John Melady - Breakthrough!: Canadas Greatest Inventions and Innovations

BREAKTHROUGH!

CANADAS GREATEST
INVENTIONS AND
INNOVATIONS

John Melady

Copyright John Melady, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Editor: Shannon Whibbs

Design: Courtney Horner

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Melady, John

Breakthrough! [electronic resource] : Canada's greatest inventions and

innovations / John Melady.

Includes bibliographical references.

Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-4597-0854-9

1. Inventions--Canada. 2. Technological innovations--Canada.

I. Title.

T23.A1M44 2013 609.71 C2013-900783-0

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Visit us at: Dundurn.com
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@dundurnpress
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This book is for my grandchildren:

Hillary, Hannah, Liam, Conlan, Keegan, Mackenzie, Meg, and Riley.

With my love to all of you.

Preface

Canadians are behind praiseworthy products, fascinating ideas, and machines with global appeal. We have invented with little fanfare, financing, or expectation. Yet our creations are important. The greatest is insulin; millions use it or die. Then there is the light bulb that illuminates the world. And a Canadian perfected a kind of wheat that when grown in our prairie provinces and elsewhere helped to feed human beings in countries around the globe.

And we share our creations: Bell conceived the idea of the telephone in Canada; then sold it in the United States. Naismith invented basketball and Americans play it. The Canadarm is Canadian, and lifts in outer space. As well, the men and women who are, or have gone into space, along with fighter pilots everywhere wear pressurized suits that were invented and initially designed here. The wirephoto was the brainchild of a man from Winnipeg named William Stephenson. He tried to sell it in Canada, but found that no one was interested. When he took it to Britain, it was an immediate success. A technician in Ottawa became alarmed when he realized planes were crashing in remote locations and becoming lost forever. The device he pioneered was able to tell searchers where to look. In time, the inventors idea became the Black Box that is found on planes today, the world over.

Some of our inventions are physically small: the BlackBerry, the paint roller; the Robertson screwdriver. Others are larger: the jetliner, the snow blower, the snowmobile. The pacemaker saves hearts; the goalie mask saves face, and the Festival saves Stratford. We have national identifiers: a donut shop named Tims and a maple leaf flag that flies over a nation that is widely envied.

Acknowledgements

Every author of every book has help in bringing the volume to the reader. This book was no exception. I was helped by many individuals, and it is impossible to thank all of you. One of the reasons was because I did not know your name, or because you offered assistance, and then you were gone. This often occurred when I was asking for directions in my search for individuals to interview, or particular files I hoped to locate. Those of you who are librarians were of particular assistance and are a credit to your profession. Rarely are you thanked as often as you should be, so please accept this token of appreciation from someone who is truly grateful.

As well, I want to extend my sincere thanks to Paul Moran, Jan Hawley, Susan Hundertmark, the wonderful staff at the Seaforth Public Library, Peter Bob McDowell, Jim Brown, Paul Vick, Larry Zaleski, Shauna Duff, the helpful individuals at the Tim Hortons head office who did not want to be specifically mentioned, Jean-Pierre Arsenault at the Canadian Space Agency, Kelly Masse at the Hockey Hall of Fame, the staff of the Sir Frederick Banting Museum in London; Brian Wood, curator at the Bell Homestead in Brantford; the individuals who assisted me at the National Archives in Ottawa; those at the Bombardier Museum in Valcourt; and the personnel at the Robertson Archive in Milton. A special thanks goes to Nels Banting for his insights about his famous uncle.

As always, I must thank several individuals at Dundurn, in particular Michael Carroll, Shannon Whibbs, Cheryl Hawley, Courtney Horner, and Jennifer Scott. Thanks as always to my wife Mary for the encouragement and assistance.

1

Frederick Banting

Lifesaver for Millions

There are millions of people alive today because of one determined Canadian. His name was Frederick Grant Banting, a young physician with a struggling practice in London, Ontario, in 1920. The doctor was a veteran of the First World War, and had been wounded by shrapnel during the carnage at Cambrai in September 1918. He returned to Canada with a Military Cross, and an uncertain future.

With money borrowed from his father, he bought a two-storey yellow-brick house in a residential area a short distance from downtown London. The man who sold him the property lived there until a house he was building was completed. In the interim, Doctor Banting had the use of the front parlour where he would see anyone who was ill, and an upstairs bedroom where he slept. He did not need more space because his patients were few. He opened his practice on July 1, 1920, and for that first month, his total receipts amounted to only four dollars. Life was bleak indeed.

Banting was a rough-hewn country boy who was raised on a farm just east of Alliston, Ontario. He had been born in a downstairs bedroom of the family farmhouse, and was the youngest of five children. His father worked the land, raised crops and cattle, and provided for his family in an adequate, though not extravagant, fashion. While he was growing up, Fred did all the jobs every farm boy did. He knew what work was, whether feeding livestock, cutting grain, or forking hay.