# 1875 in Canada

Events from the year 1875 in Canada.

## Incumbents
### 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

### Provincial governments
#### 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

### Territorial governments
#### 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