1859 in Canada

Incumbents

Federal government

Governors

Premiers

Events

  • Abraham Shadd is elected to the town council in Raleigh, Ontario and becomes the first Black elected to public office.
  • William Hall, becomes the first Nova Scotian and the first Black to win the Victoria Cross.
  • The all-Black Victoria Pioneer Rifle Company is formed to defend British Columbia.
  • De Stoeckl returns to U.S. from Saint Petersburg with authority to negotiate the sale of Alaska.
  • McGowan's War, a juridical and political crisis in the Fraser River goldfields involving a spillover of San Francisco politics into British territory, has the potential to escalate into an annexationist uprising but is settled peaceably. Marines and Royal Engineers are dispatched to Yale, led by Colonel Clement Francis Moody and escorting Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie to resolve the matter, which ends amicably, and reassert British sovereignty over the fledgling Mainland Colony.
  • Lyman Cutlar, an American settler, homesteads on San Juan Island in defiance of British claims and triggers off the Pig War.

Full date unknown

Births

January to June

July to December

Deaths

  • February 22 – Edmond Baird, cabinet-maker and upholsterer (born 1802)
  • March 2 – Hugh Cossart Baker, Sr., banker, businessman and mathematician (born 1818)
  • March 23 – Jacob De Witt, businessman, politician, and justice of the peace (born 1785)
  • December 30 – Bernard Donald Macdonald, Roman Catholic priest, bishop, and school administrator (born 1797)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.