral Leonard Murray in 1943 (Department of National Defence).
CA-K509History

Rear Admiral Leonard Murray and the Atlantic convoys

Leonard Warren Murray of Pictou County joined the navy as a cadet in 1911. As commander of the Newfoundland Escort Force and, from 1943, Commander-in-Chief Canadian North West Atlantic, he was a principal architect of the Allies’ North Atlantic convoy system in the Second World War.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Frederick Varley, probably in Vancouver, 1927 (John Vanderpant).
CA-K484Culture & sport

Frederick Varley, painter of the Group of Seven

Frederick Varley, a founding member of the Group of Seven, helped establish a national style of painting the Canadian landscape. A masterful portraitist and an official First World War artist, he moved to teach on the West Coast in 1926, and his unconventional use of colour to convey emotion is a singular contribution to Canadian art.

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Photo: John Vanderpant · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Lieutenant-General A. G. L. McNaughton in March 1942 (Department of National Defence).
CA-K387History

A. G. L. McNaughton, soldier and scientist

A. G. L. McNaughton (1887–1966), born in Moosomin in today’s Saskatchewan, played a notable role in Canadian life as a scientist, soldier, politician and diplomat. He served as an artillery officer in the First World War, co-invented the forerunner of radar, led the National Research Council, and represented Canada in senior diplomatic roles after the Second World War.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s, photographed in 2008.
CA-K339History

The Newfoundland National War Memorial

The Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s, unveiled in 1924, commemorates the Dominion of Newfoundland’s contributions to the First World War. An allegorical female figure stands above bronze figures representing the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Royal Naval Reserve, Mercantile Marine and Forestry Corps, beside the harbour where soldiers departed and returned.

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Photo: Nilfanion · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Millennium Gate on West Pender Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown, photographed in 2012.
CA-K331History

Vancouver’s Chinatown

Vancouver’s Chinatown, one of the oldest and largest in Canada, developed as a self-segregated enclave partly because of racial hostility elsewhere in the city before the Second World War, and reflects the contributions and struggles of Chinese Canadians. It is known for a distinctive “recessed balcony” architecture that blends Chinese regional styles with western building methods.

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Photo: MRDXII · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
An ice road across the Mackenzie River at Tsiigehtchic, Northwest Territories, in 2008.
CA-K282Places & geography

Ice roads in the Northwest Territories

Engineered ice roads were introduced in the Northwest Territories after the Second World War. They made transporting essential goods more affordable, carried heavy equipment for mining and petrochemical industries, and provided winter land links to northern communities.

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Photo: Ian Mackenzie · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
An immigrant woman with her baby at Pier 21, Halifax, in 1948 (photograph by E. A. Bollinger).
CA-K249History

Displaced persons arrive after the Second World War

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.

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Photo: E.A. Bollinger · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Nursing Sisters at a Canadian hospital in France voting in the 1917 federal election (photograph by William Rider-Rider).
CA-K246History

Nursing Sisters, the first women with military rank

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.

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Photo: William Rider-Rider · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Merchant Marine Monument at Sackville Landing, Halifax, photographed in 2013.
CA-K245History

The Canadian Merchant Navy in the Second World War

In the Second World War, the Canadian Merchant Navy contributed decisively to Allied victory by carrying troops and supplies to war zones around the world. Merchant mariners, men and women, faced the constant threat of enemy attack as well as the dangers of the open sea, and many lost their lives.

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Photo: Hantsheroes · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Laurier House in Ottawa, Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s home, next to which the unit worked from 1942 to 1945; photographed in 2014.
CA-K243History

The Examination Unit, Canada’s wartime codebreakers

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.

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Photo: Suwannee.payne · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
General Currie, commander of the Canadian troops in France, in June 1917.
CA-K232History

Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps

Sir Arthur Currie (1875–1933), who trained with the militia at Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria, commanded one of Canada’s first overseas infantry brigades in the First World War. Promoted to lieutenant-general after Vimy Ridge, he became commander of the entire Canadian Corps, the first and only Canadian to hold that position, and after the war served as principal of McGill University.

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Photo: Unknown photographer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The commemorative plaque in Loring Wyle Parkette, Toronto, photographed in 2026.
CA-K228Culture & sport

Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, sculptors

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.

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Photo: JRB76D · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
A photograph of C.H. “Punch” Dickins, Canadian First World War pilot.
CA-K214History

“Punch” Dickins, pioneering bush pilot

C.H. “Punch” Dickins (1899–1995), a distinguished First World War airman, became a pioneering bush pilot in the 1920s and 1930s, flying vast distances in Canada’s North and proving flight possible in remote areas and extreme cold. In the 1940s he contributed to the design of the de Havilland Beaver, helping make Canada a world leader in frontier aviation.

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Photo: Bzuk at English Wikipedia · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
A vein of waste rock in the former iron ore mine on Bell Island, photographed in 2013.
CA-K206History

U-boat attacks at Bell Island, 1942

In 1942, German submarines U-513 and U-518 made two deadly torpedo attacks on Bell Island, Newfoundland, a vital iron-ore mining and shipping centre. The attacks damaged the Scotia pier, sank four ships and killed Allied sailors, bringing the war home to Newfoundlanders.

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Photo: The Tedster · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Pier 21 in Halifax, now the Canadian Museum of Immigration, photographed in 2010.
CA-K202History

Some 48,000 war brides arrived at Pier 21

Between 1942 and 1948, some 48,000 women, mostly from Great Britain, and 22,000 children arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax as the families of Canadian servicemen stationed abroad during the Second World War. The federal government provided their transportation and information about Canada, and war bride clubs across the country helped them adapt.

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Photo: Skeezix1000 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The Japanese Canadian War Memorial in Stanley Park, Vancouver, photographed in 2026.
CA-K182History

Japanese Canadian soldiers and the 1931 vote

During the First World War, 222 Japanese Canadian soldiers overcame barriers to enlistment and prejudice to fight on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918; a quarter of them died in battle. In 1931, the returning veterans became the first group of Asian Canadians to win the right to vote in British Columbia.

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Photo: Spudgun67 · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
The Six Nations Sports & Cultural Memorial Centre in Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River, in 2024.
CA-K179Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Edith Anderson Monture, nurse and veteran

Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (1890–1996), a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman from Six Nations of the Grand River, was among the first generation of hospital-trained professional nurses from First Nations in Canada. After nursing with the American Expeditionary Force in the First World War, she was among the female veterans granted the federal vote in 1917, and returned home in 1919 as a nurse and midwife.

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Photo: JFVoll · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The sign at McCrae House, John McCrae’s birthplace in Guelph, Ontario, on Remembrance Day 2018.
CA-K174Culture & sport

John McCrae and “In Flanders Fields”

John McCrae (1872–1918), a physician born in Guelph, Ontario, joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1914 and served overseas until his death. His poem “In Flanders Fields,” published anonymously in 1915, became one of the most celebrated poems of the First World War and made the poppy a lasting symbol of the Allied soldiers who died.

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Photo: Peter K Burian · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Sergeant Tommy Prince (right) with his brother, Private Morris Prince, at Buckingham Palace, 12 February 1945.
CA-K159Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Tommy Prince, Anishinaabe veteran and activist

Tommy Prince (1915–1977), an Anishinaabe veteran, was a founding member of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion and the First Special Service Force (Devil’s Brigade) in the Second World War, and served in the Korean War. He represented Manitoba First Nations’ interests nationally, and his story illustrates both First Nations soldiers’ contributions and their poor treatment on returning home.

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Photo: Christopher J. Woods - Canada. Dept. of National Defence · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The National Aboriginal Veterans Monument in Confederation Park, Ottawa, photographed in 2019.
CA-K156Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Indigenous soldiers in the First World War

During the First World War, Indigenous people volunteered in significant numbers, even though many were denied the right to vote; it was the first time Canada’s forces integrated a substantial number of Indigenous men as individual soldiers. As veterans, they were an active force behind the League of Indians of Canada, the first organization to give their communities a national voice.

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Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context