This Day in History
March 31

Year Month Start Date Event
1782 March 31 Born - March 31: Jesse Ketchum, tanner, politician, and philanthropist (d.1867)
1821 March 31 McGill University established by Royal Charter.
1853 March 31 Died - March 31 - William Crane, merchant, justice of the peace, judge, and politician (born 1785)
1864 March 31 Born - March 31 - J. J. Kelso, journalist and social activist (died 1935)
1867 March 31 Born - March 31 – Noah Timmins, mining developer and executive (died 1936)
1870 March 31 Died - March 31 - Thomas Cooke, missionary, and the first Bishop of Trois Rivières (b.1792)
1872 March 31 March 31 - The first issue of the Toronto Mail, which would later be merged into the Globe and Mail, is published
1886 March 31 Died - March 31 - Amos Wright, farmer and politician (b.1809)
1890 March 31 March 31 — Manitoba Liberals under Thomas Greenway halt public funding of Catholic schools; causes uproar in Quebec.
1906 March 31 Died - March 31 - James McIntyre, poet (b.1828)
1928 March 31 Born - March 31 - Gordie Howe, ice hockey player
1948 March 31 Born - March 31 - Gary Doer, politician and 20th Premier of Manitoba
1949 March 31 The Dominion of Newfoundland and its dependency of Labrador joined as the tenth province, named Newfoundland as proclaimed by the British North America Act 1949.
1949 March 31 March 31 - Newfoundland becomes Canada's 10th province at a fraction of a second from April 1, April Fools' Day.
1951 March 31 Born - March 31 – Lawrence O'Brien, politician (d.2004)
1954 March 31 Died - March 31 – John Walter Jones, politician and Premier of Prince Edward Island (b.1878)
1958 March 31 March 31 – John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a massive election victory.
1966 March 31 Born - March 31 – Nathalie Gosselin, judoka
1971 March 31 March 31 - FLQ terrorist Paul Rose is sentenced to life in prison
1973 March 31 Born - March 31 - Ian Goldberg, cryptographer and cypherpunk
1978 March 31 Died - March 31 - Charles Best, medical scientist, co-discoverer of insulin (b.1899)
1980 March 31 Born - March 31 - Michael Ryder, ice hockey player
1995 March 31 March 31 - Perrin Beatty appointed head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
2003 March 31 Died - March 31 - Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, geometer (born 1907)
2004 March 31 March 31 - Saskatchewan government releases 2004 budget, raising the Provincial Sales Taxes from 6% to 7%.
2004 March 31 March 31 - 170 people, including 29 Canadians, arrested in drug bust across Canada and the United States.
2004 March 31 March 31 - Colin Thatcher is denied early parole.
2004 March 31 March 31 - Discovery finds that million flag promise in 1996 by Sheila Copps was organized by Groupaction.
2004 March 31 March 31 - Federal Court of Canada rejects Canadian Recording Industry Association request to obtain names of music fileswappers, making the sharing legal.