Highlights of the day

  • 1837 Queen Victoria ascends throne at age 18 after the death of her uncle, William IV.
  • 1868 Lord Monck’s Dominion Day Proclamation
  • 1872 Founding of Public Archives of Canada (PAC), now Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
  • 1877 Great Fire of Saint John destroys business district, 1,612 houses (2/3 of housing); kills 19, leaves 15,000 homeless.

List of Facts for June 20

  • 1604 Pierre de Monts and Samuel de Champlain reach the Annapolis Basin; Champlain names the whole area Port Royal. The following year, 1605, the French will settle here. De Poutrincourt requests this land for his retirement, a request de Monts will grant. Annapolis, Nova Scotia
  • 1686 Pierre de Troyes captures Fort Monsipi after an overland trek from New France with 80 men, including Pierre d’Iberville; renames it Fort St-Louis; will seizes all HBC posts except Fort Nelson. - Moose Factory, Ontario
  • 1704 Benjamin Church captures Les Mines (Minas) in campaign of revenge against Acadia; also attacks Pigiguit and Cobequid (Truro). - Grand Pré, Nova Scotia
  • 1822 Incorporation of the Law Society of Upper Canada. - Toronto, Ontario
  • 1825 Census - Start of 1825 Census of Lower Canada, taken from June 20 to September 20. Québec
  • 1837 King William IV of England dies. - Windsor, England
  • 1837 Queen Victoria ascends the British throne at age 18 after the death of her uncle, William IV; will reign for 63 years until her death in 1901. - Windsor, England
  • 1849 Founding of the Canadian Institute, to provide lectures, and an arts and science library; now the Royal Canadian Institute. - Toronto, Ontario
  • 1857 William Eyre appointed administrator of Canada; serves until November 2. 1857. - Kingston, Ontario October 27, 1982, the name Dominion Day will be changed to Canada Day. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1871 Charles Francis Hall leaves Brooklyn on the Polaris in an attempt to reach the North Pole between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. - Brooklyn, New York
  • 1872 Founding of the Public Archives of Canada (PAC), as part of the Department of Agriculture; Douglas Brymner appointed first Dominion Archivist; today’s National Archives of Canada {NAC), based in Gatineau, Québec, is now part of Library and Archives Canada (LAC). - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1877 Fire rages through Saint John for over nine hours, wiping out the entire business district and burning down 1,612 houses (over two-thirds of the housing stock), leaving 15,000 homeless; kills 19 people, razes over 80 hectares of land, causes $27 million worth of damage. The Great Fire begins when a spark falls into a bundle of hay at a downtown store. Most of the city’s buildings were made of wood that had dried out during a particularly dry spring, and the flames, driven by a strong breeze, soon became unmanageable. When the rebuilding began, most of the downtown’s new buildings were constructed out of granite and stone and stringent fire regulations brought in. - Saint John, New Brunswick
  • 1877 Alexander Graham Bell installs the world’s First commercial telephone service in Hamilton. - Hamilton, Ontario
  • 1877 Census of Manitoba reports 1,050 homesteaders in the Red River Valley. - Manitoba
  • 1877 First classes meets at the University of Manitoba. - Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • 1882 Federal Election - John A. Macdonald wins Canada’s 5th general election with 139 seats, to 72 for Edward’s Blake’s Liberals.
  • 1897 Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
  • 1897 Wilfrid Laurier attends Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in London; he will be knighted while there. - London, England
  • 1898 Wardner designated as a Port of Entry. - Wardner, BC
  • 1901 Red Deer becomes a town. - Red Deer, Alberta
  • 1902 International Transportation Company voluntarily liquidated. BC
  • 1905 CPR turns sod on Nicola, Kamloops and Similkameen Railway. Kamloops, BC
  • 1919 Granby smelter at Grand Forks begins laying off workers. Grand Forks, BC
  • 1924 British Columbia Election - John Oliver and Liberals re-elected in British Columbia. BC
  • 1926 CNR begins lake service between Kelowna, BC, and Penticton, BC, with the M.V. Pentown.
  • 1940 Second World War - Parliament passes a conscription law providing for service in Canada if needed; this fulfils Mackenzie King’s promise of conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1942 Second World War - Japanese submarine shells isolated Estevan Point on Vancouver Island, with little damage; only time Canadian territory under fire in Second World War, although there were German torpedo attacks in Newfoundland harbours in 1942 and 1943. - Estevan Point, BC
  • 1943 George Chubb sights the New Québec Crater; one of the world’s largest, at 403 metres deep and nearly 11 km around. - Ungava, Québec
  • 1945 Thomas Miller dies; newspaper editor; appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan shortly before his death in 1945. - Saskatchewan
  • 1946 Fred Rose sentenced to six years in prison for spying for the Soviet Union; charged after Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, defected and implicated Rose, Canada’s only Communist Party (Labour-Progressive) MP. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1949 Nelson, BC, retires its streetcars.
  • 1956 Saskatchewan Election - Tommy Douglas leads Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to fourth consecutive majority. Saskatchewan
  • 1959 Escuminac Disaster - End of severe two-day storm in Northumberland Strait sinks 50 salmon and lobster fishing Boats, drowns 35 fishermen. Escuminac, New Brunswick
  • 1966 Canada sells Soviet Union $800 million worth of wheat and flour; the world’s biggest wheat deal to date, at 336 million bushels. Moscow, Russia
  • 1967 Prime Minister Lester Pearson opens the National Library and Archives Building on Wellington Street beside the Supreme Court of Canada; houses Library and Archives Canada. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1975 CPR condemns the remainder of its Fairbanks-Morse fleet of locomotives.
  • 1976 Start of nine-day ‘gens de l’air’ strike by Canadian air traffic controllers over use of French at Québec airports; ends after agreement between Ottawa, pilots and controllers. - Montréal, Québec
  • 1977 Government ends 5-year oil exploration freeze, opens over 400 million hectares offshore; effective August 1, 1977. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1980 Roberto Duran takes the WBC welterweight title from Sugar Ray Leonard at Olympic Stadium in a unanimous decision. - Montréal, Québec
  • 1984 Cave-in in at Falconbridge Nickel mine kills 4 miners. - Sudbury, Ontario
  • 1985 Premier René Lévesque announces he will resign as leader of the Parti Québecois; Pierre-Marc Johnson will succeed him September 29, 1985 after a leadership convention; PQ down in the polls and constitutional hopes pinned on Brian Mulroney in Ottawa. - Montréal, Québec
  • 1986 Jean Drapeau resigns as Mayor of Montréal, after suffering a stroke. Montréal, Québec
  • 1986 Canadian rocker Bryan Adams performs at the First Prince’s Trust concert in London; other artists performing to aid Prince Charles’ charity are Eric Clapton, Elton John and Tina Turner. - London, England
  • 1988 Lucien Bouchard wins byelection for Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives in Lac St.-Jean; Bouchard will later quit the Party and found the Bloc Québecois after the 1990 failure of the Meech Lake Accord. - Chicoutimi, Québec
  • 1990 Meech Lake Accord introduced to the Manitoba legislature; will be delayed by the objections of lone native MLA Elijah Harper beyond deadline to have it discussed in public hearings. - Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • 1990 British synthesizer group Depeche Mode cancel a concert at the Ottawa Civic Centre after chunks of asbestos fall from the ceiling as the crew are setting up the equipment. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1991 Brian Mulroney attends Conference of Security and Co-operation in Europe; adopts Canadian proposal to monitor arms build-ups. - Germany
  • 1991 Edwards-Beaudoin Committee recommends a regional veto to the Constitution, and unanimous consent for changes involving the monarch, language and resources; all other changes would require consent of Ottawa, Ontario, Québec, 2 Western and 2 Atlantic provinces. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1991 Mohamed Al-Mashat inquiry into his fast track immigration agrees on flawed and controversial processing of case; Iraqi diplomat and defector from Saddam Hussein. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1991 Robert Bourassa pushes through Bill 150 in closing session requiring a referendum on sovereignty by October, 1992; recommended by Bélanger-Campeau Commission; also decreases payments to municipalities; puts wage freeze on public sector; also announces August 12, 1991 Montmorency by-election; vacated by ex-revenue minister Yves Séguin; Séguin quit to protest combining the PST with the GST. - Québec, Québec
  • 1991 Uniroyal Goodrich Tire keeps one of two plants; makes deal with United Rubber Workers Union; saving 1,000 of present 2,000 jobs. - Kitchener, Ontario
  • 1992 John Savage, mayor of Dartmouth, elected leader of the province’s Liberal party; 7,000 Liberals cast ballots from their homes punching their personal ID numbers into telephones. - Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • 1994 Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones start rehearsing for their Voodoo Lounge tour outside Toronto. - Toronto, Ontario
  • 1995 House of Commons approves bill to prevent suspects accused of assault from using drunkenness as a defence. - Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1996 Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk blasts off on board Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-78, the longest to date at 15 days, 12 hours. The mission carries the Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS). - Cape Canaveral, Florida
  • 2004 Jeff Lapcevich wins CASCAR’s Clarington 200 at Mosport International Raceway. Mosport, Ontario