1870 in Canada

Events from the year 1870 in Canada.

Incumbents

Crown

• Monarch – Victoria<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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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.
• 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.
• December 27 – The 1870 Manitoba election

Births

File:Howard Ferguson.jpg

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)

File:Richard Bedford Bennett.jpg

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<ref>D'Arcy G. Vermette, "II.a.The Lists of Rights and Metis Demands," Beyond Doctrines of Dominance, pgs. 108-9. Accessed 21 September 2018</ref>

President Louis Riel gives his first speech to the Red River provisional government<ref>"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</ref>

Doubtful about Louis Riel, Prime Minister Macdonald begins assembling a military force<ref>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</ref>

MP praises liberal approach in creating Manitoba in House of Commons speech<ref>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</ref>

Red River resident objects to amnesty for Louis Riel and other leaders<ref>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</ref>

President Grant calls Canada unfriendly to U.S. fishers and shippers<ref>Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873; Monday, December 5, 1870, pgs. 15-18. Accessed 10 September 2018</ref>

Call for a state-supported "Dominion University" in Canada<ref>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</ref>

McGill University's John William Dawson on science education abroad and its application to Canada<ref>John William Dawson, Science Education Abroad, a Lecture; Being the Annual University Lecture of the Session 1870-71. Accessed 10 September 2018</ref>

Reports of smallpox among Blackfoot, Cree and other nations<ref>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</ref>