X-Nico

57 unusual facts about Canada


150!Canada

The concept is based on the Canadian Centennial year celebrations which helped to define Canada’s modern identity.

Baron Revelstoke

The City of Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada was renamed in honour of Edward Charles Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke, commemorating his role in securing the financing necessary for completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Bearing Straight

Bearing Straight is the title of the debut album of Canadian guitarist Don Ross, released in 1989.

Canada's Golgotha

In 2002 British documentary maker Iain Overton alleged that the crucified soldier did exist, and named him as Sergeant Harry Band (not "Brant").

Canada's grand railway hotels

Given its location next to Montreal's main train station, the Windsor served for years as the permanent residence of executives of both the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway.

Canada's Hundred Days

There they were stationed in the villages of Fouquescourt, Maucourt, Chilly and Hallu from which they would attack eastward toward the Hindenburg Line.

Canada's Next Great Prime Minister

The show aired March 2007 and was judged by four former Canadian Prime Ministers: Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark, and Paul Martin.

The 2005 winner, and the recipient of a $50,000 first-place cash prize, was determined by four former Canadian Prime Ministers: Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark, and John Turner.

Canada's Next Top Model

The winner receives a modeling contract from Elmer Olsen Modeling Agency, a $100,000 beauty contract from Procter & Gamble, and an editorial spread in Fashion magazine.

Canada's Top 20 Countdown

The CHR/Hot AC and Rock version of Canada’s Top 20 are hosted by A. J. Reynolds.

Canada's Worst Driver Ever

Cam Woolley returning for his eighth year, is the traffic expert on CP24 in Toronto, and had a 25-year career as a traffic sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police.

Shirley Sampson, 62, from Donkin, Nova Scotia, performed well for most of Canada's Worst Driver 7, only to find herself being named the worst after a terrible road test performance.

Canada's Worst Handyman 6

Charlene Hunt, from Pickering, Ontario, is an "idea gal", but when it comes to actual work, her husband is usually the one to step in and fix her errors.

Canadian Government Ship Stanley

The Canadian Government Ship Stanley has been described as Canada's first truly effective icebreaker.

Canadian Heritage Rivers System

The Canadian Heritage Rivers System (CHRS) was established in 1984 by the federal, provincial and territorial governments to conserve and protect the best examples of Canada's river heritage, to give them national recognition, and to encourage the public to enjoy and appreciate them.

Cedarvale Park

Scott McLaughlin, a native of Scotland, emigrated to Canada and settled in Glen Williams.

Chalmers Award

a Canadian series of arts awards funded by the Chalmers family of arts patrons, including the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Awards, the Jean A. Chalmers National Dance Award and the M. Joan Chalmers Awards for Arts Administration, Artistic Direction and Documentary Film and Video.

Crazy Canucks

In 2006, it was announced that the four original Crazy Canucks would be receiving stars on Canada's Walk of Fame.

Dalsa

In 2007, Teledyne DALSA was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, one of a handful of manufacturing companies to receive this honour.

David Moorcroft

During the 2012 London Olympics he again served as a track and field analyst for Canadian television, this time for the CTV-led Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium.

Engineering Week

Engineering Week (Canada), an annual event held by engineering schools throughout Canada.

Federal minority governments in Canada

In this instance, the NDP demanded the creation of Petro-Canada among other things to support the Liberals.

Foreign relations of Lebanon

Canada established diplomatic relations with Lebanon in 1954, when Canada deployed "Envoy Extraordinaire" to Beirut.

Foreplay

Scientists from McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Canada used the method of thermal imaging to record baseline temperature change in the genital area as the definition of the time necessary for sexual arousal.

Fort Saint Jacques

Called Fort Charles, it was the first European settlement in northern Canada.

General Service Area

General Service Area is a term used by the Canadian province of Nova Scotia to describe the boundaries of areas that are communities or place names in Nova Scotia.

Gordon Jennings Laing

Gordon Jennings Laing (October 16, 1869 – September 1, 1945) was an American classical scholar, born in London, Ontario, Canada.

Ice hockey in Sweden

Often referred to by the nickname "Tre Kronor" (or three crowns), the Swedish men's national ice hockey team is amongst the most successful in the world, being considered part of the Big Six (or Seven, along with Canada, the United States, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic, and possibly Slovakia).

Icebreaker International

Continuing their alliance with NATOarts — an organization that "seeks to promote global security and stability through the exhibition of works of conceptual art" — the duo boarded a container ship named Trein Maersk in early 2000, spending two months on the ship during its journey from Japan to Canada recording an audio document promoting free international trade.

International Mid-Continent Trade Corridor

The International Mid-Continent Trade Corridor is a supercorridor linking highways in Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

Loaded, Leather, Moonroof

Loaded, Leather, Moonroof is the title of a recording by Canadian guitarist Don Ross, released in 1997.

Machinery of government

A number of national governments including those of Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom have adopted the term in official usage.

Maison Radio-Canada

The street address of Maison Radio-Canada is 1400 René Lévesque Boulevard East, fittingly named for former premier René Lévesque, who was once a reporter and commentator for the CBC.

Manifesto for an Independent Socialist Canada

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau instituted attempts to assert domestic economic control such as the creation of Petro-Canada, meant to assert Canadian control of the energy sector, and the Foreign Investment Review Agency, intended to review and limit foreign ownership and particularly American takeovers of Canadian companies.

Missinipi Broadcasting Corporation

A strong focus was placed on expanding the use of aboriginal languages and the technical skills of its broadcast staff.

MuchVibe

MuchVibe refers to either a MuchMusic TV series or a channel based in Canada.

North American Defence College

The North American Defence College is the name given to a periodic meeting of top military, industrial, and government leaders in North America, particularly Canada and The United States.

Paramedic Association of Canada

The PAC has a voluntary membership of over 14,000 paramedicine practitioners across Canada.

Paul Lafrance

Lafrance has been a host on several shows, including Decked Out, Deck Wars, and is a celebrity judge on the second season of Canada's Handyman Challenge.

Petro-Canada

In 2006, the company entered the mobile phone market with a prepaid service called Petro-Canada Mobility.

Philippe Létourneau

Létourneau served as an expert in the Discovery Channel Canada television series Canada's Worst Driver for seasons Canada's Worst Driver from season 3 to the latest season 8, as well as the Discovery Channel program Star Racer.

Quadripartite Agreement

Quadripartite Agreement (1947) was a secret pact signed by Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia as a follow on from World War II cooperation on intelligence matters.

Race to Mars

Jumping to 2029, the narrator explains the mission, 'Project Olympus' and shows the four NTR spacecraft: Cargo lander Shirase, Mars Surface Habitat Atlantis, Mars lander Gagarin, and Crew Transfer Vehicle Terra Nova. In early 2030, the international crew of six astronauts from the United States, Russia, France, Canada and Japan board Terra Nova to begin their 582 day-month journey to Mars and back.

Salendine Nook

John Morton and Samuel Brighouse were two of The Three Greenhorns who emigrated to Canada in 1862 and bought land in the area that today is known as the West End, Vancouver.

Sid Boyling

Sid Boyling (May 9, 1914 – November 5, 2006) was a Canadian broadcaster.

Single-issue politics

Some examples of single-issue parties are the party formed to protest against the increase in politician wages, the Bloc Québécois party in Canada, formed to call for the separation of Quebec, and the Party for the Animals, which gained two seats in the Dutch parliament in 2006.

Site 41

The North Simcoe Landfill, a proposed landfill site in Ontario, Canada that was cancelled after considerable public opposition.

Spectacle Island Game Sanctuary

The Spectacle Island Game Sanctuary is a protected area in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Steam dummy

A steam dummy or dummy engine, in the United States of America and Canada, was a steam engine enclosed in a wooden box structure made to resemble a railroad passenger coach.

Taya Marquis

Taya performed at the 2011 Canada's Walk of Fame Emerging Artist Showcase, after receiving a personal invite from founder Peter Soumalias.

The Battlefords

The Battlefords is the collective name given to two adjacent communities in west-central Saskatchewan, Canada.

The Wire Report

The news service covers industry events but is known for focusing on regulatory developments at the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Copyright Board of Canada, the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal, the spectrum management branch at Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the House of Commons and Senate.

Three Hands

Three Hands is the title of a recording by Canadian guitarist Don Ross, released in 1992.

Vanderveen

Vanderveen is a rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, founded in 2003 by songwriters Matt Thomas and Phil Bockstael.

World Confederation for Physical Therapy

In 1951 the World Confederation for Physical Therapy had 11 founding member organisations from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, West Germany, Sweden and the United States of America.

YFD

YFD is the IATA airport code for Brantford Airport near Brantford, Ontario, Canada.

You Bet Your Ass

Colin Sheppard, who was expelled from Canada's Worst Driver 2, was a contestant in the second season of You Bet Your Ass.


1976 Winter Olympics

Denver officially withdrew on November 15, and the IOC then offered the games to Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, but they too declined owing to a change of government following elections.

2013 Bohol earthquake

Canada, through Foreign Minister John Baird, also offered sympathies and stated that his country is ready to help the Philippines.

Ahcene Zemiri

In 2009 Justice Edmond Blanchard ruled that since the men were not Canadian citizens, and their connection to Canada was "tenuous", the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not apply to them.

Andre Champagne

Andre Joseph Orius Champagne (born September 19, 1943 in Eastview, Ontario) is a retired Canadian ice hockey left winger.

Anna's Hummingbird

Anna's Hummingbirds are found along the western coast of North America, from southern Canada to northern Baja California, and inland to southern Arizona.

Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada

The Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada is a professional award winning touring ballet company based in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Barbara Schlick

She has since appeared at major concert halls, performance venues, and music festivals throughout Europe, Israel, Japan, Canada, the United States and Russia, singing under the batons of people like Frans Brüggen, William Christie, Michel Corboz, Reinhard Goebel, Philippe Herreweghe, René Jacobs, Sigiswald Kuijken, and Karl-Friedrich Beringer.

Beijing United Family Hospital

The hospital is staffed by a team of over 100 doctors from 20 different countries, including the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia.

Belle Mahone

Bred and raced by Canada's preeminent owner/breeder, distilling magnate Joseph E. Seagram, Belle Mahone was sired by Ypsilanti, an American grandson of the British runner Galopin, winner of the 1875 Epsom Derby and a three-time Leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland.

Bob McFarlane

For those achievements, he was voted the Lou Marsh Trophy winner as Canada's top athlete of 1950 and the winner of the Norton Crowe Memorial Medal as Canada's top amateur athlete.

Canada 2014

Canada 2014 is the name of a concert tour by the Buffalo-based rock band Goo Goo Dolls, in support of their album Magnetic.

Centreport

CentrePort Canada, an inland port in Winnipeg and Rosser, Manitoba, Canada.

CHOV

CHRO-TV, a television station (channel 5) licensed to Pembroke, Ontario, Canada, which held the call sign CHOV-TV from 1961 to 1977

Cocacolonization

Canada also resorts to cultural protectionism, requiring a minimum share of Canadian content in domestic media.

Corner kick

Megan Rapinoe of the United States Women's National Soccer Team scored an Olympic goal direct from a corner kick in the semifinal match between the United States and Canada in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood

The series is co-produced by The Fred Rogers Company (formerly Family Communications) and Out of the Blue Enterprises, with animation produced in Canada by 9 Story Entertainment and music created at Voodoo Highway Music & Post.

Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire

It is also famous for being the birthplace of the Anglo-Canadian poet and literary scholar, Robin Skelton (1925–97).

First Nations Bank of Canada

First Nations Bank of Canada plans to expand its Community Banking Centres to Baker Lake, Kugluktuk, and Pond Inlet in 2014.

Footprints Recruiting

Footprints Recruiting is an ESL teacher placement agency headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Frédéric Dorion

In 1949, Dorion spoke out against the extradition from Canada of Count Jacques Charles Noel Duge de Bernonville, a Vichy France police official who had been an aide to Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie and was wanted in France for having collaborated with the Nazis.

Frederick Hamilton

Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826–1902), Governor General of Canada and Viceroy of India

Gabriel Varga

He returned to the ring on January 8, 2011 at a Canada vs. China event in Jinan, China where he won by unanimous decision under sanshou rules.

George Leith

George Gordon Leith (1923–1996), a politician in Saskatchewan, Canada

Gray squirrel

The Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), from the eastern United States and southeastern Canada; introduced into Britain, Ireland, western North America, Italy, and South Africa

Greville Janner, Baron Janner of Braunstone

Educated at St Paul’s School, London, Janner was evacuated to Canada during the war and attended Bishop's College School, Lennoxville, Quebec.

Gyro tower

Spirale,La Ronde,Montreal,Quebec,Canada (Opened in 1967 double cabin)

Inverse Symbolic Calculator

The Inverse Symbolic Calculator is an online number checker established July 18, 1995 by Peter Benjamin Borwein, Jonathan Michael Borwein and Simon Plouffe of the Canadian Centre for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics (Burnaby, Canada).

Legal status of animals in Canada

When the Conservative Party came to power in 2006, MP Mark Holland tabled a private member’s bill that was virtually identical to Bill C-50, the most recent incarnation of C-17.

Lifetime Real Women

Lifetime Real Women has never featured any original programming, relying on imported series (such as Gizzi Erskine's Cook Yourself Thin series from the UK or Style By Jury from Canada) or reruns of previous or current Lifetime series.

MacGillivray's Warbler

MacGillivray's Warblers are migratory and spend their summers in temporate forests located in the western United States, and in boreal forests of west Canada.

Marisa Lang

Lang was born in Trieste, Italy and lived there for brief periods during her youth but spent the majority of her life in Toronto, Canada.

Marty Adams

TV appearances include seventeen episodes (as of 25 August 2010) of Video on Trial and commercials for (Staples Inc., Fallsview Casino).

Marty Wood

Martin Roy (Marty) Wood is a celebrated rodeo cowboy from Bowness, Calgary, in the province of Alberta, Canada.

Montrose Swing Bridge

1910 to carry the Canada Southern Railway over the river (click the link to see a discussion of companies who used the Canada Southern tracks over the years).

Muon spin spectroscopy

This is presently achieved at few large scale facilities in the world: the CMMS continuous source at TRIUMF in Vancouver, Canada; the SµS continuous source at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland; the ISIS and RIKEN-RAL pulsed sources at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, United Kingdom; and the J-PARC facility in Tokai, Japan, where a new pulsed source is being built to replace that at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan.

Ontario Public Service Employees Union

In October 2008, OPSEU Pension Trust was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's newsmagazine.

Percy Douglas, 10th Marquess of Queensberry

He went as a gold prospector to Kalgoorlie, Australia, during the gold rush beginning in 1893, and later managed a road house in Canada.

Preet Banerjee

Preet Banerjee (born September 27, 1977) is the host of the television show Million Dollar Neighbourhood on the Oprah Winfrey Network, a personal financial expert, and winner of the reality TV series The Ultimate W Expert Challenge, which aired on the W Network in Canada during the summer of 2009.

Promens

During 1999-2000 Sæplast acquired three companies abroad; in 1999 the Dyno AS factories in Ålesund, Norway and St. John, Canada, and in 2000, Nordic Supplies Container AS of Norway.

Ritch Workman

Workman was born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1973, and in 1980, his family moved from Canada to the state of Florida, despite never having been there before, due to the fact that Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada were successful in the 1980 federal election, and his father did not want to live in a socialist country.

S. Narasinga Rao

He then moved to McMaster University in Canada where he received a second Master of Science degree in 1969 followed by a PhD in biophysics in 1973 from the State University of New York at Buffalo, NY, through Center for Crystallographic Research, Roswell Park Memorial Institute.

Saint-Pal-de-Mons

It was the birthplace of the missionary bishop, Paul Durieu, O.M.I. (1830–1899), first Bishop of New Westminster in British Columbia, Canada.

Simon Schama's Power of Art

It aired in Poland on TVP2 in February and March 2008, on PBS in the US and re -broadcast in September 2008 on TVOntario in Canada, ABC1 in Australia, Australia Network in the Asia-Pacific region, TV ONE in New Zealand and on ET1 in Greece.

Sophie Atkinson

Taking advantage of Canadian Pacific’s free passes to artists and writers, she travelled from British Columbia through Canada to Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal.

Southern Ontario Junior A Hockey League

The Southern Ontario Junior A Hockey League was a Tier II Junior "A" ice hockey that lasted from the late 1960s until 1977 in Southern Ontario, Canada.

Vincent Smith

Vincent Reynolds Smith (1890–1960), a judge and politician in Saskatchewan, Canada

Wildwood Park

Wildwood Park, Winnipeg, a suburban community in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Wong Foon Sien

He supported the Liberal Party of Canada throughout his life, but supported Progressive Conservative candidate Douglas Jung in the Canadian federal elections of 1957 and 1958.

Youth ministry

There are organizations within the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (the primary organization of Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States), as well as within the Canadian Unitarian Council (the national body for Unitarian Universalists in Canada), which minister to and with youth, of which Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) is the largest and most apparent.