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804 recordsStructured records (JSON) ↗
Emma Albani in 1899 (Talma and Company, Melbourne).
CA-K412Culture & sport

Emma Albani, soprano from Chambly

Emma Albani, born Emma Lajeunesse at Chambly, Quebec, was one of the great sopranos of her generation. For 24 years a principal artist at Covent Garden in London and a favourite of Queen Victoria, she sang Italian, French, German and English repertoire, from oratorio to Wagner, and was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1925.

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Photo: Talma and Company, Melbourne, Australia (Active: ca. 1899 - ca. 1912) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Portrait of Crowfoot, head chief of the Siksika, around 1885.
CA-K409Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Isapo-Muxika (Crowfoot), Siksika peacemaker

Isapo-Muxika (Crowfoot), born Kainai and raised among the Siksika (Blackfoot), became a leading chief known as a warrior, orator and peacemaker. Convinced that peace served his people best, he made peace with the Plains Cree, adopting Poundmaker as his son, and persuaded the Siksika to sign Treaty 7 in 1877.

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Photo: Alex Ross · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Red Crow in 1895.
CA-K405Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Red Crow, head chief of the Kainai

Red Crow, warrior and statesman, became a head chief of the Kainai (Blood) in 1870. After first boycotting the negotiations, he signed Treaty 7 in 1877 on behalf of his people and chose the site of the Blood Reserve, the largest in Canada; his leadership helped the Kainai keep their proud and independent spirit.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Archbishop Alexandre-Antonin Taché in 1873 (William Notman).
CA-K401Language & names

Archbishop Taché and French education in Manitoba

Alexandre-Antonin Taché, Bishop and then Archbishop of St. Boniface from 1853 to 1894, was the foremost Catholic leader in the West and oversaw missions, day schools and residential schools that sought to convert and assimilate Indigenous Peoples. He helped secure Catholic and French education rights in the Manitoba Act of 1870 and fought in vain to restore them after they were eroded from 1890.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney, April 1883 (Topley Studio).
CA-K400Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Edgar Dewdney and Indigenous policy on the Prairies

As Indian Commissioner (1879–1888) and Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Territories, Edgar Dewdney withheld rations from starving First Nations until they settled on government-selected reserves, causing malnutrition, disease and death. After 1885 he helped impose the extralegal pass system and helped shape the residential school system, with devastating consequences for Indigenous children, families and communities.

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Photo: Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada / PA-027070 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Hector-Louis Langevin in Montréal, 1865 (William Notman).
CA-K399Institutions

Sir Hector-Louis Langevin, Confederation and residential schools

Sir Hector-Louis Langevin, a Father of Confederation, attended all three conferences leading to 1867, helped draft the 72 Resolutions and led the Quebec Conservatives for nearly two decades. As Minister of Public Works, he called in 1883 for Indigenous children to be removed from their homes for assimilation and announced three industrial schools in the Northwest, part of the residential school system’s devastating expansion.

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Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Alexandre Vachon as a young priest, around 1910.
CA-K397Language & names

Monsignor Alexandre Vachon, science in French

Monsignor Alexandre Vachon (1885–1953) was a strong advocate of scientific education and the promotion of science for French-speaking Canadians. He founded scientific institutions, served as faculty dean and president of Université Laval, and as Archbishop of Ottawa defended the rights of Franco-Ontarians.

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Photo: Montminy & Cie · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Portrait of Edith Archibald, no later than 1895.
CA-K396Institutions

Edith Archibald and women’s suffrage in Nova Scotia

For more than 30 years, Edith Jessie Archibald (1854–1936) championed women’s right to vote in Nova Scotia, achieved on 26 April 1918. As president of the Maritime Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Halifax Local Council of Women, she also worked to improve health and education services.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Jean Blewett, portrait from a book published around 1896.
CA-K392Culture & sport

Jean Blewett, poet and journalist

Jean (McKishnie) Blewett (1862–1934), born at Scotia, Upper Canada, was a popular early 20th-century poet and journalist. For many years on the staff of the Toronto Globe, she worked as a journalist until 1925 and published several volumes of poetry between 1897 and 1922, admired for their directness and simplicity.

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Photo: Unknown author · 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
Alexander Morris in Ottawa, December 1869 (Topley Studio).
CA-K386Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Alexander Morris and the Numbered Treaties

Alexander Morris, a supporter of Confederation and lieutenant-governor of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, negotiated Treaties 3, 4, 5 and 6 with First Nations from 1873 to 1876. First Nations sought a reciprocal relationship that safeguarded their autonomy, while Canada’s main goal was territorial expansion for settlers; Morris pressed the government to keep its spoken promises.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Father Albert Lacombe, photographed before 1916.
CA-K385Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Father Albert Lacombe, missionary in the West

From 1852, Oblate priest Albert Lacombe spent over 60 years seeking to convert Indigenous Peoples in western Canada to Christianity, founding missions such as St. Albert with Métis and Cree help and acting as a go-between during Treaty 8 talks. He was the first principal of the High River Industrial School in 1884–1885 and advocated separating children from their families and suppressing Indigenous languages.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
A. M. Klein in the mid-1940s (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K383Culture & sport

A. M. Klein, poet of Jewish Montréal

A. M. Klein (1909–1972) combined modernism with Jewish literary traditions in poetry that portrayed his downtown Montréal neighbourhood. His collection The Rocking Chair and Other Poems, depicting Quebec and its people, won the Governor General’s Award in 1949.

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Photo: Library and Archives Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Prince of Wales Hotel above Waterton Lake, Alberta, photographed in 2016.
CA-K382Places & geography

The Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lakes

The Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, built in 1926–1927, is a grand survivor of the golden age of railway resorts in Canada. It was the only Canadian link in the Great Northern Railway’s chain of park hotels, and its soaring roof, gables and balconies give it the look of a giant alpine chalet.

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Photo: Lazarus000 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
A stone path through Reader Rock Garden in Calgary, photographed in 2014.
CA-K380Places & geography

Reader Rock Garden, Calgary

Reader Rock Garden in Calgary is an Arts and Crafts-style alpine rockery laid out on a steep hillside by William R. Reader, the city’s parks superintendent from 1913 to 1942. Its planting beds tested and showed off what could grow in Calgary, challenging the belief that southern Alberta’s climate was too harsh for agriculture and horticulture.

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Photo: Thank you for visiting my page from Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
A pond in the Flowery Brook area of the Montréal Botanical Garden, photographed in 2017.
CA-K379Places & geography

The Montréal Botanical Garden of Brother Marie-Victorin

The Montréal Botanical Garden, founded in 1931, was developed through botanist Brother Marie-Victorin’s leadership and landscape architect Henry Teuscher’s design. It includes exhibition greenhouses, thematic gardens and an arboretum, combining botanical study with public horticultural education.

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Photo: King of Hearts · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
A historical plaque at Seven Oaks House Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, photographed in 2017.
CA-K376Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Seven Oaks House and the Inkster family of Red River

Seven Oaks House in Winnipeg, in the Métis homeland and on Treaty 1 territory, includes a cabin of about 1831 built in Red River frame style and a Georgian house of 1851–1853. Home to the Scottish and Métis Inkster family, it shows the centrality of Métis families in the Red River community and the shift from the fur trade to farming and town life.

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Photo: Jessica Losorata · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The former CCGS Alexander Henry, preserved in Thunder Bay, Ontario, photographed in 2026.
CA-K374History

CCGS Alexander Henry, Lake Superior icebreaker

The CCGS Alexander Henry, launched at Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) in 1958, was the main Canadian icebreaker on Lake Superior from 1959 to 1985 and part of the first Canadian Coast Guard fleet in 1962. The red and white ship broke ice to lengthen the shipping season, supplied lighthouses, maintained buoys and carried out search and rescue.

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Photo: Quintin Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
The print room of the Magog cotton mill in 1897.
CA-K373Economy & trade

The Magog Textile Mill, Canada’s first cotton printing

The Magog Textile Mill in Quebec, built in 1883 on the Magog River, began printing cotton in 1884 and was the country’s only cotton-printing mill until 1899. It was the only 19th-century mill where spinning, weaving, bleaching and printing were all done at one site; as part of Dominion Textile it employed 2,300 people by 1943.

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Photo: Charles Havelock Taylor (1859-1953) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
University College on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto, photographed in 2017.
CA-K370Institutions

University College and non-denominational higher education

University College in Toronto, built in 1856–1859 to designs by F. W. Cumberland, largely assured the future of the University of Toronto and drew it into a federal pattern widely followed in Canada and the Commonwealth. It realized a major 19th-century goal: a non-denominational, government-supported institution of higher learning.

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Photo: BeautifulWaters · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Montmorency Park in Québec City, photographed in 2024.
CA-K369Institutions

Montmorency Park, where parliaments met in Québec

For nearly a century, Montmorency Park in Québec City was where the legislators of Lower Canada, the Province of Canada and the Province of Quebec met. The Québec Conference of 1864 drafted its 72 resolutions for Confederation here. After fire destroyed the Parliament Building in 1883, the site became a public park ten years later.

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Photo: Pymouss · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The front of La Petite-Ferme at Cap Tourmente, Quebec, photographed in 2022.
CA-K364History

La Petite-Ferme du cap Tourmente, Champlain’s farm

La Petite-Ferme at Cap Tourmente, Quebec, in an area with an Indigenous presence going back more than 2,000 years, began as a livestock farm built for Samuel de Champlain in 1626 to help feed the young settlement of Québec. It was the first livestock farm in the St. Lawrence Valley; bought by Bishop Laval in 1664, it was run by the Séminaire de Québec for 300 years.

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Photo: Judith Bourque · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Shoal Tower in Kingston harbour, Ontario, photographed in 2017.
CA-K362History

Shoal Tower, a Kingston Martello tower

Shoal Tower in Kingston’s harbour was built by the British government in 1846–1847 as one of four Martello towers, with the Market Battery, to reinforce Kingston’s defences against an anticipated American threat during the Oregon Crisis. It is part of the Kingston Fortifications, linked to the town’s military importance and the Great Lakes–Rideau Canal route.

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Photo: Mark · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context