Some Canadian ideas slipped so neatly into daily life, it is easy to forget someone had to think of them first.
Be Giant has been highlighting historic Canadian innovations in its weekly newsletter, and in honour of Canada Day, it has rounded up some of its most surprising picks.
In April 1940, Manitoba hardware store owner Norman Breakey invented the paint roller. A 1975 article in The Brandon Sun called him the “man of mystery,” because he never patented the idea or found major success marketing it. Be Giant said an American, “a descendant of former U.S. president John Adams, no less,” later did that. There is now a monument to Breakey in Pierson, Manitoba.
In the 1950s, three Canadians came up with the garbage bag as municipalities across Canada began collecting household waste from metal cans. Toronto’s Frank Plomp started selling his version toward the end of the decade, while Winnipeg’s Harry Wasylyk and Lindsay, Ontario’s Larry Hansen invented what became the Glad garbage bag.
IMAX also started in Canada. Graeme Ferguson, Robert Kerr, Roman Kroitor and William Shaw founded the company after being inspired by large-scale film screenings at Expo 67. Be Giant said the team built theatres one at a time, reaching 100 over 20 years before going mainstream. Today there are more than 1,700 IMAX theatres worldwide.
Elijah McCoy invented the portable ironing board in 1874 after his wife had trouble pressing clothes on uneven surfaces. McCoy, who was born in Colchester, Ontario, in 1844, filed nearly 60 patents in his lifetime, including ones for the lawn sprinkler and an automatic lubricator for steam engines.
CBC producer George Retzlaff came up with instant replay in 1955 while working on Hockey Night in Canada. Be Giant said Retzlaff realized he could quickly develop film and replay footage seconds after it aired, letting viewers watch key moments again. It said his work, along with multiple camera angles, changed sports broadcasting and later became a tool for officiating.
Marcellus Gilmore Edson, a pharmacist born in Bedford, Quebec, in 1849, applied for a patent in 1884 after roasting and grinding peanuts into a butter-like paste. He thought it would be used for candies and sweets. Be Giant said the paste was the precursor to modern peanut butter, later commercialized by American John Harvey Kellogg. More than 90 percent of Canadian households said they consumed peanut butter in 2021, according to the Peanut Bureau of Canada.
After the Second World War, George Klein created the first electric wheelchair while working as a mechanical engineer and designer at the National Research Council. Be Giant said more soldiers were surviving spinal injuries because of penicillin, but needed wheelchairs. Veteran John Counsell pushed for a design that would be easier to use, and Klein responded with an electric wheelchair that used a joystick and could make tight turns.
In 1989, McGill University system administrator Alan Emtage created Archie while trying to automate the job of searching digital archives. Archie is widely recognized as the first search engine. “Archie developed the principles that these search engines work on, which is basically, go out there, retrieve information, index it and allow people to search through,” Emtage told McGill News in 2017. “Those were the basic building blocks of every search engine.”
Hugh Le Caine, a nuclear physicist born in Port Arthur, Ontario, invented what is considered the first voltage-controlled synthesizer in 1945. He called the electronic keyboard instrument the electronic sackbut. Be Giant said it could create sound from electricity and helped lay the groundwork for a new kind of music technology.
Winnipeg-born electrical engineer John Alexander Hopps invented the first artificial pacemaker in 1950 after the National Research Council asked him to find a way to restart a human heart during cardiac surgery. Be Giant said the machine was the size of a cereal box and delivered an electric shock through a tube connected to a vein in the patient’s neck. Later in life, Hopps himself received an implantable pacemaker.
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