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William “Bible Bill” Aberhart, a Calgary high school principal and evangelical preacher, led the founding of Alberta’s Social Credit party and became premier in 1935, winning re-election in 1940. He used radio to reach audiences first as an evangelist and then as a politician.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Curlette Studio · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Adam Shortt, born near London, Ontario, founded the department of political economy at Queen’s University and advised governments. In 1908 he joined the first Canadian Civil Service Commission. In Ottawa he worked with Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty to build the national archives’ collections, and from 1913 to 1917 the two co-edited the historical series Canada and Its Provinces.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bain News Service, publisher · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William Henry Pope, born at Bedeque, Prince Edward Island, became Colonial Secretary in 1859 and represented Queen’s County in the Assembly from 1863 to 1867. A strong supporter of Confederation, he was a delegate to the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864. He became a judge of Prince County in 1873.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert Harris, born in Wales, came to Prince Edward Island in 1856 and studied art in Charlottetown, Boston, London, Paris and Rome. One of Canada’s leading portrait painters and a long-time teacher, he was an original member of the Royal Canadian Academy and its president from 1890 to 1903. He is best known for his painting of the Fathers of Confederation.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer; Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Edward Blake, a lawyer born in Middlesex County, Upper Canada, and a leading member of the Canada First movement, was the second premier of Ontario (1871–72). In 22 years in the House of Commons he was Minister of Justice under Alexander Mackenzie and led the federal Liberals from 1880 to 1887. A constitutional authority, he later sat in the British Parliament as an Irish Nationalist.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Ewing · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
William James Gage, born near Brampton, joined the publisher Adam Miller and Co. in 1874 and in 1880 reorganized it as W.J. Gage and Co. Specializing in educational books, it became one of Canada’s most successful publishing houses. A philanthropist and pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis, Gage founded several free hospitals and sanatoria.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, son of the seigneur of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, gave up his legal career because of debt in 1822. In long retirement he gathered anecdotes and popular traditions that became the basis of his historical novel Les Anciens Canadiens (1863). That novel and his Mémoires (1866) are landmarks of Canadian literature and valued sources for historians and folklorists.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jules-Isaïe Benoît · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Louis St. Laurent, born in Compton, Quebec, was a leading corporate lawyer before entering politics as Minister of Justice in 1941. He served as Secretary of State for External Affairs and then as Prime Minister from 1948 to 1957. A strong advocate of national unity, he helped shape the new Commonwealth, signed the United Nations Charter and promoted NATO.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: George Nakash · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Joseph E. Atkinson became managing editor of the Toronto Star in 1899 and its majority owner by 1913. He sought to make the paper a tool of social reform, and his innovations changed Canadian journalism and made the Star the country’s largest-circulation newspaper by the 1930s. He left his fortune to the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, which supports cultural, medical and educational institutions in Ontario.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer; City of Toronto Archives · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Ernest Lapointe, born at Saint-Éloi, Quebec, was a federal Cabinet minister from 1921 to 1930 and from 1935 to 1941. He played an important part in governing the country and in its move toward autonomy, and represented Canadians in national, imperial and international affairs. He died in Montréal and is buried in Rivière-du-Loup.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: J. Russell & Sons · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Albert Peter Low of Montréal joined the Geological Survey of Canada in 1882. In 1884 he made the first scientific survey and map of Lake Mistassini, and in the 1890s explored much of the interior of Ungava and Labrador, noting its iron deposits. He commanded the first Arctic patrol, aboard the Neptune in 1903–04, and became Director of the Geological Survey in 1906.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Pach Bros. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Édouard-Gaston Deville, a former French Navy hydrographer, came to Canada in 1874, took part in the Dominion survey of the North-West, and became Surveyor General in 1885. A pioneer of photogrammetry, he used it to map the Canadian Rockies between 1888 and 1896 and earned an international reputation for his writing, instruments and map reproduction methods. Mount Deville in Yoho National Park bears his name.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Coles, a native Prince Edward Islander, represented Queen’s in the House of Assembly from 1842 to 1868. Co-founder of the Liberal Party with Edward Whelan and a strong advocate of responsible government, he became premier when it was granted in 1851 and held office three times. A Father of Confederation, he attended the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Thomas Heath Haviland, born in Charlottetown, represented Georgetown in the Prince Edward Island legislature and held posts including Colonial Secretary and Speaker. A delegate to the Quebec Conference of 1864, he was one of three who arranged the Island’s entry into Confederation in 1873. He was then named to the Senate, and later became the province’s Lieutenant-Governor.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sam Hughes, soldier, journalist and Member of Parliament for Lindsay from 1892 to 1921, helped create a distinctly Canadian army. As Minister of Militia and Defence from 1911 to 1916, he raised the Canadian Expeditionary Force that fought in the First World War and was knighted, but disputes with colleagues and subordinates forced him from Cabinet in 1916.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Wilson Bengough of Toronto was a cartoonist, journalist, poet and lecturer working in several literary and visual forms. In 1873 he founded Grip, a weekly humour magazine where many of his best-known cartoons first appeared. He later drew for the Montreal Star and the Globe, and published A Caricature History of Canadian Politics (1886) and two books of poems.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Wilfred Grenfell, an English-born doctor and minister, gave 50 years of service to the people of northern Newfoundland and Labrador. He and those he inspired brought medical, spiritual and material aid to fishers and coastal residents, and he raised funds for projects such as the hospital at St. Anthony. The International Grenfell Association, founded in 1912, carried on his programs.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bain News Service, publisher · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Louis Fréchette, born at Lévis, was a noted polemicist and a prominent French-Canadian poet of the 19th century. His collections Les Fleurs boréales and Les Oiseaux de neige won the Académie française’s Prix Montyon in 1880, and he also wrote the epic La Légende d’un peuple. He sat in the House of Commons for Lévis and later was Clerk of the Quebec Legislative Council.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Royal Society Portraits · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Henri Bourassa, a noted orator and writer, sat in the House of Commons and the Quebec Legislative Assembly. He broke with Laurier and the Liberals over the Boer War, founded the Montréal daily Le Devoir in 1910 and edited it until 1932. Throughout his career he championed a nationalism based on Canada’s autonomy and cultural duality.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir Robert Borden, born at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, led the Conservative Party from 1901 and was Prime Minister from 1911 to 1920. He guided Canada through the First World War, imposed conscription for overseas service in 1917 and formed a Union government of Liberals and Conservatives. He is remembered above all for insisting that Canada act as an autonomous nation in international diplomacy.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Notman, Boston · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
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.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Arthur Sturgis Hardy, a Brantford lawyer of Loyalist descent, entered Ontario’s legislature in 1873 and served as Provincial Secretary and Commissioner of Crown Lands. He succeeded Oliver Mowat as premier from 1896 to 1899, and his most lasting contribution was the creation of Algonquin Provincial Park.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer (about 1900); Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context