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Douglas Coupland was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada in 2013. The appointment recognizes a novelist, artist and cultural commentator whose work examines contemporary life.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Douglas Coupland · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Leonard Cohen was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada in 2002. The appointment recognizes a poet, novelist and singer-songwriter with an international audience.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Rama · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 fr · Credit & context
Austin Clarke was appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 1998. The appointment recognizes a novelist and short-story writer whose work explores immigrant experiences.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Andrew Currie · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Roch Carrier was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991. The appointment recognizes a Quebec writer whose work includes poetry, novels, plays and children’s books.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Asclepias · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Nicole Brossard was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010. The appointment recognizes a poet, novelist and essayist associated with feminist writing in Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Simon Villeneuve · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Dionne Brand was appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 2017. The appointment recognizes a writer whose work explores questions of social justice.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Simon Fraser University - Communications & Marketing · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Joseph Boyden was appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 2015. The appointment recognizes an author recognized for his writing and social engagement, including support for First Nations.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dan Harasymchuk · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Marie-Claire Blais was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada in 1972. The appointment recognizes a writer recognized for her contribution to literature.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Asclepias · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Margaret Atwood was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada in 1981. The appointment recognizes a poet, novelist and critic whose work has contributed to Canadian literature.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Collision Conf · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · 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
Canadian plant breeders turned rapeseed into an edible oil crop. In 1974 the first agronomically viable variety low in erucic acid and glucosinolates was released in Canada, and in 1978 the name “canola,” from “Canadian oil,” was adopted for these varieties.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Ethan Sahagun · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
In 1961 James Till and Ernest McCulloch, scientists at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, reported cautious findings they called “spleen colony-forming units.” In later years they and their collaborators established that these were stem cells and explained their properties, setting the stage for all later stem-cell research.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Nichefinder · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
In 1904 the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company opened its first Canadian marine station at Pointe-à-la-Renommée, Quebec, one of six stations that began radio communication between ships at sea and the coast. The network grew into an indispensable navigation aid, and the federal government began regulating the airwaves as early as 1905.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hayden Soloviev · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · 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
Red Fife, an early-maturing, high-quality wheat, was discovered in 1842 by David Fife in an experimental plot on his farm near Keene, Ontario. For over 60 years it was Canada’s spring wheat; it opened up the grain potential of the West and is a parent of Marquis wheat.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Forest and Kim Starr · Photo licence: CC BY 3.0 us · Credit & context
In 1768 the Hudson’s Bay Company sent two British astronomers to Prince of Wales Fort, on Hudson Bay, to observe the 1769 transit of Venus. It began more than forty years of HBC cooperation with the Royal Society of London in astronomy, meteorology, cartography and natural history in the North, with Indigenous collaborators sharing their deep knowledge of the land, plants and animals.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Peterfitzgerald · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Cmichel67 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
James Peebles, born in Winnipeg in 1935 and a graduate of the University of Manitoba, shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Juan Diego Soler · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Donna Strickland, born in Guelph, Ontario, in 1959 and working at the University of Waterloo, shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for a method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short laser pulses.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Arthur McDonald, born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1943 and working at Queen’s University, shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering neutrino oscillations, which show that neutrinos have mass.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bengt Nyman · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Ralph Steinman, born in Montréal in 1943 and educated at McGill University, was awarded a share of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering, in 1973, the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Kupal123 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Willard Boyle, born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, in 1924, shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics with George Smith for inventing the CCD image sensor.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Prolineserver (talk) · 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