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Explore knowledge selected to support preparation for the Canadian citizenship test. Every record on this page belongs to the Citizenship Test collection within our knowledge base.
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The guide connects Alexander Graham Bell with the telephone, Joseph-Armand Bombardier with snow vehicles, Sandford Fleming with standard time, and Canadian engineering with the Canadarm.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NASA · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Canadarm2, a 17-metre robotic arm, is part of Canada’s contribution to the International Space Station and was extensively involved in assembling it. It moves end-over-end around the station, can handle loads of up to 116,000 kg, and grapples visiting spacecraft; with Dextre and the Mobile Base System it makes up Canada’s robotic contribution.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NASA · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
At his father’s home near Brantford, Ontario, Alexander Graham Bell conceived the fundamental principle of the telephone on 26 July 1874. There, on 3 and 4 August 1876, he publicly demonstrated his patented invention, and on 10 August he made a long-distance call, to Paris, 13 kilometres away.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: K Danko · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Michael Smith of the University of British Columbia shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing site-directed mutagenesis.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: File:Michael Smith party at Mary Vickers's house.1994, F-109-7-0-0-10 001.jpg: SCWIST Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology derivative work: Michał Sobkowski · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Richard Taylor, born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in 1929, shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments around 1970 that scattered high-energy electrons off protons and neutrons.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: ENERGY.GOV · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sidney Altman, born in Montréal in 1939, shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas Cech for discovering that RNA, not only proteins, can act as an enzyme.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NIH · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John Polanyi of the University of Toronto shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bengt Oberger · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Gerhard Herzberg of the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to knowledge of the electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Willy Pragher · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
Ernest MacMillan, composer and organist, was knighted in 1935 for services to music in Canada. For many years he conducted the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, led the Toronto Conservatory of Music and was dean of music at the University of Toronto. He promoted music at every level, supporting national music organizations, publishing, and conducting and judging festivals across the country.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Noel Rubie · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Harold Adams Innis, one of Canada’s great scholars, joined the University of Toronto in 1920 and headed its Department of Political Economy from 1937. Through works such as The Fur Trade in Canada, The Cod Fisheries and Empire and Communications, he deeply influenced the study of economics, history, geography, politics and communications.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer (1910s) · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Charles Tupper of Amherst, a physician, became premier of Nova Scotia in 1864 and, allied with John A. Macdonald, advocated Confederation despite substantial opposition in Nova Scotia. After federal cabinet posts and 11 years as High Commissioner in London, he succeeded Bowell as prime minister in 1896, then led the opposition after his party’s defeat that year.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
J. E. H. MacDonald, painter, designer and poet, was a founding member of the Group of Seven and a key figure in creating a national style of landscape painting. A talented graphic designer of Canadian motifs, he painted southern Ontario farmland, Algoma’s autumn colours, Nova Scotia shores and the Rockies, and inspired students at the Ontario College of Art.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer; Archives of Ontario · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Marshall McLuhan, a University of Toronto professor and pioneer of media studies, became famous in the 1960s for his theories about how print and electronic media shape human perception and behaviour. His ideas of the “global village” and “the medium is the message” made him one of the most celebrated scholars in the Western world.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Josephine Smith · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir William Edmond Logan of Montréal, a mapmaker and geologist in the mining districts of Wales, became the first director of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1842. He led much of the early scientific mapping of the province, built the mineral collection that became the basis of the National Museum, and earned international recognition for his geological work.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William Notman · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Stephen Leacock spent most of his career at McGill University teaching history and political science, but he is chiefly known as a humorist. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) made his reputation across the English-speaking world, and his work finds humour in ordinary people in everyday situations through exaggeration and incongruity.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: The Arts & Letters Club of Toronto · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Sir Sandford Fleming, born in Scotland, came to Canada in 1845 and became survey and construction engineer for the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific. A man of wide interests and an ardent imperialist, he advocated the Pacific telegraph cable, designed the first Canadian postage stamp in 1851, and was an early champion of standard time.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Joseph-Armand Bombardier of Valcourt, Quebec, developed snow vehicles that helped reduce winter isolation in rural areas of Canada and elsewhere. He patented the snowmobile in 1937 and the smaller Ski-Doo in 1960, both designed and built in Valcourt, and after his death the company he founded became a world leader in transportation.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Canadian military nurses have cared for the sick and wounded in battle since 1885. In 1904, professional nurses joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps as Nursing Sisters, the first women in the British Empire to receive military rank; in the two world wars hundreds were decorated and dozens died from enemy action.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William Rider-Rider · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
On 23 February 1909, more than 100 people watched the Silver Dart lift off the ice of Baddeck Bay, Nova Scotia, and fly 800 metres: the first successful powered flight in Canada. Piloted by J. A. D. McCurdy, the biplane was built by the Aerial Experiment Association, founded by Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell (see CA-K154).
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Sir Arthur Currie (1875–1933), who trained with the militia at Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria, commanded one of Canada’s first overseas infantry brigades in the First World War. Promoted to lieutenant-general after Vimy Ridge, he became commander of the entire Canadian Corps, the first and only Canadian to hold that position, and after the war served as principal of McGill University.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown photographer · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Denied university entry in Canada because she was a woman, Emily Stowe (1831–1903) studied medicine in New York City and in 1867 opened the first private medical practice in Canada run by a woman doctor, in Toronto. She led the drive to found Woman’s Medical College in 1883 and, through the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, kept suffrage in the public eye.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
John McCrae (1872–1918), a physician born in Guelph, Ontario, joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1914 and served overseas until his death. His poem “In Flanders Fields,” published anonymously in 1915, became one of the most celebrated poems of the First World War and made the poppy a lasting symbol of the Allied soldiers who died.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Peter K Burian · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
James Naismith, born in Ramsay Township, Ontario, invented basketball. In 1891, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he devised it as a non-contact indoor team game; Parks Canada designated him a National Historic Person.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: D. Gordon E. Robertson · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & contextThe Canadarm, a Canadian-built robotic arm for NASA’s Space Shuttle, was launched aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-2 on 12 November 1981.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: NASA · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context