1 November 1914 

In a battle off the coast of Chile, four midshipmen are the first Canadian
naval casualties of the First World War, perishing with the crew of
HMS Good Hope.

3 November 1944 

Japan begins launching 9,000 incendiary balloons to drift to the Pacific Coast of Canada and the United States.

4 November 1956 

The United Nations General Assembly supports Lester B. Pearson’s proposal for a UN police force to oversee a ceasefire agreement following the Suez Crisis.

5 November 1995

Aline Chrétien thwarts the attempted assassination of her husband, then-prime minister Jean Chrétien, by locking their bedroom door after seeing a knife-wielding intruder at 24 Sussex Drive. 

 6 November 1861

James Naismith, inventor of basketball, is born in Almonte, Ont. 

8 November 1944

The Battle of the Scheldt ends; by month’s end, channels are cleared of mines and the crucial
port of Antwerp is open to Allied shipping.

9 November 1910 

The dockyard in Esquimalt, B.C., is transferred to Canadian ownership and becomes the home of Pacific Command.

10 November 1975

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald founders and sinks during

a severe storm on
Lake Superior.

12 November 2001 

HMCS Vancouver is part of a U.S. battle group departing San Diego, Calif., for
the Persian Gulf.

13 November 1775 

Brigadier-General Richard Montgomery’s patriot army captures Montreal.

14 November 1891

Nobel laureate and discoverer of insulin Fredrick Banting is born in a farmhouse near Alliston, Ont.

15 November 1976

René Lévesque leads the Parti Québécois to victory in the 1976 Quebec general election, the first openly sovereigntist party to hold power in the province.

17 November 1859 

The First Battalion Volunteer Militia Rifles is authorized, origin of Canada’s oldest militia unit, The Canadian Grenadier Guards.

18 November 1916

The Battle of the Somme ends after months of brutal fighting and more than a million casualties.

21 November 1990 

The end of the Cold War draws nearer as 34 nations, including the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union, sign the Paris Charter, an international commitment to democracy and
human rights.

  24 November 1904

Ross Tilley is born. During the Second World War, Tilley would help redefine plastic surgery while caring for burned and wounded Allied airmen, who called themselves the Guinea Pig Club.

25 November 1953 

HMCS Cayuga sails for duty off Korea for the third and final time.

29 November 1776

The Battle of Fort Cumberland in Nova Scotia comes to an end after British reinforcements arrive, driving away the American invaders.