In the grand scheme of world history, Canada as we recognise it today is a relatively young nation. Though officially founded in 1867, the country’s heritage is far older, spanning thousands of years and rooted in Indigenous culture. We may not be able to capture all of this in photographs from the beginning, but we can at least zoom into how events from and aspects of Canadian history from 1840 onwards have been caught on camera.
Click through the gallery to discover a selection of some of the oldest photos ever to be taken of Canada, all of which are over a century old...
This daguerreotype, an early form of photograph created using an iodine-sensitised silvered plate and mercury vapour, is thought to be the oldest known photo taken in Canada. Dating back to the very beginning of photography’s inception, the image was made by British businessman Hugh Lee Pattinson on a visit to Niagara Falls. Daguerreotypes required around 10 minutes of exposure in order to capture a whole frame, which means the figure overlooking the falls in the bottom left corner of the shot could well be the photographer himself.
Also known as George Henry, Maungwudaus (“great hero”) was a renowned herbalist, interpreter and translator from the Mississauga (Ojibwa) tribe. Born on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario at the beginning of the 19th century, he was educated in Methodist mission schools before going on to form a travelling performance troupe made up of Indigenous Canadians that toured Europe and North America for many years.
This image shows a scene just west of the Red River Settlement, a colony founded in 1811-12 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on land granted by the Hudson’s Bay Company. An uprising led by the Metis (people of mixed European and Indigenous Canadian heritage) and their First Nations allies on 2 November 1869 became known as the Red River Resistance (or Rebellion), and was motivated by a desire to defend Red River from white settlers and government encroachment on Aboriginal land. The movement ultimately resulted in the creation of the province of Manitoba.
Photographed around 1860, this type of boat was named for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)’s York Factory. Used for transporting furs from the factory across rivers and lakes to inland trading posts, York boats were first built in the 1740s and offered the HBC a clear advantage over their business rivals, the North West Company. They could carry triple the cargo of the Nor’Westers’ canoes with the same number of crew, as well as being less vulnerable to storm and ice damage.
This photograph marks the moment the Welsford-Parker Monument was inaugurated on 17 July 1860. Also referred to as the Sebastopol Monument, the arch-shaped edifice stands at the entrance to Halifax’s Old Burying Ground (an 18th-century cemetery) and commemorates two Nova Scotians killed in 1855 at Sebastopol during the Crimean War – Major Augustus Welsford of the 97th Regiment and Captain William Parker VC of the 77th Regiment. It is North America’s only monument to the Crimean War, which lasted from 1853 to 1856.
Beginning in 1858, the Fraser River Gold Rush sparked some of the most significant events in British Columbia’s history, and not all of them positive. Indigenous peoples were robbed of access to their ancestral lands by the deluge of miners, igniting the Fraser Canyon War between predominantly white American gold hunters and the Nlaka'pamux First Nation. The founding of British Columbia as a colony was also quickened by the arrival of the Americans. When gold deposits in the region had been depleted by the mid-1860s, the colony fell into a recession – this photo captures the Gold Rush town of Soda Creek in 1863.
The first in a series of meetings that paved the way for the British North America Act – core to Canada’s constitution – the Charlottetown Conference was held in September 1864. Delegates from the provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia met to discuss a union between them; this union then joined with the Province of Canada (comprising present-day Quebec and Ontario) to form the Dominion of Canada on 1 July 1867. This date is remembered as Confederation and is marked with Canada Day every year, a national holiday.
The Niagara Falls Railway Suspension Bridge was the first bridge in the world capable of supporting the weight of a train. Designed by John Roebling, who would go on to create New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, it was completed in 1855 as a double-decked crossing over the Niagara River for horse-drawn carriages, pedestrians and railway traffic. The bridge was dismantled in the 1890s to accommodate a new steel arch behemoth.
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This stairway was designed to bypass the challenging incline that led from the lower town of Quebec City to the home of its founder Samuel de Champlain, built atop Cape Diamant in 1620. This image from around 1870 captures the earliest iteration of the steps, made of wood and then known as the Champlain Stairs (or Beggar's Stairs). Replaced with iron ones in 1893, the 59 steps still in place today date back to the 1960s. The nickname 'Breakneck Steps', dreamt up by British tour guides, is purely for dramatic effect – luckily no serious injuries have ever been reported.
Saint John was Canada’s first incorporated city, receiving its Royal Charter in 1785. Its shores lapped by the St John River and the Bay of Fundy, the city became a thriving centre for fishing and shipping thanks to its harbour remaining free of ice even in deepest winter. Seen here in 1870, Saint John was decimated seven years later by the Great Fire; 200 acres and over 1,600 structures (including vital boats) were incinerated in just nine hours on 20 June 1877. But the city bounced back, promising a mix of urban, historic and natural attractions for modern visitors.
Work on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was completed in 1885; the realisation of a promise made to British Columbia upon its joining Confederation – that a transcontinental railway would connect it to Eastern Canada. In a small ceremony on 7 November, the last iron spike of the CPR – one of around three million used along the whole line – was driven into the tracks by company director Donald Smith. It took Smith two attempts to hammer the spike home but when he did, it was seen as a huge milestone for the country’s unity.
Visit Winnipeg today and you won't find the Volunteer Monument standing proud outside City Hall, like it is in this photograph from 1887. Moved to its present site, adjacent to the Centennial Concert Hall and the Manitoba Museum, in 1968, the Volunteer Monument was originally established to honour men of the 90th Winnipeg Battalion killed in a series of skirmishes in 1885. It was re-dedicated in the 1960s to those who had served with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.
Now a sprawling metropolis, Calgary looks somewhat different in this early shot. At the time it was taken, Calgary hadn't even been incorporated as a city yet; it was recognised as a town in 1884 and didn't gain city status until a decade later, just before the province of Alberta (of which Calgary is presently the largest city) was founded in 1905. Between 1884 and 1891, Calgary's population had soared from just a few hundred settlers to nearly 4,000.
Taken circa 1890, this image shows what was marketed at the time as the 'Great Glacier'. Falling along the Canadian Pacific Railway route within the Selkirk Mountains, the Great Glacier was one of British Columbia's first major tourist attractions and is today better known as the Illecillewaet Glacier. Part of what is now the Glacier National Park of Canada, its ice is thought to have receded a mile (1.5km) upslope over the past century.
Looking north from Queen Street, this still captures a day in the life of Yonge Street. Once declared the world's longest street by the Guinness World Records, Yonge Street has been central to Toronto's economy and culture since 1796, when its first section was opened. It became home to Eaton's (in the left of the photo) towards the end of the 19th century, a small dry-goods store which soon grew into a state-of-the-art shopping centre. Revolutionising the retail experience in Canada, it introduced the nation to cash-only sales and fixed-price items – until then, haggling had been the norm.
This photograph shows a collision between two steam engines on the Bay of Quinte Railway (BQR). The BQR was a small regional line born as the Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway Company in 1879. After merging with the Bay of Quinte Railway and Navigation Company in 1897, the BQR was established, covering 83 miles (134km) and 23 stations at its peak. After the Great Depression, the line was gradually decommissioned in sections; remnants of its existence, such as old station buildings and turntable foundations, still pepper the old route today.
Stanley Park is to Vancouver what Central Park is to New York, but on a much grander scale. A swathe of West Coast rainforest whose 400-plus hectares are embellished with mountains, beaches, adventurous trails and unique sights, Stanley Park is one of the largest urban oases in North America. It was officially named in 1886 and remains as abundant with trees and wildlife today as it was then. This majestic cedar was snapped at the park by William McFarlane Notman, one of the most celebrated photographers in Canadian history.
Formerly Dawson City, this town appeared on the map in 1896 when gold was struck nearby. By 1898 – shortly before this photo of Front Street ("The Broadway of the North") was taken, Dawson was the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush and Yukon's capital, its population having surpassed 30,000. This was succeeded by a precipitous decline after the region's most accessible mines ran dry, resulting in Dawson having to surrender its position as territorial capital to Whitehorse in the mid-20th century. Modern-day Dawson forms part of the Klondike Gold Rush International Historic Park.
This image taken at the turn of the 20th century shows the impressive bulk of Perce Rock and its namesake town. Located just off the Gaspe Peninsula, Perce Rock is believed to have once had four arches sculpted out of its form by the sea; one of these is known to have collapsed in 1845, leaving behind a solitary limestone stack known as L’Obelisque. The island, now an important refuge for birds, can be reached at low tide and is one of Quebec’s main points of interest.
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Explorer James Williams Tyrrell took this photograph of an Inuit community as he and his brother Joseph travelled down the Thelon River, which flows east from what is now the Northwest Territories into Nunavut. The Tyrrells made a number of journeys across the Canadian north around the end of the 19th century; in 1897, James published a book – Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada – about their adventures, considered a canonical piece of national travel writing today. Inuit are Indigenous to Canada and have millennia-old ancestral ties to the land.
The Hudson’s Bay Company is the oldest incorporated joint-stock merchandising company in the English-speaking world. It made the majority of its early fortunes in the fur trade and today operates more than 200 department stores across North America. The history of the company, which was chartered in 1670, is inextricably linked to the colonisation and development of the nation now known as Canada. In this circa-1900 image, HBC wagons can be seen loaded with fur pelts at the company's Fort Smith post, established in 1874 on the Slave River.
Residential schools, like the one photographed here, were government-backed religious institutions that took Indigenous children from their communities with the aim of educating them and converting them to Christianity, so that they would assimilate into Euro-Canadian culture. Students were segregated by gender, often abused and forbidden from speaking their native languages, with at least 3,200 (though it could be as many as 6,000) losing their lives under the schools’ care. From 1831 until as recently as 1996, an estimated 150,000 children attended these facilities – the Canadian government and Pope Francis have since offered them formal public apologies.
One of North America’s oldest and most easterly cities, St John’s is the provincial capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. This photograph predates its incorporation as a city, which didn’t come until 1921, and depicts a dry fishery overlooking St John’s harbour. Pioneered by European fishermen who began arriving in the early 16th century, a dry fishery was where cod was salted and dried (cured) on land near the fishing grounds before being sold on.
The Banff Springs Hotel opened in 1888 as one of the grand hotels of the Canadian Pacific Railway. By the time this photograph was taken, it had already made a name for itself as one of the continent’s most sought-after mountain retreats. When the original wooden building was lost to fire in 1926, the hotel was rebuilt within two years and the landmark was declared a National Historic Site in 1988. Situated in the heart of Canada’s first national park and sometimes called the ‘Castle in the Rockies’, the Fairmont Banff Springs (as it is now known) still welcomes guests today.
This black-and-white image powerfully portrays the effects of the Great Fire of Toronto, as a group of men navigate the mass of rubble on Wellington Street. Tearing through 20 acres of the city’s industrial centre on 19 April, the blaze consumed at least 98 warehouses and other buildings, killing one person and rendering thousands jobless. This was the second major fire in 60 years to decimate Toronto, exacerbated by poor water pressure that made it difficult for fire crews to quell the flames, as well as high winds.
Canada’s claim to sovereignty over the Arctic goes back centuries, to the early days of the Hudson's Bay Company. But the country made one of its most decisive statements in 1909, when Captain J. E. Bernier led an expedition to the uninhabited Melville Island. As captured in this image, the crew left a plaque on the island asserting entitlement on the archipelago for Canada, from the mainland to the North Pole. Several other such missions to install plaques and stake flags in the north have taken place over the years, and Canada’s claim is currently deemed mostly secure.
Palaeontologist and fourth secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Charles Doolittle Walcott often took his family with him on explorative trips – and here they are photographed at their campsite in the Canadian Rockies. The expert in natural history, who is credited with the discovery of the Burgess Shale fossils in Canada, held his secretarial position at the Smithsonian for 20 years, ending with his death in 1927.
Named for the city it ripped apart, the Regina Cyclone is widely considered to be the deadliest tornado in Canadian history. Striking on 30 June 1912, the F4-scale twister left a trail of destruction that killed 28 people, as well as leaving 300 injured and around 2,500 homeless. It's believed that half of the city's businesses were wrecked in the disaster, which was classified as a cyclone at the time. It cost Regina at least CAD$1.2 million in damages (£2.1m/CAD$3.5m/USD$2.5m in today’s money), with rebuilding costs taking a decade to repay.
Five years later, another tragedy hit Canada, this time on its eastern flank. Called the world's largest explosion of the pre-atomic era, the Halifax explosion was caused by the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc blowing up in the Nova Scotian city's harbour after colliding with a Norwegian steamer. Nearly 2,000 people died and some 9,000 were injured in the blast and its subsequent tsunami, which saw more than one square mile (2.5sq km) reduced to rubble and debris.
Following the First World War, the future King Edward VIII (then Prince of Wales) embarked on a royal tour of Canada in 1919 to acknowledge the nation’s contributions to the war effort. In this photograph from his visit to Halifax, the prince can be seen handing out medals to military servicemen and women. This was the first of many journeys Edward made to Canada in his lifetime; he bought a ranch in Alberta while on the 1919 tour and even described himself as Canadian, returning to the country often on personal and official business.
This image shows crowds gathering in the streets for the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. The largest industrial action of its kind in the history of Canada, more than 30,000 workers walked out of their jobs for just over a month. Striving for fairer wages and better working conditions in the face of post-war inflation, strikers included those from factories, shops, post offices, the emergency services and the railways. Though the protest wasn’t immediately successful, it did unite Winnipeg’s (and Canada’s) working class.
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