Science, Technology, Culture and Identity, 1929–1945

Hook: breakfast science

In the early 1930s, three doctors at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children (Alan Brown, Theodore Drake and Frederick Tisdall) developed Pablum, a precooked, vitamin-rich cereal for babies. It was easy to prepare at a time when many children suffered from poor nutrition. Royalties from Pablum helped pay for medical research at the hospital for years. Even in the Depression, Canadians were inventing things that changed everyday life.

Science and technology meet real needs (C1.2)

Agriculture. The Dust Bowl pushed scientists and farmers to find new methods. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA, 1935) helped farmers build dugouts (ponds to store water), plant shelterbelts of trees and use strip farming. Alberta farmer Charles Noble invented the Noble blade (1930s), a cultivator that cut weeds below the surface without turning over the soil, which helped stop soil drift.

Medicine. Dr. Wilder Penfield founded the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1934, which became world-famous for brain surgery and research on epilepsy. Dr. Norman Bethune of Montreal organized a mobile blood transfusion service in the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, the Canadian Red Cross began a national blood donor service for the war.

Mining. The Eldorado mine at Port Radium (Lesson 10) produced radium, used in cancer treatment, and later uranium for the Manhattan Project. When the price of gold rose in the 1930s, gold mining in northern Ontario and Quebec boomed, one of the few bright spots of the Depression.

Military technology. Dr. Wilbur Franks of Toronto invented the Franks Flying Suit, a water-filled suit that helped pilots stay conscious during high-speed turns, the first anti-gravity suit used in combat. Canadian factories built aircraft such as the Hurricane and Lancaster, and the National Research Council worked on radar. Donald Hings developed a portable two-way radio that was widely used in the war; he is often credited with inventing the walkie-talkie.

Transport. In Quebec, Joseph-Armand Bombardier built the B7 (1937), a tracked snow vehicle that could carry passengers over snowy roads, an ancestor of the snowmobile. Bush planes connected northern communities and mines.

American influence and Canadian identity (C1.1)

By the 1930s, Canadians watched mostly Hollywood movies, listened to many American radio programs and read American magazines. Some Canadians worried that Canada's culture would disappear. This cultural nationalism helped lead to:

• the CBC (1936) and its French-language service, Radio-Canada, which broadcast Canadian news, music and drama across the country;
• the National Film Board (1939), which made documentaries and wartime films about Canada;
• hockey on the radio: from Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens (opened 1931), Foster Hewitt's play-by-play, with his famous call "He shoots, he scores!", reached homes from coast to coast.

People who shaped identity (C3.1)

• Women and rights: in the Persons Case (October 1929), Britain's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that women are "persons" and can sit in the Senate. In 1930 Cairine Wilson became Canada's first woman senator. In 1940, women in Quebec won the provincial vote after a long campaign led by Thérèse Casgrain and others.
• The Edmonton Grads: a women's basketball team from an Edmonton high school that, from 1915 to 1940, won 502 official games and lost only 20, and was famous around the world.
• Black Canadians: sprinter Ray Lewis of Hamilton won a bronze medal in the 4 × 400 m relay at the 1932 Olympics, the first Canadian-born Black athlete to win an Olympic medal for Canada, who also worked as a railway sleeping-car porter. Nova Scotia singer Portia White, a contralto, made her celebrated Toronto debut in 1941 and went on to an international career.
• The Dionne quintuplets, born near Callander, Ontario, in 1934, became world-famous. The Ontario government took them from their parents and displayed them to tourists; decades later, in 1998, the province paid them compensation.
• Artists such as Emily Carr painted the forests and Indigenous villages of British Columbia, and writers and musicians built a Canadian arts scene.