The Big Book of Canadian Trivia

1. Discovery of insulin for the treatment of diabetes. Toronto, in 1922 by Frederick Banting and Charles Best: Banting shared his Nobel Prize, Medicine, winnings with Best in 1923. Banting was born in Alliston, Ontario, while Best was the son of a Canadian-born physician but was born in Maine.

2. Mapping the visual cortex of the brain, enabling medical practitioners to determine where different vision processing tasks take place, such as lines, brightness, and colour: Work done at Harvard University by David Hubel of Montreal in the 1960s and 1970s. Hubel shared the Nobel Prize, Medicine, in 1981 with Torsten Wiesel, who was Swedish.

3. Development of site-based mutagenesis, a new way of creating mutations in living organisms to produce improved plants and animals: The discovery was made in the early 1980s in Vancouver by Michael Smith, who moved to Canada from England in 1956. Smith won the Nobel Prize, Chemistry, in 1993.

4. Characterization of free radicals, which are crucial to understanding the mechanism in countless chemical reactions: The discovery was made in Ottawa in 1959 by Gerhard Herzberg, who came to Canada in 1935 from Hamburg, Germany. He won the Nobel Prize, Chemistry, in 1971.

5. Invention of CCD chip for camcorders and telescopes, which takes light and converts it into digital data that can be manipulated by computers and electronics to form images in camcorders and TV cameras: Willard Boyle of Amherst, Nova Scotia, was co-inventor of the chip in 1969 at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.

6. Development of computerized weather forecasting systems now used worldwide: The theories were developed in Montreal and Boulder, Colorado, between the 1970s and 1990s by Roger Daley, who was born in London, England, but grew up in West Vancouver.

7. Development of Ricker curve used worldwide to determine sustainable fisheries catches: The theories were developed at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada in Ottawa and Nanaimo in the 1950s and 1960s by William Ricker, a native of Waterdown, Ontario.

8. Theory of plate tectonics, the notion that the Earth’s crust is made up of a series of floating plates: Developed during the 1970s in Toronto by Ottawa native John Tuzo Wilson.

9. Discovery of the t-cell receptor, a key to the understanding of the human immune system: Discovered in 1983 in Toronto by Tak Wah Mak, who came to Canada from China in the early 1970s.

10. Ellucidation of the geometry of higher dimensions, such as the fourth dimension, which can be very useful to comprehend cosmological concepts such as space-time and computer networks: Developed by H.S.M. Coxeter, who came to Toronto in 1937 from London, England.

List prepared by Barry Shell, Research Communications Manager, Simon Fraser University, and author of Sensational Scientists.

1. September 29, 1962: Canada launches the Alouette I satellite to study the ionosphere. Although Alouette had to be sent into space from California, it was still the first satellite built entirely by a country other than the United States or the U.S.S.R.

2. July 20, 1969: U.S. spacecraft Apollo 11 lands on the moon with Canadian-built landing gear.

3. November 9, 1972: Launch of Anik A-1, the first of a series of Canadian satellites. Canada becomes the first country with a domestic communications satellite system in geostationary orbit (moving so as to remain above the same point on the Earth’s surface).

4. November 13, 1981: Launch of Canadarm aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. This remote manipulator system was mounted on the shuttle and successfully moved payloads in and out of the shuttle bay.

5. October 5, 1984: Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space aboard Space Shuttle Challenger.

6. September 29, 1988: Canada signs an intergovernmental agreement/memorandum of understanding to participate in the international space station project.

7. March 1, 1989: Creation of the Canadian Space Agency to promote the peaceful use and development of space and ensure space science and technology provide social and economic benefits to Canada.

8. September 12, 1991: Canada’s Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) is launched aboard NASA’s Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS) to provide new measurements of the physical and chemical processes taking place at altitudes 10 to 300 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.

9. January 22, 1992: Roberta Bondar becomes the second Canadian and first Canadian woman in space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.

10. November 4, 1995: RADARSAT is launched. It is Canada’s first Earth observation satellite and first non-communications satellite since 1971. It can provide images of the Earth’s surface day and night, in any climate condition, to clients all over the world.

Science BITE!

Canadians wanting to get up close and personal with the Canadarms that have travelled into space are out of luck but full-size inoperable models of the Canadarm are on display at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa and the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.

11. April 19, 2001: First space walk by a Canadian: Astronaut Chris Hadfield performed an Extravehicular Activity (EVA) and was the lead spacewalker who helped to install Canadarm2 on the International Space Station. The new arm acted like a construction crane and helped build and later maintain the station.

12. Mid-March, 2008: Dextre is sent into space: The sophisticated two-armed robot is part of Canada’s contribution to the International Space Station. Canadarm2, a moveable work platform called the mobile base, and Dextre form the Mobile Servicing System. These three robotic elements can work together or independently. The sophisticated, two-armed robot Dextre is designed to perform exterior construction, and service tasks on the International Space Station. It is part of the Mobile Servicing System contributed by Canada. On this mission, Dextre will be assembled in orbit and the crew will put it through a series of tests. Dextre is to carry out a lot of the fine manipulation work for maintenance outside the space station, reducing the number of spacewalks required.

Numbers one to 10 prepared by Mac Evans, former president, Canadian Space Agency.

1. Dr. Roberta Bondar: Conducted back pain experiments aboard the 1992 Space Shuttle Discovery to determine how the body changes in space.

2. Dr. Bruce Chown and Dr. Jack Bowman: Developed methods for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of RH disease in pregnant women. (RH disease occurs during pregnancy when there is an incompatibility between the blood types of the mother and baby.)

Science BITE!

Winnipeg native John hopps invented the heart pacemaker in a national research council laboratory in 1950 to keep the weak of heart alive and kicking.

3. Dr. Jean Dussault: Discovered a blood test to identify newborns with thyroid deficiency and subsequently prevent severe mental retardation in these infants.

4. Dr. Oleh Homykiewicz and Dr. Andre Barbeau: Discovered the use of levodopa, a synthetic compound, for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

5. Dr. Robert Korneluk: In collaboration with an international team of scientists, located the defective gene responsible for myotonic dystrophy, a rare, slowly progressive hereditary disease involving the muscles.

6. Dr. Lap-Chee Tsui: Identified the defective gene responsible for cystic fibrosis.

Science BITE!

Daniel David Palmer of Port Perry, Ontario, is considered to be the world’s first chiropractor. While working in Iowa in 1865, Palmer supposedly cured a man of hearing loss by straightening his spine. He began to study how manipulation of the spine solves health problems and later taught his techniques to others.

7. Dr. Claude De Montigny: Initiated the use of Librium in treatment of depression.

8. Dr. William Mustard: Devised an operation to correct the “blue baby” heart defect.

9. Dr. Robert Noble: Discovered an effective anti-cancer drug, vinblastine sulphate, which helps control the growth of cancers.

10. Dr. Hans Selye: A world-famous pioneer and popularizer of research on biological stress in humans, he theorized that stress plays some role in the development of every disease. He founded the International Institute of Stress in 1977, through which he increased the understanding of stress.

11. Dr. Arthur Vineberg: A cardiovascular surgeon who developed a surgical procedure for the relief of angina.

12. Dr. Ronald Worton: Identified the defective gene responsible for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Science BITE!

In 1987, the first aortic valve replacement in the world was performed using the Toronto Heart Valve, which is now used worldwide.

Q. Where were the first dinosaur remains found in Canada? How old are they and where are they now?1

A. Many Canadians think the only dinosaur bones unearthed in Canada were found in Alberta and Saskatchewan but that’s not the case.

Richard Day, spokesman for the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, says the oldest dinosaur remains in Canada are actually from sediments along the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia’s Minas Basin and are approximately 200 million years old. Evidence of dinosaurs, both foot imprints and isolated bones between 65 and 150 million years old, has also been found in British Columbia; in the northern Yukon Territory; the McKenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories, and on Bylot Island in the Arctic.

But let’s not take any credit away from Saskatchewan and Alberta: Day says the dinosaur faunas in the two provinces are some of the richest in the world for the Upper Cretaceous period (65 to 75 million years ago), especially in the badlands along the Red Deer River at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta.

The first evidence of dinosaur bones in Canada was found in southern Saskatchewan, when isolated bones of duck-billed dinosaurs, known as hadrosaurs, were discovered in 1874 by Geological Survey of Canada geologist George M. Dawson in the Frenchman Formation exposures near Wood Mountain (in southern Saskatchewan.) These bones are believed to be about 65 million years old. Later in the same year, Dawson and his geological mapping party found more evidence, on the Milk River in Alberta, of the duck-billed dinos which are about 75 million years old.

Other dinosaur remains, generally pieces of leg bones and the vertebral column of hadrosaurs, were found between 1874 and 1884 when J.B. Tyrrell — namesake of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta — was mapping the area around the Red Deer River near Drumheller for its geological resource potential. Tyrrell found the first dinosaur skull in Canada, from a small tyrannosaurid that was subsequently named Albertosaurus. This 70-million-year-old specimen, discovered at Kneehill Creek, was the first example of the genus found anywhere in the world and is held in the Canadian Museum of Nature collection. It is not on display.

The first fairly complete dinosaur specimen mounted in a Canadian museum was that of a 70-million-year-old hadrosaurian dinosaur, Edmontosaurus, which was collected in 1912 by the first professional dinosaur hunters in Canada, Charles Hazelius Sternberg and his three sons, Charles M., Levi, and George, of Kansas. The Edmontosaurus has been on display since 1913 at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Other dinosaurs can be seen at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which, with thirty-five complete skeletons on display, has the largest number assembled under one roof in the world. The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina also exhibit dinosaur skeletons.