1859 in Canada

[edit] Events

Abraham Shadd is elected to the town council in Raleigh, Ontario and becomes the first Black elected to public office.
William Hall, born in Hants County, Nova Scotia, becomes the first Nova Scotian and the first Black to win the Victoria Cross for Bravery in the war. The Victoria Cross is the highest military honour in the Commonwealth of Nations.
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 juridicial and political crisis in the Fraser River goldfieldsinvolving 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 Cutler, an American settler, homesteads on San Juan Island in defiance of British claims and triggers off the Pig War.