Horton High School's Canadian History 12
Web Page and Student Resource

Did you know that...

• an Aboriginal burial mound, found at the L'Anse Amour Burial Site in southern Labrador, was believed to be built 7,000 years ago - nearly 2,000 years before the Egyptian pyramids!
• the French explorer Samuel de Champlain [c.1570-1635] created North America's first social club - the "Ordre de Bon Temps", or the "Order of Good Cheer", in 1606.
• Mary Shadd Cary was the first African American woman to run a newspaper, and she did so in Windsor, Upper Canada, in 1853. This paper was called the Provincial Freeman, and was primarily aimed at the abolishment of slavery in the United States.
• the first snow plough was invented by Toronto dentist J.W. Elliot in 1869. He called it the "Compound Revolving Snow Shovel", although the first plough wasn't manufactured until 1883 by the Leslie brothers of Orangeville.
• the first light bulb was invented by a Canadian, not Thomas Edison! In 1874, medical student Henry Woodward of Toronto patented the first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb. He later sold a share of the patent to Edison, who in turn fine tuned this revolutionary advance in lighting.
• the oldest day care centre in North America is believed to be the Montreal Day Nursery, which opened in 1888.
• the first commercial motion picture was made by Manitoba farmer James Freer in 1897, as a way of showing the West to possible immigrants to Canada.
• Superman, loved by Americans, was created by Joe Shuster of Toronto in 1938.
• the spring skate was invented by John Forbes of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1854. This skate could be attached to a boot with a clamp, and a spring would adjust the skate to fit any boot.

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