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As explained in our Mission, Citizen.ca focuses on knowledge closely connected to Canadian identity and Canadian spirit, rather than every fact about Canada. Some topics will therefore be absent. If you believe a missing topic belongs within this focus, please contact us.

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804 recordsStructured records (JSON) ↗
Simon Newcomb, between 1905 and 1909 (Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress).
CA-K530History

Simon Newcomb, astronomer from Nova Scotia

Simon Newcomb, born at Wallace Bridge, Nova Scotia, moved to the United States in 1853 and became a leading authority on mathematical astronomy at the U.S. Naval Observatory. As director of the Nautical Almanac from 1877 to 1897, his revision of lunar and planetary tables simplified nautical almanacs worldwide.

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Photo: Harris & Ewing · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Strachan, 1855.
CA-K525Institutions

Bishop John Strachan, King’s College and Trinity College

John Strachan, born in Scotland, came to Kingston in 1799, taught at Cornwall and became rector of York in 1812 and first Anglican Bishop of Toronto in 1839. A central figure of the Family Compact, he promoted public schooling and in 1827 secured a charter for King’s College; when it became the secular University of Toronto in 1849, he founded the Anglican Trinity College in 1851.

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Photo: Unknown author · 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
Richard Blanshard, around 1850.
CA-K512Institutions

Richard Blanshard, first governor of Vancouver Island

Richard Blanshard, an English barrister, was appointed first governor of Vancouver Island in 1849 and took office in March 1850. Disappointed by conditions in the colony, where the California gold rush slowed growth, and in poor health, he resigned that November, though slow communications kept him in Victoria until 1851.

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Photo: Unknown author · 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
Sir John William Dawson in 1885 (William Notman and Son, McCord Stewart Museum).
CA-K508Institutions

Sir William Dawson, principal of McGill

Sir John William Dawson of Pictou, Nova Scotia, studied in Edinburgh, worked with the geologist Lyell and became Nova Scotia’s first superintendent of education. As principal and professor of natural history at McGill University from 1855 to 1893 he profoundly influenced Canadian education and science, and he was first president of the Royal Society of Canada in 1882.

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Photo: William Notman and Son · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
E. J. Pratt in Toronto, 1944 (Gordon W. Powley).
CA-K506Culture & sport

E. J. Pratt, poet from Newfoundland

E. J. Pratt, born at Western Bay, Newfoundland, taught and briefly served as a Methodist minister before spending his career at Victoria College in Toronto. By the 1930s he was a prominent Canadian poet, writing on grand themes such as evolution and human struggle against nature, with images of sea and rock that echo his Newfoundland roots.

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Photo: Gordon W. Powley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Casey Baldwin at Ridley College, St. Catharines, 1900.
CA-K504History

Casey Baldwin, aviation and hydrofoil pioneer

Frederick Walker “Casey” Baldwin, a lifelong associate of Alexander Graham Bell, became in 1908 the first Canadian to fly a plane and designed the first aeroplane in North America to use ailerons. With Bell he built the hydrofoil HD-4, which set a world speed record on Bras d’Or Lake in 1919.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert Falconer, portrait published by the Empire Club of Canada.
CA-K503Institutions

Sir Robert Falconer, president of the University of Toronto

Sir Robert Falconer, born in Charlottetown, was an educator, writer and lecturer. After serving as principal of Pine Hill College in Halifax, he was president of the University of Toronto from 1907 to 1932 and wrote many books and articles on education and public questions.

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Photo: Empire Club of Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The commemorative plaque to Louis-Guillaume Verrier in Québec City, 2021.
CA-K501Institutions

Louis-Guillaume Verrier and the first law courses in Canada

Louis-Guillaume Verrier, born in France, was attorney general of New France and a member of the Council of Quebec for 30 years from 1728. He founded the first school of law in Canada, and from 1735 many future lawyers took his courses; he also assembled a library of some 4,000 volumes.

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Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
R. B. Bennett, prime minister (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K499Institutions

R. B. Bennett, prime minister in the Depression

Richard Bedford Bennett, born at Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, moved to Calgary in 1897 and sat in the North-West Territories and Alberta legislatures before entering the House of Commons in 1911. Conservative leader from 1927, he was prime minister from 1930 to 1935, and his government’s association with the Depression contributed to its defeat.

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Photo: Library and Archives Canada / C-008098 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Marshall McLuhan in 1945 (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K491Culture & sport

Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message”

Marshall McLuhan, a University of Toronto professor and pioneer of media studies, became famous in the 1960s for his theories about how print and electronic media shape human perception and behaviour. His ideas of the “global village” and “the medium is the message” made him one of the most celebrated scholars in the Western world.

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Photo: Josephine Smith · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Peter McArthur, portrait published in 1916.
CA-K486Culture & sport

Peter McArthur, farmer and essayist

Peter McArthur of Appin, Ontario, edited the New York magazine Truth from 1896, encouraging Canadian and American writers. Returning to his birthplace in 1908, he combined farming with journalism, and his best-known collection of essays is In Pastures Green.

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Photo: Photographer not named. · 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
George Hunt in 1898 (Harlan I. Smith, BC Archives).
CA-K482Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

George Hunt, Kwakwaka’wakw ethnographer

George Hunt, born at Fort Rupert to English and Tlingit parents and fully accepted into Kwakwaka’wakw society, was one of the most outstanding ethnographers of West Coast Indigenous peoples. He worked to preserve and share his people’s traditional knowledge, recording, translating and interpreting material that revealed the richness of Kwakwaka’wakw culture.

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Photo: Harlan Ingersoll Smith · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Stephen Willison, portrait published in 1913.
CA-K479Culture & sport

Sir John Willison, editor of the Globe

As editor of the Toronto Globe from 1890 to 1902, John Stephen Willison made it the most influential Liberal newspaper in Canada. Disenchanted with Laurier’s government, he took over the independent Toronto News in 1902, later became Canadian correspondent of The Times of London, and wrote a significant study of Laurier and the Liberal Party.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George MacKinnon Wrong, around 1920.
CA-K477Institutions

George Wrong, first professor of modern history in Toronto

George MacKinnon Wrong became the University of Toronto’s first Professor of Modern History in 1895. He saw Canadian history through its British and French origins and the American presence, and as a teacher, writer and early leader of the Canadian Historical Association he helped give an intellectual base to a developing Canadian identity.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
Philip Francis Little, from D. W. Prowse’s History of Newfoundland (1896).
CA-K474Institutions

Philip Francis Little, Newfoundland’s first premier

Philip Francis Little, elected to Newfoundland’s Assembly in 1850, campaigned for responsible government and united the Liberal Party behind it. In 1855 he became the colony’s first premier under responsible government, and he advanced Newfoundland’s interests through the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir William Edmond Logan in Montréal, 1865 (William Notman).
CA-K470History

Sir William Logan, first director of the Geological Survey

Sir William Edmond Logan of Montréal, a mapmaker and geologist in the mining districts of Wales, became the first director of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1842. He led much of the early scientific mapping of the province, built the mineral collection that became the basis of the National Museum, and earned international recognition for his geological work.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Charles Mair, portrait published in 1916.
CA-K468Culture & sport

Charles Mair, poet of Canada First

Charles Mair, born at Lanark, Upper Canada, was a journalist, poet, advocate of western expansion and an original member of the Canada First movement. A controversial figure during the Red River Resistance of 1869–1870, he later worked in business in the West and for the immigration service, and wrote works including Tecumseh and Through the Mackenzie Basin.

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Photo: Photographer not named. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Alexander Mackenzie in March 1878 (Topley Studio).
CA-K467Institutions

Alexander Mackenzie, second prime minister

Alexander Mackenzie came to Canada from Scotland in 1842 and worked as a building contractor in Kingston and Sarnia. Elected for Lambton in 1861 and to the first House of Commons in 1867, he was Canada’s second prime minister from 1873 to 1878 and worked to consolidate the new Dominion.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Monro Grant, principal of Queen’s College (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K466Institutions

George Monro Grant, principal of Queen’s

George Monro Grant, born at Albion Mines (Stellarton), Nova Scotia, was an educator and writer, author of Ocean to Ocean and minister of St. Matthew’s Church in Halifax. He was principal of Queen’s University from 1877 to 1902 and president of the Royal Society of Canada in 1901.

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Photo: Government of Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The last conference between Légaré and Sitting Bull (Saskatchewan Archives).
CA-K465History

Jean-Louis Légaré and Sitting Bull

Jean-Louis Légaré, a fur trader from Quebec who came to Wood Mountain in 1870 and founded a post at Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan, in 1880, was a trusted friend and unofficial spokesman for First Nations and Métis people. When Sitting Bull’s Lakota followers sought refuge in Canada, he worked with the North-West Mounted Police to keep the peace and persuade them to return to the United States.

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Photo: Saskatchewan Archives · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Guido Nincheri, around 1945.
CA-K462Culture & sport

Guido Nincheri, church artist of Montréal

Guido Nincheri had a major impact on church decoration in Canada in the first half of the 20th century, mastering buon fresco, painting on fresh plaster, which was rarely used in North America, and designing many church interiors and stained-glass windows. Detained during the internment of Italian Canadians in the Second World War, he later worked in the United States while keeping his Montréal studio.

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Photo: Paul Provencher [2] (dead link) [3] (1902-1982) [4] · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context