1891 in Canada

← 1890 1889 1888 1891 in Canada → 1892 1893 1894
Decades:	1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s
See also:	History of Canada Timeline of Canadian history List of years in Canada

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

Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald lying in state in the Senate Chamber

• 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)

John A. Macdonald

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]

References

1. "Queen Victoria | The Canadian Encyclopedia". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Retrieved 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. "He Is Gone; Death of Rt. Hon. Sir John Alexander Macdonald;...Canada Mourns the Loss of Her Greatest Statesman...." The (Victoria) Daily Colonist (June 7, 1891), pg. 1. Accessed 20 December 2019
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. Editorial The Canadian Architect and Builder, Vol. VI, No. XII (December 1893), pg. 122. Accessed 23 December 2019
7. "Charges against the Honourable Thomas McGreevy" Reports of the Select Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections Relative to[...]Tenders and Contracts[;] Also Relative to the Resignation of Honourable Thomas McGreevy, pgs. ivb-ivy. Accessed 9 October 2020
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. "An Act respecting the Reckoning of Time" (1891), Senate and House of Commons Bills, 7th Parliament, 1st Session: A-U, 2-175, images 1189-92. Accessed 30 May 2021
11. "Report of Major General D.R. Cameron on Messenger Pigeons of the Department, at Halifax" (September 2, 1891), Appendix No. 36, Sessional Papers; Volume 8; Second Session of the Seventh Parliament of the Dominion of Canada; Session 1892, pg. 246. Accessed 22 August 2021