1870 in Canada

← 1869 1868 1867 1870 in Canada → 1871 1872 1873
Decades:	1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s
See also:	History of Canada Timeline of Canadian history List of years in Canada

Events from the year 1870 in Canada.

Incumbents

Crown

• Monarch – Victoria ^[1]

Federal government

• Governor General – John Young, 1st Baron Lisgar
• Prime Minister – John A. Macdonald
• Parliament – 1st

Provincial governments

Lieutenant governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba – Adams George Archibald (from May 20)
• Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick – Lemuel Allan Wilmot
• Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia – Charles Hastings Doyle
• Lieutenant Governor of Ontario – William Pearce Howland
• Lieutenant Governor of Quebec – Narcisse-Fortunat Belleau

Premiers

• Premier of Manitoba – Alfred Boyd (from September 16)
• Premier of New Brunswick – Andrew Rainsford Wetmore (until June 9) then George Edwin King
• Premier of Nova Scotia – William Annand
• Premier of Ontario – John Sandfield Macdonald
• Premier of Quebec – Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau

Territorial governments

Lieutenant governors

• Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories – William McDougall (until May 10) then Adams George Archibald

Events

• March 4 – Thomas Scott is executed by Riel's provisional government in the Red River Colony.
• May 12 – The Canadian Parliament's Manitoba Act receives royal assent. The act provides for the establishment of the province Manitoba when Rupert's Land is transferred to Canada.
• May 25 – Battle of Eccles Hill: Canadian Militia defeat Fenian raiders.
• May 27 – Battle of Trout River: British regulars and Canadian militia defeat Fenian raiders.
• June–July – The 1870 New Brunswick election
• July 15 – The British Privy Council's Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory Order transfers those territories to Canada, and Manitoba and the North-West Territories are established.
• August 24 – The Wolseley expedition arrives at Upper Fort Garry, Manitoba
• September 16 – Alfred Boyd becomes the first premier of Manitoba.
• October – Battle of the Belly River: the Blackfoot Confederacy decisively defeats the Iron Confederacy.
• December 27 – The 1870 Manitoba election

Births

Howard Ferguson

• May 14 – Richard Langton Baker, politician (d.1951)
• May 21 – Leonard Percy de Wolfe Tilley, lawyer, politician and 20th Premier of New Brunswick (d.1947)
• June 18 – Howard Ferguson, politician and 9th Premier of Ontario (d.1946)

R. B. Bennett

• July 3 – R. B. Bennett, lawyer, businessman, politician, philanthropist and 11th Prime Minister of Canada (d.1947)
• July 28 – Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, politician and Premier of Prince Edward Island (d.1968)
• July 29 – George Dixon, boxer, first black world boxing champion in any weight class and first Canadian-born boxing champion (d.1909)
• September 7 – James Tompkins, priest and educator (d.1953)
• October 16 – Wallace Rupert Turnbull, engineer and inventor (d.1954)
• November 10 – Harlan Carey Brewster, politician and Premier of British Columbia (d.1918)
• November 17 – Jean Prévost, politician (d. 1915)
• December 15 – Richard McBride, politician and Premier of British Columbia (d.1917)

Full date unknown

• Thomas Langton Church, politician and Mayor of Toronto (d.1950)

Deaths

• February 6 – William MacBean George Colebrooke, lieutenant governor of New Brunswick (b.1787)
• March 4 – Thomas Scott, Orangemen (b.1842)
• March 31 – Thomas Cooke, missionary, and the first Bishop of Trois Rivières (b.1792)
• August 7 – François Lesieur Desaulniers, farmer and political figure (b.1785)
• October 13 – Charles-François Baillargeon, Archbishops of Quebec (b.1798)
• October 25 – Etienne-Michel Faillon, Catholic historian (b.1800)
• December 23 – Théophile Hamel, painter (b.1817)

Historical documents

Metis List of Rights calls for Rupert's Land and the Northwest to become the Province of Assiniboia ^[2]

President Louis Riel gives his first speech to the Red River provisional government ^[3]

Doubtful about Louis Riel, Prime Minister Macdonald begins assembling a military force ^[4]

MP praises liberal approach in creating Manitoba in House of Commons speech ^[5]

Red River resident objects to amnesty for Louis Riel and other leaders ^[6]

President Grant calls Canada unfriendly to U.S. fishers and shippers ^[7]

Call for a state-supported "Dominion University" in Canada ^[8]

McGill University's John William Dawson on science education abroad and its application to Canada ^[9]

Reports of smallpox among Blackfoot, Cree and other nations ^[10]

References

1. "Queen Victoria | The Canadian Encyclopedia". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
2. D'Arcy G. Vermette, "II.a.The Lists of Rights and Metis Demands," Beyond Doctrines of Dominance, pgs. 108-9. Accessed 21 September 2018
3. "Provisional Government; First Council Meeting; Speech of the President" The New Nation, Winnipeg, Vol. I, No. 10 (March 11, 1870), pg. 2. Accessed 20 September 2018
4. Joseph Pope, Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, G.C.B., First Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada (1894), pgs. 62-3. Accessed 10 September 2018
5. Adams George Archibald, Speech Delivered in the House of Commons by the Hon. A.G. Archibald, during the Debate on the "Manitoba Bill," May 7, 1870 (1870). Accessed 10 September 2018
6. Letter in "Report of the Select Committee on the Causes of the Difficulties in the North-West Territory in 1869-70," Journals of the House of Commons 1874, Vol. 8, Appendix 6, pg. 195. Accessed 10 September 2018
7. Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873; Monday, December 5, 1870, pgs. 15-18. Accessed 10 September 2018
8. R.G. (Robert Grant) Haliburton, Mr. Haliburton's Speech on the Young Men of the New Dominion; from the Ottawa Citizen, January 27, 1870. Accessed 10 September 2018
9. John William Dawson, Science Education Abroad, a Lecture; Being the Annual University Lecture of the Session 1870-71. Accessed 10 September 2018
10. William Francis Butler, Report by Lieutenant Butler, 69th Regt., of His Journey from Fort Garry to Rocky Mountain House and Back (1871), pgs. 9-12. Accessed 11 September 2018