I apologize for the overuse of quotation marks. Although I feel compelled to point out the CBC's
Greatest Canadian Inventions, as broadcast on 3 January 2007, I also feel compelled to express my disappointment. These were not all of the greatest, not all Canadian, and not all inventions. The premise of the show was to present 50 of the greatest Canadian inventions, as voted on by visitors to the CBC website. Bob McDonald, normally the host of CBC Radio's
Quirks and Quarks, revealed each invention in ascending order of greatness, while a number of Canadian commentators provided their individual insight (or lack thereof) regarding the invention. Most commentators seem to have been selected for their familiarity with viewers, and not their knowledge or experience. They were drawn from the fields of music, acting, politics, fashion design, cooking, and writing, with nary a historian of technology in sight. Presumably, there was to be little concern with historical context, and more with attracting ratings.
There were a few interesting surprises in the
list of inventions, such as instant mashed potatoes at number 39, or the paint roller at number 33. There were a few not-so-surprising results as well, such as the Cobalt-60 Bomb (no. 11) or Bombardier's Ski-Doo (no. 17). There were a few conspicuous absences as well. Where was the
Avro Arrow, or the even more technically amazing (in my opinion)
Avro-Car? What of
Gesner and his process for distilling kerosene, or the more recent invention of
Canola oil?
But the top three inventions were a mystery to me. To induce a climatic finish to the 2-hour show the light bulb, the telephone, and insulin were listed as among the top three. Before revealing the final order half a dozen CBC television hosts were given a chance to pick their favourite. I'm not sure how close the public voting was, but insulin turned out to be "the Greatest Canadian Invention", followed by the telephone and the light bulb. Here is my problem with this list. Insulin is arguably not an invention, it is a discovery, as the Nobel Prize committee of 1923
indicated when they awarded Banting (and MacLeod) that year's prize in Physiology or Medicine (of course, inventing the process of purifying insulin was crucial, but this point was not made clear on the show). It is also difficult to claim that the telephone is Canadian: the research was conducted primarily in the United States and Bell was not Canadian, but Scottish (these two facts were briefly mentioned in the show) Finally, as anyone familiar with the history of electric lighting should know,
Edison did not just invent a light bulb. He necessarily invented an entire electric lighting system, including electrical generation and distribution. Alone, without this context, the light bulb is inconsequential.
The program was hardly within the same caliber of intelligent programming as, say,
The Nature of Things, or the host's usual location at Quirks and Quarks. Perhaps 50 inventions was too many, or two hours too little. Why not a series of shows, profiling 20 or even just 10 of the top inventions? In the grand scheme, a program like this should be acknowledged for the awareness it must have generated of Canadian inventiveness, though there was precious little discussion of what it was that made these inventions "Canadian", or if there was some special kind of Canadian ingenuity at work. Most importantly, it offered almost no contribution to the eternal question of Canadian identity. Ultimately, it is just one more list for Canadians to point at and say "We did that". The problem with lists is that they are ultimately and inevitably to be forgotten.
Labels: CBC, Invention
