1870 in Canada

Events from the year 1870 in Canada.

Crown

 * Monarch – Victoria

Federal government

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

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

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

 * 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)
 * 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

President Louis Riel gives his first speech to the Red River provisional government

Doubtful about Louis Riel, Prime Minister Macdonald begins assembling a military force

MP praises liberal approach in creating Manitoba in House of Commons speech

Red River resident objects to amnesty for Louis Riel and other leaders

President Grant calls Canada unfriendly to U.S. fishers and shippers

Call for a state-supported "Dominion University" in Canada

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

Reports of smallpox among Blackfoot, Cree and other nations