Canada’s new 10-dollar note features Viola Desmond, a black woman and civil rights activist from Nova Scotia. She is known as Canada’s Rosa Parks for her refusal to leave a whites-only section of a theatre.
Canada
Fed up with Ontario laws restricting…
Fed up with Ontario laws restricting the cross-provincial sale of eggs, the Canadian province of Manitoba copied the Ontario laws, sued itself all the way up to the Supreme Court, and got those laws deemed unconstitutional in ALL provinces.
Canadians are entitled to…
Canadians are entitled to receive a free flag from the government ($150 value), but the waiting period is 99 years.
Fruit Machine
In the 1960s, the Canadian government commissioned a series of homosexuality tests known as the fruit machine.
The fruit machine consisted of a series of questions, a chair resembling one you might sit in at a dentist’s office, and flashing images of mundane scenes contrasted with pornography that people in the ’50s thought gay people would like — think: half-naked carnival strongmen. Subjects (who were told the machine was measuring stress) sat in the chair and watched the images while scientists noted their pulse rate, skin reflexes, breathing rate and pupillary response.
It didn’t work, and ruined countless lives.
A high school in Nunavut…
A high school in Nunavut, Canada takes students on fox trapping sessions, offers polar bear body parts for science class, and has events where students skin seal meat for elders.
In Canada it is illegal to pretend…
In Canada it is illegal to pretend to practice witchcraft. However, completely legal to practice witchcraft.
In 1972 Canada had a contest to complete…
In 1972 Canada had a contest to complete the saying “As Canadian as…”. The winner was “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”
There is an inland island in Canada…
There is an inland island in Canada that is larger in area than the lake in which it is situated. The geological structure was formed by the impact of a meteorite 214 million years ago. The meteorite is believed to have been about 5 km in diameter, and would have hit the earth at a speed of 17 km/s, the fourth most powerful known impact that Earth has seen.
In 1968, Canada gave a $3,500 grant…
In 1968, Canada gave a $3,500 grant to a 35-year old man in Vancouver “to revive the ancient and time-honored tradition of town fool.”
France sent 800 women to Quebec. The “Filles du Roi”…
France sent 800 women to Quebec. The “Filles du Roi” (“Daughters of the King”) were poor women who in 1663 agreed to go to the mostly male New France colony to marry. It worked; the population more than doubled in 10 years, and two thirds of French Canadians today are their descendants.