Highlights of the day

  • 1812 Miles Macdonnell arrives with First Red River Settlers at the fork of the Assiniboine River.
  • 1873 Lord Dufferin issues the Order-in-Council constituting the North West Mounted Police (NWMP).
  • 1916 Canadians enters Battle of the Somme; ends mid-Nov with almost 25,000 Canadian casualties.
  • 1988 Canada’s Vicki Keith staggers ashore from Lake Ontario, ending her marathon swim of all 5 Great Lakes.

List of Facts for August 30

  • 1611 Newly appointed Governor John Guy issues Newfoundland’s First laws; to protect forests and harbours and regulate the fishery. St. John’s, Newfoundland
  • 1812 Miles Macdonnell, Lord Selkirk’s agent and a former soldier, arrives with the First Red River Settlers, mostly Scottish, at the confluence of the Red River and Assiniboine River, to found the Red River Settlement. As First Governor of Assiniboia, his duty is to establish the colony on land acquired by Selkirk from the Hudson’s Bay Company; he builds Fort Douglas near the North West Company’s Fort Gibraltar. The Red River Colony will be destroyed in a feud with the Norwesters in 1815, but will be re-established by Selkirk in 1817. Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • 1843 Rupert’s Land native Abishabis burned to death by his tribe to destroy his murderous spirit, after being caught and jailed by the HBC after he killed an in-law’s family and stole food and a canoe; claimed to be Jesus Christ. Saskatchewan
  • 1851 Currency - British Parliament passes the Canadian Currency Act, specifying a conversion to decimal currency, and making the dollar legal tender, up to $10 per transaction; any new coins struck for Canada must have approval of British Government. London, England
  • 1851 Legislative Council of Vancouver Island holds First session. Victoria, BC
  • 1856 Abbé Chiniquy excommunicated; firebrand defector from the Roman Catholic Church was called ‘The Luther of Québec’. Montréal, Québec
  • 1856 John Ross, Royal Navy officer, dies at age 79; born at Balsarroch, Scotland June 24, 1777. In 1817, Ross charted Baffin Bay; 1829-33 explored Lancaster Sound and Somerset Island in search of the North West Passage; icebound on his ship, HMS Victory, off the coast of Boothia Peninsula for four winters; 1831 his nephew and second-in-command, James Clark Ross, located the Magnetic Pole on Boothia’s west coast; 1850 commanded HMS Felix in unsuccessful search for the lost Franklin Expedition. London, England
  • 1858 Governor James Douglas appoints Richard Hicks and O-J Travaillot as Gold Commissioners at Fort Yale and Fort Dallas (Lytton, BC), respectively. Victoria, BC
  • 1860 Prince of Wales visits St-Hyacinthe, Québec and Sherbrooke, Québec; later King Edward VII. Québec
  • 1873 Governor General Lord Dufferin issues the Order-in-Council constituting the North West Mounted Police (NWMP). Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1873 George French forms First detachment of North-West Mounted Police with 150 recruits. Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • 1883 Chief Piapot moves his Cree band onto their new reserve. Piapot First Nation, Saskatchewan
  • 1907 Opening of Inquiry into the collapse of the Québec Bridge. Québec, Québec
  • 1911 Education - School district formed at Burmis, Alberta.
  • 1916 First World War - Canadian Corps enters the Battle of the Somme, raging since July 1, 1916; engagements follow at Courcelette, Thiepval and Ancre Heights, end in the mud of mid-November with almost 25,000 Canadian casualties. France/Belgium
  • 1928 Disaster - Six miners dead in blow-out at Coal Creek No.1 East. BC
  • 1932 Olympics - Canadian team attends opening of the tenth olympiad, the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games. Los Angeles, California
  • 1940 Second World War - RAF’s Canadian Squadron sees action in the Battle of Britain. Britain
  • 1944 Second World War - Two brigades of the First Canadian Corps cross the Foglia River and fight their way through the German Gothic Line toward Rimini. Rimini, Italy
  • 1944 Maurice Duplessis sworn in as Premier of Quebec for the second time, replacing Adélard Godbout Québec, Québec
  • 1949 Saskatchewan Air Ambulance makes its First night pickup at Mankota. Mankota, Saskatchewan
  • 1950 Strike - Parliament legislates end of Canada-wide strike of 15 railway unions which tied up railway and telegraph services, forces union back to work; sets up new arbitrator for this and future strikes. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1951 Steambat Sicamous arrives at Penticton under tow, to be beached as a museum. Penticton, BC
  • 1957 Ottawa native Paul Anka’s hit single Diana peaks at #1 on the UK pop singles chart and stays there for nine weeks. According to Anka, it was inspired by Diana Ayoub, an older girl with whom 15-year-old Paul Anka was infatuated. She was a girl I saw at church and now and then at functions, he said. She was a little out of my league. She was twenty and I was fifteen - and she really didn’t want anything to do with me, which made it even worse. Worse still, she was babysitting Anka’s younger brother and sister, and it was hard to avoid her. So Anka wrote a poem about her and set it to music. London, England
  • 1959 End of Montréal streetcar service. Montréal, Québec
  • 1968 Pierre Trudeau cancels Winter Works Program first started in 1958-59. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1971 Alberta Election - Peter Lougheed leads Progressive Conservatives to power in Alberta; wins a majority, defeating Harry Strom’s Social Credit Party, which had governed for 36 years. Alberta
  • 1972 British Columbia Election - David Barrett leads the NDP to victory over W. A. C. Bennett’s Social Credit Party, taking 39 seats in the BC provincial election; upsetting 20 years of Socred rule. BC
  • 1972 Frank Calder appointed to the Cabinet of British Columbia; First aboriginal Cabinet minister in Canadian history a BC MLA for 26 years; will give his name to the Calder Case, where the court rules against Calder and the Nisg’aa people on aboriginal title, but enters into negotiations for a settlement; will join Social Credit in 1975. Victoria, BC
  • 1972 Football - Winnipeg Blue Bombers Mack Herron sets CFL record with 120 yard kickoff return. Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • 1973 Protest - Group of 200 aboriginal protesters start 2-day occupation of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs building to demand a halt to the James Bay power development until Cree land claims are settled; also protest DINA’s youth liaison program. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1973 Strike - Rail workers force their way into the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings during national strike. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1976 Group of 17 Chinese officials attends official opening Norman Bethune’s restored birthplace, operated by Parks Canada; the Montrealer served as a battlefield surgeon during Mao’s long march, and died in China of blood poisoning. Gravenhurst, Ontario
  • 1976 Manitoba Liquor Commission fined $300,000 for violating federal wage and price controls; First case of provincial agency fined under controls. Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • 1987 Record - Toronto sprinter Ben Johnson runs the 100m dash at the world track and field championships in a world record 9.83, cutting one-tenth of a second from the previous record of 9.93 set by Calvin Smith four years earlier; record later erased by IAAF because Johnson admitted using steroids; in 1988, he will win gold at the Seoul Summer Olympics with a time of 9.79 seconds but will be stripped of the medal after testing positive for steroids. Rome, Italy
  • 1988 Record - Canada’s Vicki Keith staggers ashore from Lake Ontario, ending her marathon swim of all 5 Great Lakes and setting the women’s world distance record of 38 km for the butterfly stroke; Keith started her marathon on July 1. Toronto, Ontario
  • 1990 Brian Mulroney appoints five new Senators to break GST & UI logjams in the Senate; standings 32 PCs, 52 Liberals; Pat Carney (former MP for Vancouver Centre and Minister of International Trade), Mario Beaulieu (Montréal businessman who headed 1988 PC campaign in Québec), Nancy Teed (NB PC organizer), Gerald Comeau (former MP from Nova Scotia), Consiglio di Nino (President of Cabot Trust and former PC fundraiser from Toronto). Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1990 Ottawa native Paul Anka takes out American citizenship; on leaving the ceremony, the pop singer and songwriter finds that his car has been towed away for double parking; Las Vegas, Nevada
  • 1997 Record - Tennis star Greg Rusedski is the First player to make a serve clocked at 141 mph in a pro match; the Montréal-born Rudeski, who moved to England in 1995, is competing in the US Open. He is currently ranked 9th in the world. New York, New York
  • 2003 Canada the first country to implement the World Trade Organization initiative to supply generic drugs to to help fight AIDS/HIV. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 2004 Jurists Louise Charron and Rosalie Abella are formally appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 2004 Terrorism - Canadian Passport Office asks permission to use facial recognition technology to detect potential terrorists. Ottawa, Ontario