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148 recordsStructured records (JSON) ↗
Sir William Price, about 1924 (Fonds Dubuc).
CA-K853Economy & trade

Sir William Price, from lumber to pulp and paper

William Price joined his family’s lumber business in 1885 and took control in 1899, when it was close to failing. To diversify, he bought a pulp mill at Jonquière and helped lead the shift from lumber to pulp and paper, a sector in which Canada became a world leader by the 1920s. His mill at Kénogami was for years Canada’s top newsprint producer.

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Photo: Fonds Dubuc · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Charles Sherwood Noble, 1918.
CA-K845Economy & trade

Charles Noble and the Noble Blade

Charles Sherwood Noble, farmer, inventor and entrepreneur, showed the farming potential of the drought-prone Palliser Triangle. During the Great Depression he worked with the Dominion Experimental Farm to promote dry-land farming methods, and in 1936 invented the Noble Blade, a cultivator that cut weeds at the roots without disturbing the soil, greatly reducing erosion. His company became Alberta’s largest maker of such implements.

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Photo: unknown (Life time: 1910s) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Andrew Archibald Macdonald, 1892 (William James Topley).
CA-K829History

Andrew Archibald Macdonald, note-taker at Quebec

Andrew Archibald Macdonald, a Prince Edward Island merchant and shipbuilder, sat in the Legislative Assembly and Council. He attended the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864, and his notes from Quebec are one of the few original records of that conference. After the Island joined Confederation he became its Lieutenant-Governor and was later named to the Senate.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
James J. Hill, 1916 (Pach Bros.).
CA-K811Economy & trade

James J. Hill, railway builder

James Jerome Hill, born near Rockwood, Upper Canada, moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1856. He organized the Red River Transportation Company linking St. Paul and Winnipeg and by 1878 was building a railway empire. A CPR board member from 1880 to 1883, he became a major competitor, organized the Great Northern system by 1889, and built many feeder lines to the Canadian border.

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Photo: Pach Bros. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Ezra Butler Eddy, 1894 (William James Topley).
CA-K789Economy & trade

E.B. Eddy, match maker of the Chaudière

Ezra Butler Eddy, born in Vermont, came to the Chaudière Falls in 1851 and started a small hand-operated match factory. He grew into a lumber magnate and maker of wooden goods, by the 1880s was Canada’s largest match producer and also made wood pulp, and in 1890 opened an up-to-date paper mill, helping make the Chaudière area a major industrial centre.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George A. Cox, portrait published in 1907.
CA-K782Economy & trade

George Cox, banker and insurance magnate

George Cox, after a business career in Peterborough, moved to Toronto as it challenged Montréal as Canada’s banking capital. President of the Canadian Bank of Commerce from 1890 to 1906, he expanded it into Western Canada, and as head of Canada Life he dominated the insurance industry from the mid-1890s until his death in 1914.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Percy Girouard in 1899 (Wm. Notman & Son, McCord Museum).
CA-K749History

Sir Percy Girouard, railway engineer of empire

Percy Girouard of Montréal, a graduate of the Royal Military College in Kingston, joined the Royal Engineers in 1888. He built the Wadi Halfa–Khartoum railway from 1896, directed railways in South Africa and oversaw the line to Kano in Northern Nigeria, later serving as governor of Northern Nigeria and of East Africa and as Britain’s director general of munitions supply.

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Photo: Studio Wn. Notman & Son · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
James Garfield Gardiner (Alexandra Studio, Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K739Institutions

Jimmy Gardiner, voice of the Prairie farmer

James Garfield “Jimmy” Gardiner, first elected to Saskatchewan’s legislature as a Liberal in 1914, was twice premier of the province and federal Minister of Agriculture from 1936 to 1957. A combative, intensely partisan politician, he was for years his party’s bulwark in the West and the voice of the Prairie farmer in Ottawa.

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Photo: Alexandra Studio / Library and Archives Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Statue of Frontenac on the façade of the Parliament Building, Québec City, 2015.
CA-K735History

Frontenac, governor of New France

Louis de Buade de Frontenac, governor of New France from 1672 to 1682 and 1689 to 1698, shaped the colony’s military destiny: he resisted the British attack of 1690 and invaded Haudenosaunee territory in 1696. To profit from the fur trade he defied policy against westward expansion, founding Fort Frontenac (Cataraqui) in 1673 and starting a network of posts; he remains a controversial, legendary figure.

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Photo: Photo: Jean Gagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The commemorative plaque to Agathe de Saint-Père de Repentigny in Montréal, 2020.
CA-K715Economy & trade

Agathe de Saint-Père de Repentigny, textile entrepreneur of New France

Agathe de Saint-Père de Repentigny established a textile workshop in early-18th-century Montréal to address a shortage of fabric in New France. She developed dyes and cloth from local plants and fibres, and ransomed and hired English weavers who had been taken captive, pairing them with Canadian apprentices.

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Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Harold Adams Innis, 1910s.
CA-K711Culture & sport

Harold Innis, historian of staples and communications

Harold Adams Innis, one of Canada’s great scholars, joined the University of Toronto in 1920 and headed its Department of Political Economy from 1937. Through works such as The Fur Trade in Canada, The Cod Fisheries and Empire and Communications, he deeply influenced the study of economics, history, geography, politics and communications.

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Photo: Unknown photographer (1910s) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Dora Dworkin in her nurse’s uniform, around 1909 (Ontario Jewish Archives).
CA-K706History

Dorothy Dworkin, nurse and community builder

Dorothy Dworkin, a nurse, midwife and entrepreneur, managed Toronto’s free Jewish Dispensary and helped found Mount Sinai Hospital in the 1920s, which served Jewish Canadians and employed doctors often shut out of hospitals by antisemitism. During the Holocaust she led relief fundraising and, through her family’s steamship agency, helped hundreds of Eastern European Jews settle in Canada.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Maurice Duplessis, 1936 (Studio Dupras et Colas).
CA-K700Institutions

Maurice Duplessis and the Union nationale

Maurice Duplessis of Trois-Rivières formed the Union nationale in 1935, an alliance of Conservatives and dissident Liberals that governed Quebec from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 until his death in 1959. Known as “Le Chef”, he was a colourful and influential figure whose years in office brought frequent controversy, the assertion of Quebec autonomy and major public works.

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Photo: Studio Dupras et Colas · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Samuel Cunard, between 1855 and 1865 (Nova Scotia Archives).
CA-K699Economy & trade

Sir Samuel Cunard and transatlantic steamships

Samuel Cunard, born in Halifax of Loyalist parents, built a Maritime empire in banking, lumber, land, coal and above all shipping. A pioneer of transatlantic steam navigation, he won an Admiralty contract in 1839 for scheduled Liverpool–Halifax–Boston mail service, and in July 1840 the Britannia, the first regular Cunarder, crossed in 13 days.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Honoré Mercier, around 1880 (J.-E. Livernois).
CA-K668Institutions

Honoré Mercier, premier of Quebec

Honoré Mercier, a lawyer and orator from Saint-Hyacinthe, led the Parti national formed in 1885 by Liberals and Conservatives outraged by the Riel affair. As premier of Quebec from 1887 to 1891 he encouraged agricultural settlement, convened the first conference of premiers and fiercely defended provincial autonomy.

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Photo: Jules-Ernest Livernois · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Eulas Foster, around 1920 (Bain, Library of Congress).
CA-K651Institutions

Sir George Foster, Conservative finance minister

George Eulas Foster of Carleton County, New Brunswick, a former classics professor, sat in the House of Commons for most of 1882–1921. A central Conservative figure and orator, he was Minister of Finance under five prime ministers and Minister of Commerce under Borden and Meighen, and supported the League of Nations.

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Photo: Bain · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Jean-Charles Chapais, April 1870 (Topley Studio).
CA-K646History

Jean-Charles Chapais, Father of Confederation

Jean-Charles Chapais, a merchant of Saint-Denis de Kamouraska, represented Kamouraska as a Conservative from 1851 to 1867 and was Commissioner of Public Works. A delegate to the Québec Conference and Father of Confederation, he became a senator in 1868 and served in Macdonald’s cabinets as Minister of Agriculture and Receiver General.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Francis H. Clergue.
CA-K644Economy & trade

Francis Clergue and industrial Sault Ste. Marie

Francis Hector Clergue, a promoter from Maine, transformed Sault Ste. Marie into a major industrial centre. After buying an unfinished hydroelectric station and canal there in 1894, he created his own linked industries to use the power, including a pulp and paper mill, a copper company, Algoma Steel and the Algoma Central Railway.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Margaret Duley, 1941.
CA-K637Culture & sport

Margaret Duley, Newfoundland novelist

Margaret Iris Duley of St. John’s, who wrote mainly in the 1930s and 1940s, was the first Newfoundland novelist to gain international recognition, with readers in Canada and England as well as at home. Novels such as Cold Pastoral and Highway to Valour vividly portray the beauty and harshness of early 20th-century Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Photo: Anonymous (photographer unidentified) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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
Sir Richard John Cartwright, December 1908 (Topley Studio).
CA-K606Institutions

Sir Richard Cartwright, Liberal finance minister

Richard John Cartwright of Kingston, grandson of a Loyalist merchant, sat in the House of Commons as a Liberal for 37 years. He was Minister of Finance under Mackenzie (1873–1878) and Minister of Trade and Commerce under Laurier (1896–1904), and as a free trader he designed the Liberals’ 1891 policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Carling, Minister of Agriculture, December 1885 (Topley Studio).
CA-K604Economy & trade

Sir John Carling and the Experimental Farms

John Carling of London, Ontario, succeeded his father as president of Carling Brewing and Malting and sat as a Conservative in the provincial and federal legislatures for decades. His most significant contribution came as federal Minister of Agriculture from 1885 to 1892, when he founded the system of Dominion Experimental Farms.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Gustave Francq, portrait published in 1924.
CA-K601Economy & trade

Gustave Francq, labour leader

Gustave Francq, a typographer and journalist, was a key figure of international unionism in Quebec and Canada, campaigning for a minimum wage for women, better workers’ compensation and free compulsory education. In 1916 he founded Le Monde ouvrier/The Labor World, which became the official newspaper of the Quebec Federation of Labour.

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Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Peter Mitchell, April 1883 (Topley Studio).
CA-K587History

Peter Mitchell, New Brunswick Father of Confederation

Peter Mitchell of Newcastle, New Brunswick, attended the Charlottetown, Québec and London conferences and, as premier in 1866–1867, negotiated New Brunswick’s entry into Confederation. He was Canada’s first Minister of Marine and Fisheries from 1867 to 1873 and later owned the Montreal Herald.

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Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context