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On March 23, 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin met President George W. Bush in Crawford and Waco, Texas.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Series: Photographs Related to the George W. Bush Administration, 1/20/2001 - 1/20/2009 Collection: Records of the White House Photo Office (George W. Bush Administration), 1/20/2001 - 1/20/2009 · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
On a working visit on September 9, 2002, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien discussed the Iraq crisis with President George W. Bush in Detroit, Michigan.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Not identified. Part of White House Photo Essay. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker), a nehiyaw (Plains Cree) chief and spokesman, sought better terms for his people and pressed Canada to honour Treaty 6. In 1885 he was drawn into the North-West Resistance when Lieutenant-Colonel Otter’s troops attacked his peaceful camp near Cut Knife Hill. Though he worked to prevent bloodshed and surrendered on May 26, he was imprisoned; he died soon after release and was exonerated in 2019.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Prof. Buell, O.B. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto was built in 1907–1908 in the Byzantine Revival style. Its 1923 murals included work by J. E. H. MacDonald, Frederick Varley and Franklin Carmichael of the Group of Seven. A fire destroyed the historic church building and its irreplaceable artwork on 9 June 2024.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: SimonP · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The rustic stone Abbot Pass Refuge Cabin, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1922 high in the Rockies between Mount Lefroy and Mount Victoria, sheltered hikers and mountaineers from 1923 until 2018. Erosion of the slope, accelerated by climate change, made the hut unstable and forced its demolition in 2022.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Florin Chelaru · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Ernest Thompson Seton (1860–1946), largely self-taught, made major contributions as a naturalist, ornithologist, conservationist and wildlife artist, and his bestselling realistic animal stories developed a distinctive Canadian genre. His “Woodcraft Indians” youth program influenced the Boy Scout movement and summer camps but, as Parks Canada’s 2022 review notes, also contributed to inaccurate stereotypes of First Nations.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bain News Service · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
From the 1540s to the early 1600s, up to 2,000 Basque men and boys sailed each year from southern France and northern Spain to the Strait of Belle Isle to hunt right whales and render their blubber into oil for European markets. Red Bay, Labrador, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013, is the most extensive and best-preserved whaling station of its kind.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Cephas · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Landscape of Grand Pré in Nova Scotia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012, bears exceptional testimony to a farming settlement the Acadians created in the 17th century beside some of the world’s highest tides. They reclaimed land from the sea with dykes, aboiteaux and drainage, under a community-based management system still in use today.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Mykola Swarnyk · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
About 300 million years ago, the eastern shore of Chignecto Bay, on the Bay of Fundy, was a tropical wetland forest near the equator. The Joggins Fossil Cliffs in Nova Scotia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008, hold the best and most complete known fossil record of land life in the “Coal Age,” including the first reptiles in Earth’s history.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Gorob · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Botanist and geneticist Carrie Derick (1862–1941) overcame strong opposition to become one of the first women appointed to a full professorship in Canada, at McGill University from 1912 to 1929. A suffragist and reformer, she promoted political and educational equality for women; Parks Canada’s 2024 review also notes that she held eugenic views widely shared in her academic circles.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, opened in 2014. It describes itself as the first museum solely dedicated to the evolution, celebration and future of human rights.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Quintin Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
In the 2021 Census, 18.0% of Canadians could speak both English and French; in Quebec, the rate was 46.4%. English is a minority language in Quebec, while French is a minority language in the other provinces and territories and in Canada as a whole.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: WCL20 Lycée Louis Pasteur Justemila · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
In the 2021 Census, one in four Canadians had at least one mother tongue other than English or French, and one in eight spoke mainly another language at home, both the highest proportions on record. That year, 41.2% of Canadians could hold a conversation in more than one language.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Steve Harris from Toronto, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
More than 70 distinct Indigenous languages are spoken in Canada, and Cree languages and Inuktitut are the main ones. In the 2021 Census, 189,000 people reported at least one Indigenous mother tongue.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Fenerty at English Wikipedia · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Pimachiowin Aki, Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) for “the land that gives life,” is a boreal forest in Manitoba and Ontario under Indigenous stewardship. Inscribed in 2018, it is Canada’s first mixed (natural and cultural) World Heritage property and testifies to the Anishinaabe tradition of Ji-ganawendamang Gidakiiminaan (Keeping the Land).
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Timkal · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi, in Alberta’s Milk River Valley, is a sacred site where the Blackfoot (Siksikáítsitapi) left engravings and paintings on the sandstone walls. The landscape remains sacred to the Blackfoot and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Nodin Cutfeet · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
In March 2013, Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to command a spaceship when he took command of the International Space Station. In 2001 he had become the first Canadian to venture outside a spacecraft in orbit.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NASA · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Mistaken Point, on the southeastern tip of Newfoundland, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. Its fossils, 580 to 560 million years old, include the world’s oldest-known examples of large, architecturally complex organisms.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Alicejmichel · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
In 1946, Viola Desmond, a successful Nova Scotia businesswoman, refused to leave a whites-only area of a movie theatre; her court case inspired the pursuit of racial equality across Canada. In 2018 she appeared on Canada’s first vertical bank note, the $10 note.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Colin Stepney · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Canadian horse was recognized as the national horse of Canada in April 2002 through the National Horse of Canada Act. The breed’s origins trace to 1665, when the King of France sent horses to New France.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Deinocheirus · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Nisg̱a’a Treaty, British Columbia’s first modern treaty, took effect on 11 May 2000. It recognizes about 2,000 square kilometres of Nisg̱a’a Lands and was the first treaty in British Columbia to provide constitutional certainty for self-government.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Darren Kirby · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is observed each year on 30 September, honouring Residential School Survivors, their families and communities. It became a federal statutory holiday through Bill C-5, which received royal assent on 3 June 2021; Orange Shirt Day, which began in Williams Lake, British Columbia, in 2013, is observed the same day.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Joli Rumi · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Maple Leaf Tartan was designed in 1964 and became an official symbol of Canada in 2011. Its colours evoke the changing colours of maple leaves through the seasons.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Wilfredor · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
The Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) entered into force on 1 July 2020. It replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Crisco 1492 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context