1891 in Canada explained

Events from the year 1891 in Canada.

Incumbents

Crown

• Monarch – Victoria^[1]

Federal government

• • Governor General – Frederick Stanley Prime Minister – John A. Macdonald (until June 6) then John Abbott (from June 16)
• Chief Justice – William Johnstone Ritchie (New Brunswick)
• Parliament – 6th (until 3 February) then 7th (from 29 April)

Provincial governments

Lieutenant governors

• • • • • • • Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia – Hugh Nelson Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba – John Christian Schultz Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick – Samuel Leonard Tilley Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia – Malachy Bowes Daly Lieutenant Governor of Ontario – Alexander Campbell Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island – Jedediah Slason Carvell Lieutenant Governor of Quebec – Auguste-Réal Angers

Premiers

• • • • • • • Premier of British Columbia – John Robson Premier of Manitoba – Thomas Greenway Premier of New Brunswick – Andrew George Blair Premier of Nova Scotia – William Stevens Fielding Premier of Ontario – Oliver Mowat Premier of Prince Edward Island – Neil McLeod (until April 27) then Frederick Peters Premier of Quebec – Honoré Mercier (until December 21) then Charles Boucher de Boucherville

Territorial governments

Lieutenant governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Keewatin – John Christian Schultz
• Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories – Joseph Royal

Premiers

• Chairman of the Lieutenant-Governor's Advisory Council of the North-West Territories then Chairman of the Executive Committee of the North-West Territories – Robert Brett (until November 7) then Frederick Haultain

Events

• February 21 – The first Springhill Mining Disaster occurs killing 125.
• March 5 – Federal election: Sir John A. Macdonald's Conservatives win a fourth consecutive majority
• April 27 – Frederick Peters becomes premier of Prince Edward Island, replacing Neil McLeod
• June 6 – Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald dies in office
• June 8 – Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald lies in state in the Senate Chamber
• June 16 – Sir John Abbott becomes prime minister following the death of Sir John A. Macdonald
• September 29 – Thomas McGreevy is expelled from the House of Commons due to corruption.
• November 7 – The election of the 2nd North-West Legislative Assembly
• December 10 – The Calgary and Edmonton Railway opens, connecting Edmonton to the national railway network for the first time.
• December 21 – Sir Charles-Eugène de Boucherville becomes premier of Quebec for the second time, replacing Honoré Mercier
• The Legislative Council of New Brunswick is abolished

Sport

• The Canadian Rugby Football Union is renamed the Canadian Rugby Union

Births

January to June

• January 6 – Tim Buck, politician and long-time leader of the Communist Party of Canada (d.1973)
• January 26 – Wilder Penfield, neurosurgeon (d.1976)
• April 1 – Harry Nixon, politician and 13th Premier of Ontario (d.1961)
• May 3 – Thomas John Bentley, politician (d.1983)
• June 13 – Hervé-Edgar Brunelle, politician and lawyer (d.1950)

July to December

• July 12 – Adhémar Raynault, politician and Mayor of Montreal (d.1984)
• August 30 – Elmer Jamieson, educator
• September 16 – Julie Winnefred Bertrand, supercentenarian, oldest living Canadian and oldest verified living recognized woman at the time of her death (d.2007)
• October 30 – Ada Mackenzie, golfer
• November 14 – Frederick Banting, medical scientist, doctor and Nobel laureate (d.1941)
• December 10 – Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, military commander and Governor General of Canada (d.1969)
• December 25 – William Ross Macdonald, politician, Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada and 21st Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (d.1976)

Deaths

• January 4 – Antoine Labelle, priest and settler (b.1833)
• January 21 – Calixa Lavallée, musician and composer (b.1842)
• May 31 – Antoine-Aimé Dorion, politician and jurist (b.1818)
• June 6 – John A. Macdonald, politician and 1st Prime Minister of Canada (b.1815)

Historical documents

Residential school principal says teaching Gospel and how to live better compensates for robbing and half-starving Indigenous people^[2]

Poster: Conservatives campaign against reciprocity with United States as destructive of industry nurtured by Canada's National Policy^[3]

Prime Minister John A. Macdonald dies^[4]

Death of Prime Minister Macdonald, Conservative Party's "tyrannical master," leaves power vacuum^[5]

Imprisonment of ejected MP Thomas McGreevy strikes at pernicious level of corruption in public contracts^{[6] [7]}

Heroism of rescuers at Springhill, Nova Scotia mining disaster^[8]

Bilingual English and Chinook periodical is published to improve Indigenous people's literacy^[9]

Federal bill aligns Canada with international time system based on global time zones and Greenwich, England time^[10]

Calm messenger pigeons by replacing trap-door entrance (which scares birds) and long roosting rail (on which they fight) in their loft^[11]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Queen Victoria The Canadian Encyclopedia . www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca . 5 December 2022.
2. Miss Walker, "Work Among the Indians of Portage la Prairie," Monthly Letter Leaflet, Vol. 8, No. 8 (December 1891), in Denise Hildebrand, Staff Perspectives of the Aboriginal Residential School Experience: A Study of Four Presbyterian Schools, 1888-1923 pg. 89. Accessed 10 June 2021
3. "Election Poster - Conservative Campaign against reciprocity" (ca. 1891). Accessed 2 May 2021 https://www.picturingpolitics.com/friends-or-foe/ (scroll down to "What do sand")
4. https://archive.org/stream/dailycolonist18910607uvic/18910607#mode/1up "He Is Gone; Death of Rt. Hon. Sir John Alexander Macdonald;...Canada Mourns the Loss of Her Greatest Statesman...."
5. "The Tory Position," The (Toronto) Globe (June 16, 1891), pg. 4. Accessed 7 December 2019 via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail (on-line through many Canadian public and academic libraries)
6. http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/cab/search/imgprint.php?imgfile=../Volume%206/Issue%2012/v6n12p122.gif Editorial
7. https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.com_HOC_0701_2_2/14?r=0&s=1 "Charges against the Honourable Thomas McGreevy"
8. R.A.H. Morrow, "Chapter IV; Searching for the Dead and Injured" Story of the Springhill Disaster (1891) Accessed 3 December 2019
9. J.M.R. LeJeune, "This paper is named Kamloops Wawa" Kamloops (B.C.) Wawa, No. 1 (May 2, 1891). Accessed 25 July 2020
10. https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.bills_SOCHOC_0701_1/1189?r=0&s=3 "An Act respecting the Reckoning of Time"
11. https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_08052_25_8/871?r=0&s=2 "Report of Major General D.R. Cameron on Messenger Pigeons of the Department, at Halifax"