Incumbents

• Monarch: Queen Elizabeth II
• Governor General: Jeanne Sauvé
• Prime Minister: Brian Mulroney
• Premier of Alberta: Don Getty
• Premier of British Columbia: Bill Vander Zalm
• Premier of Manitoba: Gary Filmon
• Premier of New Brunswick: Frank McKenna
• Premier of Newfoundland: Brian Peckford then Thomas Rideout then Clyde Wells
• Premier of Nova Scotia: John Buchanan
• Premier of Ontario: David Peterson
• Premier of Prince Edward Island: Joe Ghiz
• Premier of Quebec: Robert Bourassa
• Premier of Saskatchewan: Grant Devine

See also: 1989 Canadian incumbents for more

Events

• January 1: The Canadian-American Free Trade Agreement comes into effect
• March 1: The Canadian Space Agency is created
• March 10: An Air Ontario flight crashes near Dryden, Ontario killing 24
• March 20: Alberta election: Don Getty's PCs win a sixth consecutive majority
• March 22: Thomas Rideout becomes premier of Newfoundland, replacing Brian Peckford
• May 5: Clyde Wells becomes premier of Newfoundland, replacing Thomas Rideout
• May 25: In Montreal, the Calgary Flames win the Stanley Cup against the Montreal Canadiens
• June 5: First baseball game in SkyDome is played
• June 5: The federal government announces sweeping cuts to VIA Rail
• July 31: Cable television network CBC Newsworld is launched.
• September 1: French cable sports network, RDS, signs on.
• December 2: Audrey McLaughlin is elected head of the NDP replacing Ed Broadbent becoming the first female major party leader in Canadian history
• December 6: École Polytechnique Massacre: Marc Lépine murders fourteen women at the École Polytechnique of the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. The event proves a spur to both the Canadian feminist and gun control movements.
• December 21: Quebec uses the notwithstanding clause for the first time
• Deborah Grey wins a by-election to become the first Reform Party Member of Parliament.
• Corel releases CorelDraw
• Heather Erxleben becomes Canada's first official female combat soldier
• Sidney Altman shares in the Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Arts and literature

New works

• Mordecai Richler: Solomon Gursky Was Here
• Steve McCaffery: The Black Debt
• Erin Mouré: WSW
• Joy Fielding: Good Intentions
• Dave Duncan: West of January
• Tomson Highway: Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing
• William Bell: Death Wind
• Farley Mowat: The New Found Land

Awards

• Books in Canada First Novel Award: Rick Salutin, A Man of Little Faith
• See 1989 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Geoffrey Bilson Award: Martyn Godfrey, Mystery in the Frozen Lands, and Dorothy Perkyns, Rachel’s Revolution
• Gerald Lampert Award: Sarah Klassen, Journey to Yalta
• Marian Engel Award: Merna Summers
• Pat Lowther Award: Heather Spears, The Word for Sand
• Stephen Leacock Award: John Kertes, Winter Tulips
• Trillium Book Award: Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring
• Vicky Metcalf Award: Stéphane Poulin

Music

• Simply Saucer, Cyborgs Revisited

Births

• September 1: Katie Lai, actor
• Cassie Steele, actor
• Thomas Haggerty

Deaths

• February 9: Ken Adachi, writer and editor
• May 14: E.P. Taylor, businessman
• July 13: Samuel Boulanger, politician
• June 14: Louis-Philippe-Antoine Bélanger, politician
• November 11: Kenneth MacLean Glazier, Sr., former minister and former Secretary of the Alberta Liberal Party