Groundbreaking inventions from small-town Canada
Never leave a teenage boy alone with a car engine and some sleds
Canada's small towns have always been full of ingenuity. When your small town is still the biggest place for hours in any direction, you've got to figure out how to solve problems on your own. That, plus some ample tinkering space, are what make rural communities hotbeds of invention.
Here are some great inventions from Canada's small towns.
The snowblower (Dalhousie, N.B.)
It's not surprising that a Canadian invented the snowblower. In fact, it would be surprising if it were invented anywhere else, to be honest. The idea for the snowblower was patented by a New Brunswick inventor named Robert Carr Harris back in 1870 under the name "Railway Screw Snow Excavator." Which is what we're going to call our snowblowers from here on out.
Poutine (Warwick, Que.)
As one might imagine, there's more than one small Quebec town that claims to be home to Canada's favourite artery-clogging side dish. The most commonly accepted story, however, is that it was invented at a restaurant called Le lutin qui rit — The Laughing Leprechaun — in Warwick. Apparently, back in 1957, a Lutin regular named Eddy Lainesse asked owner Fernand Lachance to throw some cheese curds on his fries.
Sardine Cans (Blacks Harbour, N.B.)
The history of putting fish in cans is a long and surprisingly interesting one. People have been putting fish in cans for almost as long as there have been cans (there have always been fish). But the ring-pull sardine can we know today can be traced back to a Canadian named Henry T. Austin, who invented the iconic detachable key opener in 1932.
Snowmobile (Valcourt, Que.)
Joseph-Armand Bombardier was a tinkerer from an early age. In his early teens he had already made a miniature locomotive out of clock parts, turned his aunt's spinning wheel into a steam engine and converted an old rifle into a cannon. It was a different time.
In 1922, 15-year-old Joseph-Armand combined his mechanical genius and his teenage recklessness to solve a quintessentially Canadian problem: "How the heck are we getting there? Everything's covered in snow!" He attached a refurbished Ford Model T engine to a handmade wooden propeller, strapped the whole thing to a pair of wooden sleds, and took the contraption out for a rip. His father, not unreasonably, demanded he take the whole thing apart before someone got hurt, but Joseph-Armand wasn't discouraged. At 17, he became an apprentice mechanic and continued to work on his invention in his spare time. Finally, after 15 years of work, he brought the first commercial snowmobile to market in 1937.
Hydrofoil (Baddeck, N.S.)
As is so often the case with landmark inventions, the hydrofoil wasn't really invented by one person. There were a series of European and North American inventors who patented various parts of the idea starting all the way back in 1861. But the first successful hydrofoil was built in Atlantic Canada, and Canada will proudly claim it. Famed Scottish-Canadian inventor Alexander Graham Bell and Canadian engineer Casey Baldwin began experimenting with hydrofoils in 1908 as a way of allowing airplanes — also a new technology at the time — to take off from water. But after studying the work of an Italian inventor named Enrico Forlanini, they figured out that it could also work as a boat. Their first hydrofoil, the HD-1, made its maiden voyage in 1911. Their fourth iteration, the HD-4, set a marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour.