1880 in Canada

Crown

• Monarch – Victoria^[1]

Federal government

• Governor General – John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne
• Prime Minister – John A. Macdonald
• Chief Justice – William Johnstone Ritchie (New Brunswick)
• Parliament – 4th

Provincial governments

Lieutenant governors

• Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia – Albert Norton Richards
• Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba – Joseph-Édouard Cauchon
• Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick – Edward Barron Chandler (until February 6) then Robert Duncan Wilmot (from February 11)
• Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia – Adams George Archibald
• Lieutenant Governor of Ontario – Donald Alexander Macdonald (until July 1) then John Beverley Robinson
• Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island – Thomas Heath Haviland
• Lieutenant Governor of Quebec – Théodore Robitaille

Premiers

• Premier of British Columbia – George Anthony Walkem
• Premier of Manitoba – John Norquay
• Premier of New Brunswick – John James Fraser
• Premier of Nova Scotia – Simon Hugh Holmes
• Premier of Ontario – Oliver Mowat
• Premier of Prince Edward Island – William Wilfred Sullivan
• Premier of Quebec – Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau

Territorial governments

Lieutenant governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Keewatin – Joseph-Édouard Cauchon
• Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories – David Laird

• February 4 – Five members of the Donnelly family are killed near Lucan, Ontario.
• February 14 – The wife of the governor general, The Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne, is seriously injured when the viceregal sleigh overturns on a Rudolph Ottawa street.
• March 25 – George Brown fatally shot by a disgruntled employee.
• May 4 – Edward Blake becomes the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
• June 24 – "O Canada" first performed.
• July 16 – The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts is established.
• October 9 – The United Kingdom gives Canada control of the Arctic Archipelago.

Full date unknown

• Emily Stowe becomes the first woman doctor to practise medicine in Canada
• Sanford Fleming becomes chancellor of Queen's University
• Bell Canada founded
• Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). British-backed Canadian firm, headed by US railroad building genius (Sir William Cornelius Van Horne) gets the deal: $25 million, 25 million acres (100,000 km²), already completed sections free, all under-construction sections finished free, 20 year monopoly as only railway and 20-year control over rate-setting.
• The Varsity, created.

• March 6 – The Royal Academy for the Arts is founded.

New books

• Charles G.D. Roberts, Orion and Other Poems

• January 17 – Mack Sennett, actor, producer, screenwriter and film director (d.1960)
• January 18 – Richard Squires, politician and Prime Minister of Newfoundland (d.1940)
• March 22 – Allison Dysart, politician, lawyer, judge and 21st Premier of New Brunswick (d.1962)
• April 13 – Charles Christie, motion picture studio owner (d.1955)
• August 6 – Leland Payson Bancroft, politician (d.1951)
• August 12 – Jacob Penner, politician (d.1965)
• August 14 – Percival Molson, athlete and soldier (d.1917)
• August 29 – Marie-Louise Meilleur, supercentenarian, the oldest validated Canadian ever (d.1998)
• October 12 – Healey Willan, organist and composer (d.1968)
• October 27 – Vere Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough, businessman, politician and Governor General of Canada (d.1956)

• January 19 – James Westcott, American-born United States Senator from Florida from 1845 till 1849 (born 1802)
• February 6 – Edward Barron Chandler, politician (b.1800)
• May 9 – George Brown, journalist, politician and one of the Fathers of the Confederation (b.1818)
• June 12 – William Evan Price, businessman and politician (b.1827)
• October 8 – Caleb Hopkins, farmer and politician (b.1785)
• October 18 – Luc-Hyacinthe Masson, physician, businessman and politician (b.1811)
• December 8 – Charles Fisher, politician and 1st Premier of the Colony of New Brunswick (b.1808)
• December 24 – David Christie, politician (b.1818)

Statute creates Canadian Pacific Railway as government-supported private company for benefit of B.C. and N.W.T.^[2]

Chief Ocean Man and another Nakoda (Stoney) describe attack on their people by Gros Ventre and Mandan from U.S. side of border^[3]

British order-in-council transfers Arctic islands to Dominion of Canada ^[4]

Using words like "terrible evil" and "usurpation," Anti-Chinese Association petitions British Columbia legislature to stop Chinese immigration^[5]

Editorial on complaints of French-Canadians^[6]

Walt Whitman calls Thousand Islands most beautiful place on Earth^[7]

To avoid bankruptcy caused by westward expansion, Canada must declare independence^[8]

Britain gifts part of HMS Resolute to U.S. for saving that Arctic exploration ship ^[9]

Painting: Trapper approaches animal caught in leghold trap^[10]