1875 in Canada

Events from the year 1875 in Canada.

Crown

 * Monarch – Victoria

Federal government

 * Governor General – Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood
 * Prime Minister – Alexander Mackenzie
 * Chief Justice – William Buell Richards (Ontario) (from 30 September 1875)
 * Parliament – 3rd

Lieutenant governors

 * Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia – Joseph Trutch
 * Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba – Alexander Morris
 * Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick – Samuel Leonard Tilley
 * Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia – Adams George Archibald
 * Lieutenant Governor of Ontario – John Willoughby Crawford (until May 13) then Donald Alexander Macdonald (from May 18)
 * Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island – Robert Hodgson
 * Lieutenant Governor of Quebec – René-Édouard Caron

Premiers

 * Premier of British Columbia – George Anthony Walkem
 * Premier of Manitoba – Robert Atkinson Davis
 * Premier of New Brunswick – George Edwin King
 * Premier of Nova Scotia – William Annand (until May 8) then Philip Carteret Hill (from May 11)
 * Premier of Ontario – Oliver Mowat
 * Premier of Prince Edward Island – Lemuel Cambridge Owen
 * Premier of Quebec – Charles Boucher de Boucherville

Lieutenant governors

 * Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories – Alexander Morris

Events

 * January 14 – The Halifax Herald is first published.
 * January 18 – 1875 Ontario election: Sir Oliver Mowat's Liberals win a second consecutive majority.
 * March 1 – The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto) is founded.
 * April 5 – The Supreme Court of Canada is created.
 * April 8 – The Northwest Territories is given a lieutenant-governor separate from that of Manitoba.
 * May 11 – Philip Carteret Hill becomes premier of Nova Scotia, replacing William Annand.
 * June 1 – Construction begins on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
 * June 30 – The Land Purchase Act comes into effect in Prince Edward Island in order to address the "land question", one of the issues that had prompted the colony to join Confederation.
 * July 7 – 1875 Quebec election: Charles-Eugène Boucher de Boucherville's Conservatives win a third consecutive majority.
 * July 20 – 1875 British Columbia election.
 * September 2 – The Guibord Affair, violence resulting from the 1874 Guibord case, breaks out.

Full date unknown

 * Convent Scandal: During the winter in Montreal, typhoid fever strikes at a convent school. The corpses of the victims are filched by body-snatchers before relatives arrive from America, causing much furor. Eventually the Anatomy Act of Quebec is changed over it.
 * Louis Riel is granted amnesty with the condition that he be banished for five years.
 * Jennifer Trout becomes the first woman licensed to practise medicine in Canada, although Emily Stowe has been doing so without a licence in Toronto since 1867.
 * Grace Lockhart receives from Mount Allison University the first Bachelor of Arts degree awarded to a woman.

Births

 * February 26 – Edith Jane Miller, concert contralto singer (d. 1936)
 * March 29 – Harry James Barber, politician (d.1959)
 * June 12 – Sam De Grasse, actor (d.1953)
 * June 15 – Herman Smith-Johannsen, ski pioneer and supercentenarian (d.1987)
 * August 2 – Albert Hickman, politician and 17th Prime Minister of Newfoundland (d.1943)
 * August 21 – Winnifred Eaton, author (d.1954)
 * August 22 – François Blais, politician (d.1949)
 * August 26 – John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, novelist, politician and 15th Governor General of Canada (d.1940)
 * September 6 – Edith Berkeley, biologist
 * October 5 – Anne-Marie Huguenin, journalist
 * November 19 – John Knox Blair, politician, physician and teacher (d.1950)
 * December 5 – Arthur Currie, World War I general (d.1933)

Deaths

 * March 1 – Henry Kellett, officer in the Royal Navy, oceanographer, Arctic explorer (b.1806)
 * June 22 – William Edmond Logan, geologist (b.1798)
 * July 15 – Charles La Rocque, priest and third Bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe (b.1809)
 * July 22 – Amable Éno, dit Deschamps, political figure (b.1785)
 * August 21 – George Coles, Premier of Prince Edward Island (b.1810)
 * December 14 – Marie-Anne Gaboury, female explorer (b.1780)

Historical documents
Now in Opposition, J.A. Macdonald and Charles Tupper criticize the Liberal government

Rev. George Bryce details Presbyterian Church's "heathen" mission work among 80,000 Indigenous people in North-West Territories

Painting: Huron-Wendat Chief Telari-o-lin's self-portrait