Did you know peanut butter was invented in Canada by a Canadian? A lot of people think George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. He didn't. He came up with hundreds of practical uses for the peanut, but peanut butter wasn't one of his.
I mention peanut butter because someone actually said to me the other day, "Name one useful thing that was ever invented by Canadians." Peanut butter is a good answer, but it's not the only one.
A Canadian invented the caulking gun. Another Canadian invented the paint roller. Neither invention is terribly complicated, but both are very useful.
Canadians invented the snowmobile, the snowblower and the goalie mask. Those things make sense. Canada is called The Great White North for a reason. And the reason is that it's cold.
Cold weather may have been the reason that Canadians invented things like the game Trivial Pursuit, IMAX movies and instant replay. The first two are great ways to kill time indoors, and instant replay makes ballgames much better to watch on TV, also indoors.
The odometer is a Canadian invention. So is the egg carton, the walkie-talkie, the electric wheelchair and Easy-Off oven cleaner.
I've never made a firm decision about whether I consider another Canadian invention, the Wonderbra, to be a good thing or a bad thing. It seems fine aesthetically, but its basic purpose is deception. So I'm undecided about that.
And this one's kind of funny. There's a special kind of ink that's used in the production of American paper money. It's what gives the bills their green tint, and it was invented by a Canadian. I say it's funny because Canadian money doesn't use that kind of ink. The different denominations of Canadian money come in different colors, like red, blue and yellow. A Canadian friend of mine once told me that America should adopt a similar system, because it's much harder to mistakenly give someone the wrong bill. I told him thank you, but for now we'll just keep on struggling with those numerals.
