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Southwest coast of Cap Gaspé, Forillon National Park.
CA-K1034Places & geography

Forillon National Park’s people of land and sea

The Mi’gmaq and their ancestors have used the rich territory of Forillon, on Quebec’s Gaspé coast, for thousands of years. From the 18th century, cod merchants arrived, and Anglo-Norman, Irish, Scottish, French-Canadian and American families settled to take part in the fishery. The park’s cultural landscape, including the fishing village of Grande-Grave and the Cape Gaspé lighthouse, reflects this long relationship between people, land and sea.

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Photo: Ymblanter · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Marble Canyon, Kootenay National Park.
CA-K1008Places & geography

Kootenay National Park, a land of ice and fire

Kootenay National Park in British Columbia is a place of contrasts, with valleys and canyons carved by glaciers and grasslands shaped by fire. A historic highway crosses the park, and visitors can see ancient fossils and soak in mineral-rich hot springs.

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Photo: Chris Woodrich · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Gwaii Haanas, Haida Gwaii.
CA-K1007Places & geography

Gwaii Haanas, Haida land and sea

On the rainforest islands of Gwaii Haanas, in Haida Gwaii, moss-draped cedar and Sitka spruce tower over the Haida people’s historic carved poles and fallen longhouses. Bald eagles, bears, whales, porpoises and sea lions live here. The land and sea are protected by Parks Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Haida, and Haida Gwaii Watchmen share Haida culture at five village sites.

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Photo: Christine Rondeau from Vancouver, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
A grassland landscape in Elk Island National Park.
CA-K1002Places & geography

Elk Island National Park, near Edmonton

Elk Island National Park lies about 48 kilometres east of downtown Edmonton, in Treaty 6 territory and the Métis homeland. Its rolling hills, lakes and dark skies form a landscape Indigenous Peoples have long used for sustenance, ceremony, trade and travel. The park supports bison, elk and more than 250 bird species.

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Photo: Khoshhat · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
John Murray Gibbon, photograph by Olive Edis.
CA-K999Culture & sport

John Murray Gibbon and the Canadian mosaic

John Murray Gibbon, born in Ceylon and educated in Scotland and Germany, turned from painting to journalism. As the Canadian Pacific Railway’s publicity agent from 1913 to 1945, he combined advertising with promoting a Canadian identity and popularized the image of Canadian society as a mosaic. He organized folk festivals, helped start the Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies at Banff, and in 1921 helped found the Canadian Authors’ Association.

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Photo: Olive Edis · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir William Coaker, 1930.
CA-K997Economy & trade

Sir William Coaker and the Fishermen’s Protective Union

William Coaker founded the Fishermen’s Protective Union in 1908 to unite the fishers, sealers and loggers of rural Newfoundland under the motto “To Each His Own.” Under him the union set up trading stores, a newspaper and a political party that fought for social and economic reform, and founded Port Union as its headquarters in 1916. A member of several governments from 1917, he was a major force in Newfoundland politics until the mid-1920s.

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Photo: Richard Hibbs · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
A.A. Heaps, Winnipeg alderman, 1921.
CA-K996History

A.A. Heaps, labour leader and MP

Abraham Albert Heaps, labour leader and politician, fought for workers and spoke for the Jewish community. One of the more moderate leaders of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, he pressed for workers’ rights while seeking a peaceful settlement. As MP for Winnipeg North (1925–40) he fought antisemitism, sought reform of immigration policy and the admission of Jewish refugees, and championed old age pensions and unemployment insurance.

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Photo: City of Winnipeg · 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
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
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
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
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
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
Violet McNaughton, about 1910 (University of Saskatchewan Archives).
CA-K950Economy & trade

Violet McNaughton, farm women’s leader

Violet McNaughton, a leader in the women’s, peace and co-operative movements, drew on her life as a farm wife to organize the Women Grain Growers and help develop the Wheat Pool. She led the fight in Saskatchewan for women’s right to vote and for publicly funded medical care, and from 1926 to 1960 promoted agrarian feminism, pacifism and co-operation as a journalist with The Western Producer.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir Louis Henry Davies, 1903 (William James Topley).
CA-K944History

Sir Louis Davies, Island premier and Chief Justice

Louis Henry Davies, born in Charlottetown, was premier of Prince Edward Island from 1876 to 1879, defending tenant farmers while working to settle the land question. He served as counsel to the International Fisheries Commission at Halifax in 1877, sat in the House of Commons and became Minister of Marine and Fisheries in 1896. Named to the Supreme Court in 1901, he became Chief Justice of Canada in 1918.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William Molson, 1863 (William Notman).
CA-K942Economy & trade

William Molson, brewer and banker

William Molson, youngest son of Montréal brewer John Molson, helped expand the family empire into distilling, lumber, a foundry, steamships and railways by the mid-19th century. In 1853 he and his brother John founded Molsons Bank, which he led until his death. A leading philanthropist, he was president of the Montreal General Hospital and gave money toward founding and building McGill University, later becoming a governor.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Hiram Walker (Hiram Walker and Sons archives).
CA-K938Economy & trade

Hiram Walker and Walkerville

Hiram Walker, born in Massachusetts, was a successful merchant, distiller and grain dealer in Detroit by the 1850s. After Michigan adopted prohibition in 1855 he bought land across the river in Canada and built a distillery and mill that grew into the company town of Walkerville, later adding cattle finishing, a river ferry and a railway. He played an important part in western Ontario’s economic development.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; Hiram Walker and Sons archives · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
C.D. Howe, about 1940.
CA-K922Economy & trade

C.D. Howe, “Minister of Everything”

Clarence Decatur Howe, born in Massachusetts, came to Canada in 1908 and set up an engineering firm in Port Arthur in 1916. Elected in 1935, he dominated Liberal cabinets for more than two decades, tied his party closely to business and drove Canada’s rapid industrialization in war and peace. He led the creation of many Crown corporations, including Trans-Canada Airlines and Atomic Energy of Canada.

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Photo: Fayer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Plaque honouring Douglas at the New Brunswick Legislative Building.
CA-K911History

Sir Howard Douglas, founder of King’s College

Howard Douglas, born in England, was Lieutenant-Governor and Commander in Chief of New Brunswick from 1823 to 1831. He encouraged agriculture, steam navigation and lighthouse building, and in 1828 founded King’s College, now the University of New Brunswick. He dealt firmly with armed incursions from Maine and upheld the province’s rights in the boundary dispute of 1826–28, and wrote important books on military and political subjects.

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Photo: JJonahJackalope · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Monument to Philemon Wright, Gatineau.
CA-K895Economy & trade

Philemon Wright, founder of Hull and the Ottawa timber trade

In 1800 the American entrepreneur Philemon Wright founded the farming settlement that became Hull. Turning to the region’s forests for income, he pioneered the Ottawa Valley timber trade, floating his first raft of square timber to Québec in 1806, and later built Canada’s first timber slides to bypass the Chaudière Falls. The Ottawa Valley became a major source of Canadian timber exports in the second quarter of the 19th century.

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Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Charles Marega, 1929 (Archives of Ontario).
CA-K880Culture & sport

Charles Marega, sculptor of Vancouver

Charles Marega, an Italian-Canadian sculptor, created many notable monuments in British Columbia after arriving in 1909, first in the Beaux-Arts style and later in Art Deco. He helped found both the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts. The lions of the Lions Gate Bridge, his last public work in the city, are among Vancouver’s best-known icons.

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Photo: Unknown photographer; Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
W.R. Motherwell, 1913 (Bain News Service).
CA-K878Economy & trade

W.R. Motherwell, champion of the western farmer

William Richard Motherwell, born in Perth, Ontario, settled at Abernethy and advocated for western farmers. In 1901 he helped initiate the Territorial Grain Growers’ Association, which sought better grain inspection and shipping. As Saskatchewan’s agriculture minister from 1905 to 1918, he supported agricultural education and co-operative grain handling; he later served as Canada’s agriculture minister.

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Photo: Bain News Service, publisher · Photo licence: Public domain · 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 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