Highlights of the day

  • 1760 Philippe de Vaudreuil surrenders Montreal and New France to Jeffrey Amherst
  • 1864 Canadian delegates to Charlottetown Conference visit PEI beaches, attend closing supper and ball.
  • 1952 CBC starts English-language television broadcasting on CBLT-TV in Toronto.
  • 1978 UNESCO puts L’Anse aux Meadows Nfld on its World Heritage List.

List of Facts for September 8

  • 1535 Jacques Cartier anchors alongside the Île d’Orléans. Québec
  • 1608 Samuel de Champlain orders locksmith Jean Duval hanged for conspiracy to mutiny, murder Champlain, loot the Habitation and escape to Spain; his head is skewered on a pike on the highest vantage point of the new fort. Québec, Québec
  • 1619 First Lutheran service in Canada held by the Jens Munk expedition to Hudson Bay . Churchill, Manitoba
  • 1629 French captain Charles Daniel captures Lord Ochiltree’s settlement at Port aux Baleines on Cape Breton, capturing the fort and taking the colonists prisoner. St. Ann’s Bay, Nova Scotia
  • 1632 Isaac de Razilly reaches Acadia with three ships to take possession of Acadia after the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye restored it to France; accompanied by his cousin Charles d’Aulnay, his nephew, Claude de Razilly, and by the Denys brothers, Nicholas Denys and Simon Denys; the Scots at Fort Charles surrender the territory and fifteen French families build a settlement at La Have, Nova Scotia; Capuchins open First boarding school in the New World. Riverport, Nova Scotia
  • 1634 Jesuit fathers Jacques Buteux and Paul LeJeune arrive at Trois-Rivières with Sieur de Laviolette; they found a mission under the name Notre-Dame de la Conception; Laviolette builds a trading post under Champlain’s orders. Trois-Rivières, Québec
  • 1700 Treaty - Louis-Hector de Callières makes peace treaty with Iroquois, Abanakis and Ottawas. Montreal, Quebec - See also August 4 for the Great Peace of Montreal which follows in 1701.
  • 1734 Michel Sarrazin dies; doctor, philosopher, biologist. Montreal, Quebec
  • 1755 French and Indian War - Baron Dieskau, a German mercenary in French service, ambushes Sir William Johnson and his 1,000-man relief army en route to Fort Edward, 80 km north of Fort Albany; Dieskau is shot in the knee and captured, but the action halts British thrust northward with their Mohawk allies. With winter coming, Johnson starts building Fort William Henry on the portage road at the southern end of Lake George; Dieskau’s army retreat to Crown Point and start building Fort Carillon 15 km to the south, were Lake George joins Lake Champlain. Lake George, New York
  • 1756 French and Indian War - Iroquois in Montréal promise to stay neutral in the Seven Years War. Montreal, Quebec
  • 1760 Philippe de Vaudreuil signs letters of capitulation surrendering Montreal and New France to British General Sir Jeffrey Amherst and Sir William Johnson with their force of English troops; Vaudreuil asks that his 2,000 soldiers be allowed to march out of the city with their guns and banners; Amherst refuses, and that evening, the flag of England replaces the fleur-de-lis at the Place d’Armes; the Chevalier de Lévis burns his battle flags to save his troops from the humiliation of surrendering them to the English; beginning of the ‘Regime Militaire’ as Frederick Haldimand assumes the governorship; end of the French and Indian War (the Seven Years War continues in other parts of the world until February 10, 1763) The British will agree to give the French fair treatment, including freedom of worship, freedom to trade furs on an equal basis with the British, freedom of emigration and continued property rights. Montréal, Québec - See September 18, 1759
  • 1775 Disaster - Nova Scotia hit by the ‘Hurricane of Independence’, named after the US War of Independence; started a week earlier in the West Indies; an estimated 4,170 people from North Carolina northward die in the storm. Nova Scotia
  • 1810 David Thompson leaves to explore Columbia River valley; prevented by the Piegan from using Howse Pass, he travels north to the head of the Athabasca River and across the mountains to the Columbia. Kootenay, BC
  • 1828 Monument unveiled to commemorate the death of Marquis de Montcalm and James Wolfe at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Québec, Québec
  • 1836 Mgr. Jean-Jacques Lartigue becomes Bishop of Montréal. Montreal, Quebec
  • 1842 Opening of second session of 1sr Parliament of the Province of Canada; meets until October 12, 1842; passes new election law, new duty on imported U.S. wheat. Montréal, Québec
  • 1854 Francis Hincks & A-N Morin (Hincks-Morin Ministry) resigns. Kingston, Ontario
  • 1864 Confederation - Charlottetown Conference - The Canadian delegates are treated to an excursion to the beaches of Prince Edward Island’s North Shore, followed by a closing supper and ball at the Colonial Building (the Province House National Historic Site of Canada). Most delegates are up all night and head to the Queen Victoria at 5am to set sail for Halifax. Charlottetown, PEI
  • 1876 Mgr. Ignace Bourget resigns as Bishop of Montréal. Montreal, Quebec
  • 1880 Energy - A group of 16 small Ontario refiners pool their resources and equipment and incorporate the Imperial Oil Co. Ltd. in London, Ontario. The company owned two refineries, one in London and the other in Petrolia. Imperial expanded rapidly and by 1893 had twenty-three branch offices across Canada. They also started exporting their lubricants, candles and kerosene abroad to Japan, India, China, Australia and South America. In July, 1898, Imperial sold a majority interest to J. D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. London, Ontario
  • 1883 Henry Villard drives the last spike of the Northern Pacific Railroad at Cold Creek, Montana Territory; the line runs close to the Canadian border in BC.
  • 1892 Last rail in the southern branch of the Calgary and Edmonton Railway is laid at West MacLeod. Fort Macleod, Alberta
  • 1905 David Harrison dies; physician, politician, farmer, businessman; briefly Premier of Manitoba from 1887-1888. Manitoba
  • 1907 Riot - Rally at Vancouver city hall held to protest against giving jobs to Asian immigrants is organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council; after a series of inflammatory anti-Asian speeches about the yellow peril, the rally degenerated into a riot when a youth threw a rock through the window of a Chinese store. A mob of 7 000 people marched through the streets of downtown Vancouver, smashing windows and destroying signs on Oriental businesses. In Chinatown, they looted and burned thousands of dollars worth of Chinese property. Vancouver, BC
  • 1907 See: Anti-Asian Riot in Vancouver
  • 1911 Education - Opening of Mount Royal College, offering elementary and secondary level academic courses, and special courses in household sciences, business, music and art to 200 students; Methodist Church institution. Calgary, Alberta
  • 1916 Pope Benedict XV makes statement deploring language tensions in Ontario; amid protests against Regulation #17. Vatican City, Italy
  • 1930 Prime Minister R. B. Bennett retaliates against punitive US Smoot-Hawley Tariff with up to 50% steeper ‘Emergency Tariffs’ on 130 articles; most drastic shakeup in the Canadian tariff since 1879; the net result of this and other tariff raising will be the deepening of global economic depression. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1930 Opening of first session of 17th Parliament; meets until September 22, 1930. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1931 Strike started by Estevan coal miners for union recognition; three strikers will be killed in September 29, 1931 clash with RCMP. Estevan, Saskatchewan
  • 1939 Second World War - Mackenzie King says no to conscription; stresses munitions-making, and building up Canadian navy and air force. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1945 Nova Scotia Election - Angus Macdonald leads Liberal party to a second victory in the provincial election; succeeding Alexander MacMillan. Nova Scotia
  • 1949 Construction begins on 7.5 km Yonge Street subway line in Toronto; Canada’s First subway will open five years later in 1954. Toronto, Ontario
  • 1951 Lester Pearson signs Japan Peace Treaty for Canada; 48 other nations participate. San Francisco, California
  • 1952 Media - After starting in French at Radio-Canada in Montréal two days earlier, CBC starts English-language broadcasting on CBLT-TV in Toronto beginning at 7:15 pm, to an audience of 146,000 across Canada; the First show is ‘Let’s See’, a preview of the night’s events, followed by Percy Saltzman with the weather, John Conway in ‘Uncle Chichimus’, and at 8 pm, the opening ceremonies. Canada’s First TV blooper also happens when a technician puts in an ID slide upside down. Toronto, Ontario
  • 1952 Crime - Edwin Alonzo Boyd, leader of the Boyd Gang, escapes from Don Jail with fellow cop-killers Lennie Jackson and Steve Suchan; charged with murder and armed robbery; after a massive manhunt, they are captured eight days later in a barn near Leslie Street in North York; Boyd and Jackson had also escaped from Don Jail a year earlier. Toronto, Ontario
  • 1953 New Brunswicker Yvon Durelle wins the Canadian heavyweight boxing crown. Montreal, Quebec
  • 1954 Marilyn Bell starts her attempt to swim across Lake Ontario with Winnie Roach Leuszler and champion swimmer Florence Chadwick (offered $10,000 by the CNE to swim the lake); only Bell reaches Toronto 30 hours later. Youngstown, New York
  • 1958 Ottawa teen heart-throb Paul Anka opens a month long tour of the Orient in Tokyo. Tokyo, Japan
  • 1964 Beatles give two concerts at the Montréal Forum. Montréal, Québec
  • 1965 Alberta Premier Ernest Manning opposes Medicare on national television. Edmonton, Alberta
  • 1966 Montreal-born actor William Shatner as Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise start their mission as the crew of Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi space epic Star Trek on NBC TV; First episode called The Man Trap; NBC will cancel the show Sept 2, 1969; the former Stratford Festival actor will also play in the 1973 cartoon version, as well as in film spinoffs. Hollywood, California
  • 1966 Labour - Saskatchewan passes Essential Services Act; compulsory arbitration without appeal for labour dispute. Regina, Saskatchewan
  • 1968 Terrorism - FLQ bomb explodes in Québec City. Québec, Québec
  • 1968 First of 10,000 refugees from August 21, 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia arrive in Canada; under four-month program. Montréal, Québec
  • 1968 Opening of renovated birthplace of Dr. John McCrae, author of ‘In Flanders Fields’. Guelph, Ontario
  • 1971 NHL star Gordie Howe retires for the First time; in 1973, he decides to play with his sons for Houston of the WHA. He retires for good in 1980. Detroit, Michigan
  • 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series - USSR beats Team Canada 5-3 in Game 4 of the Summit Series, with Canada’s best defender, Serge Savard, out of the lineup with a hairline fracture, and Vladislav Tretiak stopping 38 of 41 shots, including 21 in the final period. Vancouver fans boo Team Canada off the ice at the end of the last game played in Canada. A party of 3,500 flag waving Canadian fans will accompany them to the Soviet Union. Vancouver, BC
  • 1972 Neil Young and actress Carrie Snodgrass have a son Zeke, born at Young’s ranch near San Francisco. California
  • 1974 Ottawa singer Paul Anka’s hit single (You’re) Having My Baby stays at #1 on the Billboard pop charts for another week. New York, New York
  • 1975 Record - Herve Filion wins his 5,312th harness racing victory; Canadian driver now has the most wins in the world, edging out Germany’s Hans Fromming. Atlantic City, New Jersey
  • 1975 Montreal-born actor William Shatner stars in new show Barbary Coast, an ABC western premiering tonight with Doug McClure and Richard Kiel; lasts until January; after Star Trek, before T. J. Hooker. Hollywood, California
  • 1976 Vancouver band Heart’s debut album Dreamboat Annie goes gold; contains singles Magic Man (a #9 hit) and Crazy on You. Vancouver, BC
  • 1977 Record - 20-year-old Toronto swimmer Cindy Nicholas finishes the First non-stop swim of the English Channel in both directions; beats the old record by 10 hours; will swim the Channel 19 times in her career. Dover, England
  • 1978 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) puts L’Anse aux Meadows on the World Heritage List after a three day visit to the site; remains of 1000-year-old Norse colony on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula First excavated in 1960 by Norwegian archaeologists Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad, then by Parks Canada 1973-76; First known European settlement in the Americas south of Greenland consists of eight sod and timber buildings and many Norse artifacts, spoken of in the Norse sagas, the settlement was abandoned ten years later after skirmishes with Aboriginal people; First of 12 Canadian sites on the World Heritage List. L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland
  • 1980 Constitution - Ottawa and provinces start five days of constitutional talks; fail to reach agreement over constitutional amending formula. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1986 Strike - Inmates go on hunger strike at Archambault Penitentiary. Montréal, Québec
  • 1987 Energy - National Energy Board drops controls on natural gas exports, thus bringing in deregulation of the fuel. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 1987 Normick-Perron forestry giant acquires la Cie Panofor. Montréal, Québec
  • 1988 Sylvia Fedoruk sworn in as Saskatchewan’s First woman Lieutenant-Governor. Regina, Saskatchewan
  • 1990 Oka Crisis - Canadian Army and Mohawk Warriors continue standoff at Kanesatake. Oka, Québec
  • 1991 No person injured as 55 ton concrete beam falls in Montréal’s Olympic Stadium. Montréal, Québec
  • 1993 Federal Election - Prime Minister Kim Campbell calls an election for October 25, 1993. The Conservatives, who have a substantial majority, will be reduced to a pair of seats as the Liberals under Jean Chrétien will come to power. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 2004 Peacekeeping - Canada donates $20 million to the United Nations for Sudan peacekeeping. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 2005 Diplomacy - Chinese President Hu Jintao arrives in Canada for his first state visit; marks 35 years of diplomatic ties and expanding trade and energy agreements. Ottawa, Ontario