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WEEKS TO GO
Canadian treasures CANADA: NATURAL SOURCE OF PRIDE SINCE 1867
Quiz TEST YOUR CANADIAN KNOWLEDGE
The Waterloo pump
QUESTION 1: On what small Ontario town did author Steven Leacock base the fictional town of Mariposa in his 1912 novel, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town? QUESTION 2: Which Canadian province is the most densely populated?
In the late 1970s, the University of Waterloo, in southern Ontario, was still something of a newcomer on the Canadian education scene. Founded in 1957, the institution set itself apart from its centuries-old counterparts that lived and breathed the status quo by implementing co-operative education—a concept that flew in the face of the lectures and classrooms of traditional academia—in its faculty of engineering. Co-op, as it became known, aimed to create a new generation of engineers with a unique skillset acquired by alternating between classic schooling and hands-on industry experience. A progressive, relaxed, entrepreneurial culture took hold of the establishment, attracting a particular type of student and staff: young, bright and willing to approach problems from unconventional angles. Among the educators enticed by University of Waterloo’s forward-thinking model was Alan Plumtree, a 29-year-old junior professor who made the move from University of Toronto. Plumtree, a mechanical engineering faculty member, and Alfred Rudin, member of the chemistry faculty, both had a reputation as problem-solvers that perfectly fit in with the fledgling university’s ethos. The pair caught the eye of Tim Journey, a water pump expert at Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Journey was searching for a solution to a problem that plagued developing nations: inadequate access to drink- ing water. At the time, the water pumps used in poor, isolated villages of the third world were manufactured in rich, technically advanced countries. They were complex pieces of machinery made of cast iron that suffered rapid wear. When they broke, replacement parts were expensive—if they
could be located in the first place—and repairs required expertise rarely present in the affected communities. So in 1977, Tim Journey, on behalf of the IDRC, approached Plumtree and Rudin about designing an inexpensive, easy-to-repair pump that could be manufactured in developing countries using local materials. The two professors enthusiastically agreed to take on the project, an engineering challenge that researchers in five countries had already failed to deliver on. In just six months, Alan Plumtree and Alfred Rudin successfully built an elegant piston-based hand pump that stood up to rigorous testing with ease. How? “By keeping it simple,” according to Plumtree, who says the design was inspired by the philosophy of resourcefulness and minimalism embraced by the local Mennonite community. The Waterloo pump was an instant success, manufactured locally by the hundreds of thousands following its 1978 debut. While traditional pumps rarely last more than a year, the Canadian-born model can withstand eight years of heavy wear. Its designers never profited from their inven- tion and continue to make contact with users and manufacturers in differ- ent countries to help adapt the pump to local conditions. Various versions of the Waterloo pump currently provide clean water to millions of people worldwide, empowering villages by giving them control over their water supply. Thirty-odd years after its birth in a southern Ontario lab, the Wa- terloo pump remains a shining example of Canada’s will and ability to lead positive change on the global stage.
QUESTION 3: What breakthrough medical device was first built by Canadian engineer John Hopps between 1949 and 1951?
QUESTION 4: Which Canadian athlete is the first and only Olympian of any gender or country to win multiple medals at both the Summer and Winter Games?
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ART, LITERATURE AND ENTERTAINMENT
Where are we from? THE 52 LARGEST GROUPS IN CANADA’S MULTICULTURAL MOSAIC
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY
SPORTS AND LEISURE
infO Canada THE STORIES BEHIND OUR SYMBOLS
Canada’s Acadian community
Acadian Canadians are the descendants of a French colony that settled the present-day Maritime provinces, a region then called Acadia, during the 17th and 18th centuries. The colony was a separate entity, both geographi- cally and politically, from New France and the French Colony of Canada (modern-day Quebec), and thus developed its own distinct history and culture.
ALBERTA
Bird: Great horned owl
The great horned owl became Alberta’s avian em- blem in 1977, after a province-wide vote amongst schoolchildren. This nocturnal raptor is a silent hunter, subsisting mainly off of small to mid-sized mammals. The great horned owl is a non-migra- tory bird that spends its life in the same locale where it’s born.
Acadians now mainly live in New Brunswick, despite the fact that their ancestors were spread out across all three Maritime provinces (as well as
parts of Quebec and Maine). This is mainly due to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which forced France to cede Acadia to Great Britain and eventually led to the Great Expulsion of 1755–1763. At the dawn of the French and Indian War in 1754, the British government ordered Acadians to take an oath of allegiance that included the pledge to fight against the French. Nearly all refused. In the face of such disobedience, British authorities elected to deport roughly 11,500 people from the Maritimes; one-third died of disease or drowning. When displaced Acadians returned to Acadia after the war, their homes, farms and villages in Nova Scotia had been taken over by Loyalists. This prompted a mass exodus to the land that is now New Brunswick, where over 500,000 Acadians live today.
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The Journal Cornwall
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Wednesday, October 5, 2016
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