The yellow school bus kicks up a plume of dust as it comes down the road on the first day of school. The kids that board are wearing new clothes and carrying new accoutrements – backpacks, lunch kits, summer tans and thoughts of the fun they had this summer.
The bus drives by fields busy with harvest as it takes its cargo back to those hallowed halls of learning, where our kids will gain knowledge that could benefit the public and agriculture in yet undiscovered ways.
Why, it could even put them in the company of Deborah Haines and Joseph Coyle and Jim Anderson and Margaret Newton.
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You might recognize these names as Canadian inventors. Their work is documented in a new book that crossed the desk last week. Canadian Inventions: Fantastic Feats & Quirky Contraptions, by Lisa Wojna, is a selection of quick and entertaining sketches about people who improved their world.
The really famous ones are there: Frederick Banting and Charles Best; Alexander Graham Bell; Sandford Fleming; Armande Bombardier.
And these bright lights share their space with the others noted above. Haines invented Headstart, a colostrum replacement for newborn calves. Coyle invented the egg carton. Anderson invented the frost-free nose pump for watering cattle, and Newton developed varieties of rust-resistant wheat.
One chapter is dedicated to brief mentions of agricultural inventions and inventors: Patrick Bell (threshing machine); Thomas Carroll (self-propelled harvester); Charles Noble (Noble cultivator blade); Charles Saunders (Marquis wheat).
There are also details on other inventions dear to the hearts of prairie folk, among them the Robertson screw, invented by Peter Robertson, and the hockey mask, developed by Jacques Plante.
The book says Albertans invented ginger beef and the Caesar cocktail, but it was a Vancouver man who figured out the handle that helps carry a case of beer.
Wojna, the author of Canadian Inventions, gets to the heart of this book’s appeal in her introduction: “The stories behind these great Canadian inventions are stories about dreams. They’re stories about standing firm on what you believe in, about the benefits of perseverance.” Not a bad lesson, eh?
The excitement of early school days will soon wear off. When it does, a copy of this book might be handy to present as proof of what “ordinary” educated Canadians can do. The book is distributed by Lone Pine Publishing. Our website at www.producer.com has details.
