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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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Spudgun67 · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
After escaping slavery in Kentucky to Upper Canada, Reverend Josiah Henson (1789–1883) became an Underground Railroad conductor and abolitionist, founded the Black settlement of Dawn and established the British American Institute school. Harriet Beecher Stowe said his 1849 memoirs supplied ideas and incidents for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, raising awareness of Canada as a haven from slavery.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NearEMPTiness · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: JFVoll · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Nahnebahweequay (Catharine Sutton, 1824–1865), a Mississauga (Ojibwe) advocate raised at the Credit Mission, fought for Indigenous land title and against the loss of First Nations women’s status through marriage to non-Indigenous men. In defiance of colonial officials, she travelled to London and appealed directly to Queen Victoria in 1860.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: ^ Missi ^ from Mississauga, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Onondeyoh (Frederick Ogilvie Loft, 1861–1934) founded the League of Indians of Canada in 1919, the first pan-Indigenous political organization, advocating for land rights and better education. He lobbied for self-government and day schools in place of residential schools, and protested forced enfranchisement and the expropriation of reserve lands.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Chief Peguis (1774–1864), a skilled hunter and diplomat, worked to protect the rights and interests of the Anishinaabeg of Red River and stepped in to save lives when fur trade hostilities threatened the Selkirk Settlement. He was one of five First Nations negotiators of the Selkirk Treaty of 1817, the first agreement permitting limited farmland access to settlers in western Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Wtshymanski · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Chanie Wenjack was an Anishinaabe boy from Marten Falls First Nation who lived for three years at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario, and died after escaping. His story represents thousands of children driven by loneliness, abuse and desperation to run away from residential schools, and was amplified at the time by official procedures and national news coverage.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Quintin Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Peter K Burian · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld (1903–1969), an all-round athlete who excelled in hockey, basketball, tennis, softball and track, won gold and silver medals at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. In 1949 she was chosen Canada’s outstanding female athlete of the half-century, after a later career as a Toronto sports columnist.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Contralto Portia White (1911–1968), from the Black Nova Scotian community, was the first African-Canadian woman to win international acclaim as a singer. Between 1940 and 1948, her debuts in Toronto and New York and recitals across the Americas and the Caribbean became a source of pride for Canadians.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Yousuf Karsh · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Between October 1944 and May 1945, the Canadian military opened the Scheldt estuary and the port of Antwerp to Allied supplies, cleared much of the Netherlands of the enemy and fed a starving Dutch population. On 5 May 1945 in Wageningen, German forces surrendered to Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Brbbl · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The Preston Rivulettes of Preston (now Cambridge), Ontario, are considered the most successful early women’s hockey team, winning more than 95% of their games in their ten-year existence. Led by right-winger Hilda Ranscombe, they won most provincial, regional and national championships between 1931 and 1940.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Preston Rivulettes · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Between 1914 and 1941, when Japanese Canadians faced racism, Vancouver’s Asahi Baseball Team won championships in senior amateur leagues with its “brain ball” style of bunting and speed. The team became a symbol of the Japanese Canadian struggle for equality and respect, and was disbanded during the Second World War internment.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Vancouver Public Library Historical Photographs · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
In the early 1880s, thousands of labourers from China helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway through British Columbia’s mountains; about three-quarters of the men on the section between the Pacific and Craigellachie were Chinese. They were paid a dollar a day, half a white worker’s pay, and hundreds died from accidents or illness.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Shaun Merritt · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Mary Ann Shadd (1823–1893) became a prominent activist in the Underground Railroad refugee communities of Upper Canada in the 1850s. In 1853 she established the Provincial Freeman, an influential newspaper that argued for the rights of Black people and women and became the leading voice of refugees in Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Chris Woodrich · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Upper Canada’s 1793 Act against slavery, passed under Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, prohibited the importation of enslaved people. It did not free people already enslaved, but provided that children subsequently born to enslaved mothers would become free at age 25. Slavery in Upper Canada ended in 1834.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: User:Saforrest · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Théophile Panadis of Odanak, known as “the Storyteller,” dedicated his life to safeguarding and sharing Abenaki traditional knowledge. Working with ethnologists A. Irving Hallowell and Gordon M. Day, he recorded Abenaki language and history, helping to sustain a strong Abenaki identity.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: AnonymousUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Peter Pitseolak (1902–1973), an Inuit artist, photographer, hunter and historian, recorded both the old customs and beliefs of his people and their adjustment to a new life as Inuit culture underwent momentous change. His carvings, prints and photographs are acclaimed for their historical and artistic value, and he left an account of the history of Sikusuilaq (southern Baffin Island).
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Charles Gimpel · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Christopher J. Woods - Canada. Dept. of National Defence · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
pīhtokahānapiwiyin (Poundmaker, ca. 1842–1886), a nēhiyaw (Plains Cree) chief, sought better terms for his people and called on Canada to fulfil its obligations under Treaty 6. In 1885 he repulsed Lieutenant-Colonel Otter’s attack on his reserve at Cut Knife but restrained his followers; imprisoned as a rebel, he died after his early release.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Meshikamau-shipu, Innu-aimun for “river to Meshikamau,” is a travel route of about 330 kilometres through rivers and lakes in Labrador, from Sheshatshiu to the Meshikamau area. Its camp sites, some dating back 3,500 years, portages and burial places reflect Innu land use and a way of life based on mobility until permanent settlement in the 1960s.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Photo by Fred C. Sears. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada (PA-148593). · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Abenaki weavers in Odanak and Wôlinak, Quebec, use black ash splints and sweetgrass to make baskets using skills passed between generations. Basket-making was Odanak’s main source of income from 1870 to 1920 and remains a symbol of Abenaki identity.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Société historique d'Odanak, Musée des Abénakis, Odanak, Québec, Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922), best known as the inventor of the telephone, was born in Scotland, became a citizen of the United States and was a longtime resident of Canada. In 1907 he and his wife Mabel co-founded the Aerial Experiment Association, which led to the flight of the Silver Dart; he died at his summer home, Beinn Bhreagh, near Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Skeezix1000 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context