Canadian Made

Canadians are not widely regarded as fashionable, but we can proudly wear the label of fashionistas - because the clothing items we've devised were not merely stylistic flourishes but true revolutions that forever changed the way people dress. This episode looks at three very different upheavals in attire: the Wonderbra, the lumberjack shirt and the gas mask.

Getting from A to B despite mounds, drifts and blizzards is a basic Canadian requirement that has forced successive waves of innovation for as long as people have lived in this big cold land. In this episode, we learn why snowshoes all look different, why Bombardier was inspired by tragedy and why being a snow plow driver is dangerous in more ways than you might assume.

Time may be unstoppable but its not as immutable as one might suppose. Here we tell the story of three brilliant inventions that transformed our use and perception of time. Standard time put the whole world on one clock. Key frame animation took Muybridge to the next logical step. And the Instant Replay reduced the squabbles that come up, from time to time, between players, fans and refs.

Canadians have a proven ability to cope with vast empty expanses, cold that defies imagination and lonely regions where only brave explorers dare to go. And that makes us naturals at inventing stuff for outer space. In this episode, we learn the Earth-bound clunkyness of the Canadarm, the dexterity of the robot DEXTRE and the precision of Canada's LIDAR system which can spot a snowflake on Mars.

Canada: home of the superhero, fighting for truth, justice and the Canadian way! Wait a minute... What do superheroes have to do with Canada? This episode looks at three very different Canadian inventions that had world-wide influence: Superman, electronic music (electronic sackbut) and Trivial pursuit.

The traditional Canadian diet tends to be basic meat and potatoes. And perhaps it's proof that people must have delights in their lives, that most of the foods Canadians can claim to have invented are all about putting a little unnecessary sweetness into the daily routine. "Sweet Treats" is about the yummy stuff we've discovered: maple syrup, ginger ale and chocolate bars.

Our official summer and winter sports are really variations on the same theme: brutally bulldozing through your opponents to hammer a hard thing past a poor fellow stuck in a net. But the main pieces of equipment behind the action have long and fascinating histories that come out of First Nations traditions.

As long as Canadians have had garages and basements, there have been guys holed up in them tinkering with weird vehicular contraptions and dreaming big. Some turn out to be noisy boondoggles and some to be brilliant breakthroughs. This show features a jetpack powered by water, a helicopter you can build in your shed and an electric unicycle that converts into a motorcycle for high speed getaways.

Just as we seem to be congenital peacemakers, so too are Canadians a nation of healers. In this episode we look at the remarkable Canadian stories behind the invention that keeps arrhythmic hearts ticking, the rebirth of a forgotten language that allows the mute to speak and the discovery of the basic building block of complex life forms - which promises to give medicine truly staggering powers.

Survival, as Margaret Atwood said, is our middle name. We have always had to get by in a landscape and climate which are blithely capable of killing us. This episode is about the technologies we have invented to help us scoff at the elements: a house built from the softest powder snow, a coat fashioned from good ole fur and a suit that cannot be crushed by even the weight of the deep blue sea.

Nothing so defines the Canadian landscape as water - and that raw fact has forced us to come up with more than our share of inventions for working on, around and beneath it. This episode is about our most revolutionary solutions: the kayak, the Hibernia Platform and the Sawfish.

This episode is all about how Canadians have translated our cheerful ability to attend to the little things in life into some brilliant amenities that have made a world of difference for people living in this country: screws that can be used with one hand, bags that harness stinking garbage and bins that keep out the hungry intruders.

'Hewers of wood and drawers of water' is how Canadians were traditionally (and pejoratively) dismissed, abroad and (shockingly) at home too. If Canadian Made proves anything, it's that this old image is a load of beaver dung. This episode tells the stories of three inventions that utterly change our view of trees: the totem pole, newsprint and the water bomber.

"Revolutionary Perspectives" reports on this wonderful trait through the stories of three visionary inventions: the microscope that reveals the building blocks of life; a form of surgery that allows doctors to operate on patients many kilometers away and an observatory that provides a window on the infinite mysteries of marine biology.