1965 in Canada

See also: 1964 in Canada, other events of 1965, 1966 in Canada and the Timeline of Canadian history.

Incumbents

• Prime Minister – Lester B. Pearson
• Governor General – Georges Vanier

• Premier of Alberta – Ernest Manning
• Premier of British Columbia – W.A.C. Bennett
• Premier of Manitoba – Duff Roblin
• Premier of New Brunswick – Louis Robichaud
• Premier of Newfoundland – Joey Smallwood
• Premier of Nova Scotia – Robert Stanfield
• Premier of Ontario – John Robarts
• Premier of Prince Edward Island – Walter Shaw
• Premier of Quebec – Jean Lesage
• Premier of Saskatchewan – W. Ross Thatcher

Events

• January 1 – Trans-Canada Airlines is renamed Air Canada
• January 16 – The Canada-US Autopact is signed
• February 15 – The Maple Leaf becomes the National Flag of Canada.
• March 2 – Lucien Rivard escapes from a Montreal area jail
• March 7 – Canadian Roman Catholic churches celebrate mass in the vernacular for the first time due to the reforms of Vatican II
• March 11 – The NHL admits six new teams and doubles in size.
• March 20 – Peter Lougheed is elected leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party
• April 2 – Lester Pearson gives a speech at Temple University in the United States which called for a stop to the bombing of North Vietnam, infuriating President Lyndon Johnson
• July 8 – A crash of a Canadian Pacific Airlines flight in British Columbia kills 52.
• July 9 – The Hope Slide, the largest landslide ever recorded in Canada, kills four
• September 9 – The Fowler Report is released. It advocates creation of the CRTC
• October 13 – The Canadian Film Development Agency is formed
• November 8 – Federal election: Lester Pearson's Liberals win a second consecutive minority
• November 9 – A failure at an Ontario power station causes the 1965 Blackout that stretches from Florida to Chicago and all of southern Ontario.
• November 29 – Alouette 2 is launched.
• Eligibility age for pensions is lowered from 70 to 65
• The new Toronto City Hall is opened

Arts and literature

New Books

• George Grant – Lament for a Nation
• John Newlove – Moving in Alone
• Robert Kroetsch – Moving in Alone
• Farley Mowat – West Viking
• Gilles Archambault – La vie à trois

Awards

• Gordon R. Dickson's Soldier, Ask Not wins a Hugo Award
• See 1965 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Stephen Leacock Award: Gregory Clark, War Stories
• Vicky Metcalf Award: Roderick Haig-Brown

Music

Karel Ancerl replaces Seiji Ozama as artistic director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Film

• Christopher Plummer stars as Captain von Trapp in the Sound of Music
• William Shatner stars in Incubus

Births

• January 21 – Brian Bradley, hockey player
• January 24 – Ross MacDonald, Olympic sailor
• January 28 – Stéphane Bergeron, politician
• January 31 – Ofra Harnoy, cellist
• March 1 – Stewart Elliott, jockey
• March 23 – Daren Puppa, hockey goalie
• April 21 – Ed Belfour, hockey goaltender
• May 9 – Steve Yzerman, ice hockey player
• May 10 – Linda Evangelista, model
• May 19 – James Bezan, politician
• August 11 – Marc Bergevin, hockey player
• August 28 – Shania Twain, singer and songwriter
• September 27 – Bernard Lord, Premier of New Brunswick
• September 27 – Peter MacKay, Tory leader
• October 5 – Mario Lemieux, ice hockey player
• October 5 – Patrick Roy, ice hockey player
• October 29 – Christy Clark, politician
• December 10 – Jennifer Wyatt, golfer

Deaths

• Dorothy Gish, actor