Learn / People who shaped Canada
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Twenty-one years in office, the longest in the Commonwealth, and a diary no one expected.
Life story
- December 17, 1874 · Kitchener, Ontario
Born in Berlin, Ontario, grandson of the 1837 rebel - 1900 · Ottawa
Became Canada's first deputy minister of labour - December 29, 1921 · Ottawa
Became prime minister for the first time - 1926 · Ottawa
Won the King-Byng crisis and the Balfour Declaration on dominion autonomy - September 10, 1939 · Ottawa
Took Canada into the Second World War by a vote of Parliament - April 27, 1942 · Ottawa
Held a conscription plebiscite: not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary - January 1, 1947 · Ottawa
Received Canadian citizenship certificate number one - July 22, 1950 · Kingsmere, Quebec
Died at Kingsmere, his estate in the Gatineau Hills
In the timeline
- 1907 — The Vancouver anti-Asian riots
- 1923 — The Chinese Exclusion Act
- 1931 — The Statute of Westminster
- 1939 — Canada declares war
- 1939 — The air training plan
- 1942 — Japanese Canadian internment
- 1945 — Canada signs the UN Charter
- 1945 — The Gouzenko affair
- 1947 — Canadian citizenship begins