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The Erland Lee Museum in Stoney Creek, Ontario, the farmhouse where the constitution was drafted, photographed in 2008.
CA-K205History

The first Women’s Institute, Stoney Creek, 1897

In 1897, inspired by domestic science reformer Adelaide Hoodless, Janet Lee drafted the constitution of the Stoney Creek Women’s Institute at her farmhouse in Ontario. The Women’s Institutes spread across Canada and the world, bringing rural women together to learn skills, promote civic reform and break the isolation of rural life.

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Verified against cited sourcesVerified on 2026-10-26↗
Photo: Kristenkerr · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
A North-West Mounted Police trail marker near Glen McPherson, Saskatchewan, on the former route between Fort Walsh and Wood Mountain, in 2021.
CA-K204History

The North-West Mounted Police, 1873

The North-West Mounted Police was established in 1873 by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s government as a paramilitary force of 300 mounted constables, to assert Canadian control over the North-West Territories. Arriving in 1874 after a 1,300-kilometre trek from Dufferin, Manitoba, the force set up posts without the consultation or permission of First Nations and enforced laws that disregarded Indigenous laws and ways of life.

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Photo: Awmcphee · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Wild horses on a Sable Island beach, photographed in 2016; the image does not show the historic rescue establishment.
CA-K203History

The Sable Island Humane Establishment, 1801–1958

From 1801 to 1958, the Sable Island Humane Establishment rescued passengers and crews and recovered cargo from hundreds of vessels wrecked on the shifting shoals of Sable Island, about 290 kilometres southeast of Halifax. Founded long before the Canadian Coast Guard, it marked the beginning of government responsibility for marine safety.

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Photo: Paul Gierszewski · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Pier 21 in Halifax, now the Canadian Museum of Immigration, photographed in 2010.
CA-K202History

Some 48,000 war brides arrived at Pier 21

Between 1942 and 1948, some 48,000 women, mostly from Great Britain, and 22,000 children arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax as the families of Canadian servicemen stationed abroad during the Second World War. The federal government provided their transportation and information about Canada, and war bride clubs across the country helped them adapt.

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Photo: Skeezix1000 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
A photograph of George Dixon, taken before 1909.
CA-K201Culture & sport

George Dixon, first Black world boxing champion

George Dixon (1870–1908), born in Africville, Nova Scotia, was the first Black boxer and the first Canadian to win a world title, taking the bantamweight title in 1890 and the featherweight title in 1891. His training innovations, including shadowboxing, are still in use, and he used his popularity to open opportunities for Black boxers.

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Photo: unattributed · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Ware with his wife Mildred and children Robert and Nettie, 1896.
CA-K200History

John Ware, Black cowboy of the Canadian West

John Ware (c. 1850–1905), a Black cowboy who had been enslaved, entered the District of Alberta in 1882 with a trail crew driving cattle to the Bar U Ranch. Despite racism and rough frontier conditions, he built his own ranch with his wife Mildred and their children, and his skill and generosity earned him a prominent place in the history of the Canadian West.

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Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Richard Pierpoint Building, a courthouse in London, Ontario, named in his honour, photographed in 2026.
CA-K199History

Richard Pierpoint, Black Loyalist

Richard Pierpoint (c. 1744–c. 1838), born in Bundu in present-day Senegal, was captured and sold into slavery in the Thirteen Colonies around 1760. He fought as a free man with Butler’s Rangers in the American Revolution, settled in Niagara, and during the War of 1812 contributed to the creation of the Colored Corps; afterward he asked for passage to West Africa but was given land in Upper Canada instead.

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Photo: Chris Woodrich · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Africville Museum in Halifax, housed in a replica of the Seaview African United Baptist Church, photographed in 2012.
CA-K198Culture & sport

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, formed in 1895 by African Canadian Baptist leaders in Dartmouth and Halifax, was the only all-Black men’s ice hockey league in Canada and soon expanded across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Its championships drew multiracial crowds, though players endured racism, and the league advanced the fight for equality.

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Photo: DRheaume · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
A hand-coloured portrait of Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway), about 1860 (Library of Congress).
CA-K197Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway), Anishinaabe author

Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway, 1818–1869), a Mississauga Anishinaabe author, lecturer and activist, gained international literary celebrity for popular non-fiction books in the late 1840s and early 1850s. His writing and lectures gave readers in Canada and abroad insight into Mississauga spirituality, history and culture, and he spoke for Indigenous peoples at the 1850 Peace Congress in Frankfurt.

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Photo: Marian S. Carson Collection (Library of Congress) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
A portrait of James Isbister, taken before 1915.
CA-K196Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

James Isbister, English Métis leader

James Isbister (1833–1915), an English Métis leader, founded the Isbister Métis settlement at Prince Albert, where he and Margaret Bear began farming in 1862. He helped unite English and French Métis in seeking recognition of their land rights, and in 1884 was one of four delegates who travelled to Montana to invite Louis Riel to lead the Métis protest movement.

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Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Hartley Bay, British Columbia, home of the Gitga’at First Nation, photographed in 2007.
CA-K195Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

‘Wii Niisł Puuntk (Lucille Clifton), Gitga’at matriarch

‘Wii Niisł Puuntk (Lucille Clifton, 1876–1962), a Laxsgiik (Eagle Clan) matriarch, exemplifies the centuries-old leadership role of prominent women in matrilineal Gitga’at (Tsimshian) society. A healer and midwife with deep knowledge of plants, she passed on ancestral knowledge and cultural practices as Hartley Bay faced land loss and disruptive government policies.

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Photo: Shawn from Airdrie, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
A seated statue of Northrop Frye at Victoria College, University of Toronto, photographed in 2018.
CA-K194Culture & sport

Northrop Frye, literary theorist

Northrop Frye (1912–1991), based at Victoria College, University of Toronto, from 1939 to 1991, was a pre-eminent literary theorist and critic. His systematic study of the myths and symbols underlying literature, and his work on the Bible as literature, had significant international influence, and his idea of a “garrison mentality” shaped English-Canadian literature.

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Photo: Maksim Sokolov (maxergon.com) · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Margaret Laurence House in Neepawa, Manitoba, photographed in 2012.
CA-K193Culture & sport

Margaret Laurence and Manawaka

Margaret Laurence (1926–1987), one of Canada’s most esteemed authors, set her best-known novels in the fictional prairie town of Manawaka, with characters such as Hagar Shipley of The Stone Angel. She said Neepawa, Manitoba, where she lived from 1935 to 1944, shaped her “way of viewing,” and she helped found the Writers’ Trust of Canada and the Writers’ Union of Canada.

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Photo: Amqui · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The Harry Jerome statue by Jack Harman in Stanley Park, Vancouver, photographed in 2022.
CA-K192Culture & sport

Harry Jerome, sprinter

Harry Jerome (1940–1982) was one of the fastest men in the world for much of the 1960s, holding multiple world sprint records, including the 100 metres in ten seconds flat. He later made major contributions to amateur sport and fitness in Canada, and remains a point of pride for African Canadians.

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Photo: Dietmar Rabich · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Winnipeg Falcons team at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.
CA-K191Culture & sport

The Winnipeg Falcons won the first Olympic hockey gold, 1920

The Winnipeg Falcons, a hockey club made up almost entirely of Icelandic Canadian players, won the Allan Cup as Canada’s senior amateur champions in 1920. That year they represented Canada in Antwerp, Belgium, and won the first Olympic gold medal for hockey.

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Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Eleanor Roosevelt holding a poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1949; Humphrey does not appear in the photo.
CA-K189Institutions

John P. Humphrey and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

John P. Humphrey (1905–1995), a McGill law professor, was the first director of the United Nations Human Rights Division from 1946 to 1966. The 48-article “Secretariat Outline” he prepared with his staff for the UN Human Rights Commission laid the foundations for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

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Photo: FDR Presidential Library & Museum · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Tommy Douglas, former Premier of Saskatchewan, around 1971.
CA-K188Institutions

Tommy Douglas and the roots of medicare

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) was Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, leading Canada’s only Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government. Under him the province pioneered publicly funded hospital insurance, laying the foundations for national medicare; he later became the first leader of the federal New Democratic Party.

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Photo: Themightyquill · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
A portrait of Emily Stowe, no later than 1895.
CA-K187History

Emily Stowe, Canada’s first woman doctor in private practice

Denied university entry in Canada because she was a woman, Emily Stowe (1831–1903) studied medicine in New York City and in 1867 opened the first private medical practice in Canada run by a woman doctor, in Toronto. She led the drive to found Woman’s Medical College in 1883 and, through the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, kept suffrage in the public eye.

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Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Agnes Macphail, MP, photographed by Yousuf Karsh on 14 May 1934.
CA-K186Institutions

Agnes Macphail, first woman elected to the House of Commons

Agnes Macphail (1890–1954), a rural schoolteacher, became the first woman elected to the House of Commons when she won Grey County as a Progressive in the 1921 federal election. In Ottawa she fought for penal reform, disarmament and social welfare, and later sat in the Ontario legislature from 1943 to 1951.

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Photo: Yousuf Karsh · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Thérèse Casgrain photographed by George Nakash (Library and Archives Canada).
CA-K185History

Thérèse Casgrain and the Quebec vote for women, 1940

Thérèse Casgrain (1896–1981), a pioneer of Quebec feminism, led the Ligue des droits de la femme from 1928 to 1942 and played a pivotal role in winning women the right to vote in Quebec provincial elections in 1940. The Fédération des femmes du Québec, founded under her guidance in 1966, launched a new wave of organized feminism.

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Photo: George Nakash (1892-1976) · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
The Supreme Court of Canada building in Ottawa, photographed in 2009.
CA-K184History

The Klippert case, 1967

In Klippert v. the Queen (1967), Everett Klippert appealed his indefinite imprisonment as a dangerous sexual offender for gross indecency, under a Criminal Code that made sex between men illegal. The Supreme Court ruled against him, but the case exposed legal discrimination against gay men and contributed to the partial decriminalization of same-gender sexual acts in 1969.

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Photo: Wladyslaw · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The Japanese Canadian War Memorial in Stanley Park, Vancouver, photographed in 2026.
CA-K182History

Japanese Canadian soldiers and the 1931 vote

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.

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Photo: Spudgun67 · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site near Dresden, Ontario, now the Josiah Henson Museum of African-Canadian History, photographed in 2014.
CA-K181History

Josiah Henson and the Dawn settlement

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.

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Photo: NearEMPTiness · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Citadel Hill in Halifax, Nova Scotia, photographed in 2011.
CA-K180History

The Jamaican Maroons in Nova Scotia, 1796–1800

After the Maroon War of 1795–1796, Britain exiled more than 500 Maroons of Trelawny Town, Jamaica, to Nova Scotia. They kept a strong sense of community despite pressure to assimilate and demands for their labour, including at the Halifax Citadel; most were resettled in Sierra Leone in 1800, while a few remained.

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Photo: Moneywagon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context