William Nassau Kennedy started his career as a house painter, but ended up having a significant impact both on Canada’s militia and Canada’s prairie provinces.

Upper Canada, Canada West and Ontario — different names for the same place. It was built by a wide range of characters: surveyors, soldiers, politicians, miners, entrepreneurs, scrappers and showmen.

Sir John A. Macdonald was not only the country’s first prime minister; he was also the last premier of Canada West, what Ontario was called before Confederation.

In 1775, Canada faced invasion by the army of the rebel forces of nascent America.

When the American Revolution broke out, a First Nations woman played a key role in protecting Loyalists and supporting the troops of King George III.

Daniel Eaton was only one of the many Canadians killed at Vimy Ridge.

Orson Squire Fowler just happened to be in London on the day a young man was hanged for the murder of Const. Timothy Pomeroy. Fowler was an itinerant phrenologist, octagonal house proponent and an American.

If you`d had the opportunity to ask shipbuilder Melancthon Simpson which was the best-known ship he`d ever built, he`d likely have had a hard time answering.

On Dec. 30, 1922, Angelina Napolitano walked out of Kingston Penitentiary, a free woman. She was 39.

You would have to search long and hard to find a more definitive immigrant pioneer than August Kruger.

Flea circuses were a thing at one time — peaking in the late 1800s. They started with Louis Bertolotto, who was born in Genoa, Italy in 1802 but who moved to Ontario in 1856.

While Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, gave his name to Fort Frontenac and ordered its construction, the actual layout and work was overseen by Hugues Randin, a soldier, mapmaker and engineer – a renaissance man who mastered numerous skills, including cartography – which in his hands, managed to spark fear in Britain and Spain.

John Richardson is not easily pigeon-holed — he wrote dozens of books, was a war hero, was knighted and brought peace to the Welland Canal.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee was a man of passionate — if not always consistent — convictions who had a huge impact on Canada.

Catherine Sutton, a First Nations woman, fought the law and the law lost.

When you are frustrated with the state of politics today and hear someone say, “there were better people in the old days,” don’t discount that as just warmed-over sentimentality.

Blackbird, also known as Jean-Baptiste Assiginack, was one of the great intermediaries between First Nations and the Crown in Upper Canada.

We think of the Family Compact of old Upper Canada as just a homogenous group of WASP-y British men, but there were exceptions.