Modern Canada

Postwar prosperity, Quebec, the arts and sciences, and Canadian inventions.

Trade and social programs

Oil was discovered in Alberta in 1947, beginning Canada’s modern energy industry.
Not until 1951 could most people in the country afford enough to eat, somewhere decent to live and clothes to wear.
The Act fixes what every provincial system must include and the minimum standard it must meet.
Unemployment insurance (now employment insurance) was introduced in 1940; Old Age Security was devised as early as 1927; the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans came in 1965.
Schooling is paid for and run at the provincial and territorial level.

Canada joined NATO (a military alliance with other democratic countries) and NORAD (with the United States).
Canada fought in the Korean War, 1950–53: 500 dead and 1,000 wounded.
Canada has taken part in UN peacekeeping missions in Egypt, Cyprus, Haiti and elsewhere, and in operations in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Quebec’s era of rapid change in the 1960s is known as the Quiet Revolution.
Parliament established the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963, leading to the Official Languages Act of 1969.
Canada helped found La Francophonie in 1970.
Quebec sovereignty was defeated in referendums in 1980 and again in 1995. The Constitution was amended in 1982 without Quebec’s agreement.

Japanese-Canadians, the last group of Asian descent denied the vote, gained it in 1948. Aboriginal people were granted the vote in 1960.
Any citizen aged 18 or over can now cast a ballot.
About 37,000 Hungarians came in 1956; over 50,000 Vietnamese found refuge after 1975.
A third of the population traced its roots elsewhere than Britain or France by that decade.

The Group of Seven, founded in 1920, captured rugged wilderness landscapes. Emily Carr painted the West Coast forests. Kenojuak Ashevak pioneered modern Inuit art.
Les Automatistes of Quebec pioneered modern abstract art in the 1950s, notably Jean-Paul Riopelle.
Basketball was invented by Canadian James Naismith in 1891.
In 1972 Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the Canada-Soviet Summit Series — "the goal heard around the world".
Terry Fox began his "Marathon of Hope" in 1980 to raise money for cancer research. Rick Hansen circled the globe in a wheelchair in 1985 for spinal cord research.
Wayne Gretzky played for the Edmonton Oilers from 1979 to 1988. Donovan Bailey won double Olympic gold in 1996; Chantal Petitclerc is a Paralympic champion wheelchair racer.
Since 1989 the Canadian Space Agency and Canadian astronauts have taken part in space exploration, often using the Canadarm.

Banting and Best isolated insulin, the hormone used to treat diabetes; some 16 million lives are credited to it.
Alexander Graham Bell — the idea for the telephone came to him at his summer place here.
Joseph-Armand Bombardier — the snowmobile.
Sir Sandford Fleming — the world system of standard time zones.
Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward — the first electric light bulb; the patent was sold to Thomas Edison.
Reginald Fessenden — sent the first wireless voice message in the world.
Dr. Wilder Penfield — pioneering brain surgeon at McGill, "the greatest living Canadian".
Dr. John A. Hopps — the first cardiac pacemaker.
SPAR Aerospace / National Research Council — the Canadarm.
Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research In Motion — the BlackBerry.