CANADA : The Pioneer

Discover what makes Canada unique and what Canada was first to bring to the world...

• The Trans-Canada Highway is the longest national highway in the world: from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia, it stretches 7821 kilometers (4860 miles).
• The world’s longest covered bridge is located in Hartland, New Brunswick. It spans 390.8 meters (1282 feet).
• In 1879, Sanford Fleming, a Canadian, first originated the idea of implementing an international Standard Time system.
• The telephone was conceived in Brantford (Ont.) in 1874 by Alexander Graham Bell. He made the first long-distance call to his uncle from Brantford to Paris, Ontario, on August 10th, 1876, a total distance of 13 km.
• The first wireless voice message was transmitted December 23rd, 1900, by Quebec-born radio inventor Reginald Aubrey Ressenden.
• Canada also had the first batteryless radio and the first radio station that was launched in April 1925, by inventor Edward Samuel Rogers.
• Dr. Abraham Gesner discovered Kerosene and demonstrated it for the first time on Prince Edward Island in 1846.
• In 1888, Ontario Hydro supplied a paper mill with energy, the first plant to run on hydro-electricity in the world.
• In 1925, Swedish-born inventor Gideon Sundback came to Canada and invented the zipper.
• Charles Fenerty of Halifax, N.S., discovered a process for making paper from wood fibers in the early 1800s.
• The discovery of Insulin for diabetics was discovered by Frederick Banting and his student Charles Best at the University of Toronto in 1921. This was at a time when over 1 million North Americans had the fatal disease. Banting won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
• On April 12th, 1980, Terry Fox began his cross-country "Marathon of Hope" to raise money for cancer research. He had lost his leg to cancer in 1977, and succeeded in running a total of 5,373 km before the cancer spread to his lungs. A large portion of money raised for cancer research continues to come from the annual Terry Fox Runs held across the country.
• Pablum, the vitamin-enriched breakfast cereal for babies was invented in the late 1920s by doctors T.G.H. Drake, Alan Brown and Frederick F. Tisdall from Toronto.
• Canada has also been a leader in children’s care with the world's first Hospital For Sick Children being opened in Toronto in 1875 by a group of women.
• The active international environmental group Greenpeace was formed in Vancouver in 1970.
• The widely-used Geographical Information Systems (GIS) computer-based mapping program originated in Canada in the early 1960s.
• The first film to be titled a "Documentary" was produced in Canada in 1920/1921. It was entitled Nanook of the North and was used for many years in schools and educational facilities.
• Similarly, a Canadian produced the first commercial motion picture. In 1897, James Freer made a film about the life of a prairie farmer; this was used in Britain in 1898/1899 to promote and encourage immigration to Canada.
• The National Film Board of Canada is now a world leader in documentary films, and hosts Studio D, the only women’s English film studio in the world.
• Basketball was invented by a Canadian in 1892. Dr. James A. Naismith developed the game and made it popular with a touring women’s team.
• The ever-popular Superman is another Canadian creation. The comic was created in 1938 by a Canadian newspaper artist, Joe Shuster, and Jerome Siegel, an American.
• Today’s Hockey originated from Halifax in 1853.
• Kurt Browning performed the first Quadruple Jump in figure skating in 1990.
• The game loved by all, Trivial Pursuit, was conceived and created by Canadians Scott Abbott and Chris Haney in 1979. Today, more than fifty million games have been sold throughout the world.
• From Ralph Nader’s Canada Firsts. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992