The Woulda Coulda Shoulda Guide to Canadian Inventions

by Red Green

  The Happy Hopper was born.

  The rider starts by jumping up and down, but that is only to build momentum. After a few jumps, the rider springs forward, causing him or her to rise into the air as the unit moves forward. Repeating the leaping motion builds up speed and allows the Happy Hopper to cover significant distances with each stride.

  Eunice’s first trip on the machine was to go down to the patent office to register her ingenious device. When she arrived, she was unable to stop. She was forced out of town by her own momentum. She was never seen again in Possum Lake, but someone said she got a job in Port Asbestos as a bouncer.

  Several others struggled to find a use for the device. Local road maintenance workers tried using it to paint dotted lines on the highway. The high school gym teacher used it to train hurdlers. Possum Lake’s resident daredevil, Rutger Lapsich, put on a display where he got into the machine and ran barefoot across a freshly fertilized cornfield.

  About halfway across, Rutger had a little too much leg kick, which caused him to flip over and complete the run upside down. He was relatively unhurt, but he retired the Happy Hopper. And his hair smelled funny for the rest of his life.

  KEROSENE

  Abraham Gesner

  Abraham Gesner was born in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley in the early 1800s. In his late teens he joined the merchant marine, but after experiencing the excitement of a couple of shipwrecks, he packed it in and became a doctor, which is likely the first and last time that particular career path has been taken. But you know that old expression about how you can take the man out of the adventure, but you can’t take the adventure out of the man? Neither do I, but it’s true.

  So in between patients, Abe studied geology, and in 1836 he discovered big deposits of iron ore and coal in Nova Scotia. He went on to make geological discoveries in New Brunswick and Quebec, and his medical patients started having a tough time getting an appointment. However, Abraham got one—he was named provincial geologist for New Brunswick in 1838.

  But his big breakthrough was when he created a process to refine a liquid fuel from coal bitumen and oil shale. He called the stuff “kerosene.” It burned cleaner and was cheaper than anything else on the market. Pretty soon it was powering street lamps in Halifax and eventually all over North America.

  Abraham’s only obstacle was finding a way to make more kerosene and make it faster and cheaper. Then along came petroleum, which is a way easier starting point for kerosene, and that did the trick.

  In 1933, Imperial Oil put up a memorial in Camp Hill Cemetery in Halifax as a tribute to Abraham and all of his contributions.

  I could have written a lot more about Abraham Gesner, but I didn’t because it was starting to make me feel like a useless dork. The guy did good. We can all see that.

  So I’d like to focus on what I would call a side effect of his invention that is maybe as important as the invention itself. Yes, he invented kerosene, which was used all around the world, but what they didn’t mention was that Abe was simultaneously inventing camping.

  Up until kerosene same along, camping wasn’t camping. It was living in the woods. No light, no heat, no cooking. Kerosene changed all that. Now you could have a kerosene lamp to light the way so you didn’t have to go to the bathroom right beside the tent. And a kerosene stove to cook whatever you caught or brought—or not. And just raw kerosene to give that old campfire a kick-start.

  So we all owe a lot to Mr. Gesner and his work. Especially me. When they first got married, my parents went camping a lot. If it wasn’t for kerosene, I might not even be here.

  LACROSSE

  William George Beers

  William George Beers, the Father of Professional Lacrosse Credit 43

  Lacrosse started way back when with the Aboriginal game of baggataway, which despite being fun to say was a pretty violent activity. It had hundreds or even thousands of players playing at one time. And no ref.

  It was a game used to train young warriors for war, as well as to settle tribal disputes. It would have been used to keep the young people off the streets if there were any streets. In 1844, the Montreal Olympic Club organized a team to play against the Native people. In 1856, the Montreal Lacrosse Club was founded, and the first written rules were developed. White men love rules. Over the next ten years, Montreal Lacrosse Club member and dentist William George Beers kept tweaking the game until it turned into the sport it is today.

  Sounds to me like the early days of lacrosse were closer to war than sport. Maybe the true beginning dates back to the caveman using a tree branch as a club. It was a big deal for man to make tools, because it proved he had enough smarts to figure that he could hit something harder with a stick than he could with his hand. (And that it wouldn’t hurt.) Not just because of the increase in mass, but more importantly, the increase in velocity that happens when the arm length is stretched by three or four feet. It’s why the Tyrannosaurus Rex never played golf: his stubby little arms prevented him from generating significant clubhead speed, or even reaching the ground with his niblick. But what changes the lacrosse stick from a weapon to a tool is its ability to catch as well as throw—and, of course, hit.

  I gotta say I was surprised to learn that William George Beers was the guy who standardized all the rules. I’ve watched a bunch of lacrosse matches and didn’t realize there were any rules. It’s kind of like hockey, but without the skates or camaraderie. Looks like you have to be in great shape, and I would say the second objective of the game is to score a goal. The first objective is to never have the ball. If you somehow find the ball in your stick, get rid of it right away—to a teammate, to an opponent, at an opponent, into the lake, whatever it takes. Otherwise, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get hit in the mouth with a lacrosse stick.

  It’s no coincidence that Mr. Beers was a dentist. Also no coincidence that his name is Beers.

  —

  Somewhere in here is a subtle message that, as a species, we have really let ourselves go. When you consider the First Nations would play this game with thousands of competitors, that means pretty much every guy in the tribe was included. That could never happen today. North America has a population of over five hundred million people, and fewer than two thousand guys play in the NFL. That’s not exactly the whole tribe. That’s less than .0005 per cent of the tribe.

  And if you ever did get the whole tribe out, it wouldn’t be long before heart attacks would get you back down to that same two thousand. With the development of civilization, the country gets in much better shape, but the people who live in it go the other way.

  —

  The town of Possum Lake has an unexpected connection to lacrosse. In the early 1940s, Florence Booth, pictured below, found a live hand grenade in her herb garden. She called the fire department, but he was out. She yelled to her neighbour, which she often did, but this time it was about the grenade.

  He was the captain of the ten-man Possum Lake lacrosse team. He gathered the team together and had them stand 100 feet apart, holding their lacrosse sticks, which created a line reaching out to the edge of town. Then he carefully picked up the grenade in his stick and hurled to the first man 100 feet away. He caught it gingerly and relayed on to the next man. And so on and so on until it got to the second-last man, but when he threw the grenade the pin got caught in the mesh and was pulled out by the force of throwing.

  Florence Booth, Local No-Nonsense Person Credit 44

  Luckily, the grenade didn’t go off right away. It waited until the last man, Ernie Stubler, caught it. The ten-man lacrosse team was now a nine-man lacrosse team. Florence thanked the men and sent them on their way. Except for Ernie. He’d already left.

  Ernie’s Remains

  Some of the residents of Possum Lake had a different application for the game of lacrosse. It was a time of horse-drawn carts, which involved horses, which involved manure on the streets. Teenagers were hired to get rid of it at the end of each week, and more often during the Christm
as rush.

  Not the most glamorous job in town, and the boys soon turned to lacrosse sticks to get it done. The road was clear in minutes, but the storefronts took a real beating. One outdoor café was never able to reopen, and at the doughnut shop, sales of the chocolate twist plummeted.

  To see us play, go to the Book of Inventions page at redgreen.com and click on “Lacrosse.”

  A flashlight—or “torch,” as it’s called by anyone who has never held a real torch—is a portable handheld electric light source. Usually, flashlights are battery-powered with a light bulb mounted in such a way as to the direct the light in a specific direction. This allows you to locate something in the dark, but then to not see that thing on the ground in front of you, so you still stub your toe moving towards the thing you wanted.

  Flashlights come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours. They come mounted to hard hats, and some can even be used underwater. They have regular battery-powered ones, ones that use a hand crank to charge up and, yes, they even have solar-powered ones, which I guess only work when you don’t need them. Flashlights are mostly an emergency tool, so they usually end up sitting in a kitchen drawer for a couple of years. The batteries eventually die and the flashlight becomes their coffin.

  When the emergency finally arrives, the power’s off, it’s pitch-black and the batteries are dead in your flashlight, so you can’t even use it to find the new ones.

  RATING: Not even close. Candidate #8 has a better chance.

  Credit 45

  MAGNETIC SHOES

  Dennis Holmsworth, Lodge Member and Man on the Run Credit 46

  Marathon athlete and Lodge Member Dennis Holmsworth invented running shoes with magnetic inserts in the soles. He claimed they increased circulation and helped him run straighter, especially when he was heading north. To test the strength of the magnets, he ran upside down under the Mercury Creek Railway Bridge.

  While Dennis’s magnets held up fine, his shoe-tying skills did not. He recovered quickly and was unfortunately soon back to being his old self.

  Sadly, one evening while running on the side of the highway a truckload of steel I-beams went by and Dennis was never seen again.

  MUSKOL

  Charles H. Coll

  Credit 47

  Charles H. Coll was born in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, on October 19, 1907. After working for Lever Brothers in Boston and Tibbetts Paints in Trenton, Nova Scotia, he started his own company in the late 1950s. His tremendous creativity even shows in the company’s name—Muskol—in which the word musk is stuck onto his surname. I think it would have been better for him if his last name had been Ito. That way, his flagship product would’ve been called Muskito, and he would have been on the right track right away.

  He started working on a bunch of different hunting and fishing products, and Chucky must have really liked the name he came up with, because every product he introduced was called Muskol, but with a different “flavour” depending on the animal and whether you wanted to get it to come closer or go farther away. The most successful invention of the bunch was his Muskol insect repellant. That was when he started making some serious scratch. The Coll family retained the rights to Muskol until they were sold to Schering-Plough Canada in 1982 and then to Bayer in 2015.

  This invention sounds like a total accident to me. Anybody whose core business is focused on hunting and fishing wants to attract animals, not repel them. Even the word musk refers to the scent female animals give off when they’re in heat. There used to be a cologne called Musk that was pretty popular with teenaged boys who’d wear it as aftershave long before they needed to shave.

  And hunters use deer musk or bear musk or moose musk to scent the trail to their blind. Wouldn’t it be great to be an animal? No subtleties. No guesswork. The scent of the female says it all. Now that’s what I call a dating service.

  So instead of needing a bunch of different products, each geared to whatever animal you were trying to catch, my guess is that this guy was trying to invent a product that attracted a whole range of animals.

  He knew that hunters aren’t that fussy. They’re out there with cold hands, cold feet and wet pants. Dammit, they wanna shoot something. They don’t care what. Sometimes when they’re really bored, they shoot cows or road signs. Or each other. Much better to have a bottle of something on hand that brought the wild animals and cut back on the homicides.

  Charles knew that a single product that attracted everything would have a huge customer base. So I think he was trying to invent Musk-All, not Muskol. It probably wasn’t until they started testing it that they found out what it was really good for.

  Like most men, they were trying to attract something but instead found repelling came much easier.

  Likely they had one guy, maybe a college student working for the summer, whom they would cover with different formulas of musk to see if any animals strolled over with lovin’ on their minds. None of the formulas ever worked.

  At the end of the day, this poor guy would come schlepping back to the lab covered with mosquito bites. He’d have a quick blood transfusion and then head home. Then one day, after a full eight-hour shift of no action (same as his social life), he came back with no mosquito bites. No blood transfusion required.

  So the breakthrough was not in inventing the mosquito repellant, but in abandoning everything else and focusing on the fluke. A good lesson for all you inventors—you may be trying to grow the perfect flower, but your real strength may be in spreading fertilizer.

  —

  There’s a basic rule at the root of Muskol or any other repellant chemical or sound or action. The rule has two parts. The first is that the animal or insect or person you are trying to repel has options—you or your property are not the only game in town. Second, that person, animal or insect must have the mental and physical capacity to analyze those options and choose the best one.

  So when you’re wearing Muskol, it doesn’t stop the mosquito from biting. It only stops it from biting you. And even that doesn’t work unless there’s somebody or something in the area that is more appealing than you—for example, a friend, neighbour or loved one who’s not wearing Muskol.

  This is an important fact. If you’re not alone and don’t want to be alone in the near future, before you put on your Muskol, put it on your loved one first. And if there’s only enough Muskol for one, she gets it. Otherwise she won’t blame the mosquitos for her bites, she’ll blame you.

  —

  Buster Hadfield has a stagnant pond on his property that has become a mosquito breeding ground for the entire county. He applied for a government grant to have water-bombing planes fly over the pond like they would over a forest fire, but instead of dropping water they would drop twenty thousand gallons of Muskol. Buster theorized that if each mosquito was covered in Muskol, they would repel each other and end the species.

  To watch our Adventure Film on dealing with bugs, go to the Book of Inventions page at redgreen.com and click on “Repellant.”

  PABLUM

  Dr. Frederick Tisdall

  Credit 48

  In 1931, the Mead Johnson Company came out with Pablum for the very first time. It was invented by Dr. Frederick Tisdall, Dr. Theodore Drake and Dr. Alan Brown. Three men making baby food in the ’30s was a brave, brave choice. The stuff was precooked and predried and tasted like it. It was designed to fight against infant malnutrition, particularly the lack of vitamin D in babies’ diets. At the same time, it was easy on the digestive system because it didn’t have any lactose, nuts or eggs in it. Something you could eat with even the worst hangover.

  It’s hard to imagine there was a time when malnutrition was a big problem in North America. It was back in the days when fat people stood out. Our generation will be remembered as the one that stamped out undereating. The brand name Pablum comes from the Latin word pabulum, which means “foodstuff.” Similar to the word curriculum, which means “school stuff’ or hoodlum, which means “guy who robs you while wearing
a hood.” Pablum is also a good word because it pretty much describes its flavour.

  —

  The biggest impact of Pablum is that it may have been the first “in-between” meal. It was in between food and drink. Up until that time, the idea of in-between had been limited to right and wrong, a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea. With the creation of Pablum, which bridged the gap between one thing and another, the floodgates were opened.

  Next came sushi, which is in between food and bait; hot dogs, which are in between meat and sweeping compound; a shih-tzu, which is in between a dog and a cat; the honeymoon, which is in between being single and being married; and having a government job, which is in between being unemployed and working.

  —

  A side effect of Pablum is that it proved to the world it was possible to live without teeth. This was excellent news for the entire bluegrass community. It was also very easy to digest, so you could still eat, even when you were getting over a case of the twenty-four-ounce flu.

  —

  Lodge Member and apocalyptic enthusiast Glen Friedman was inspired by Pablum. Glen had always been obsessed with the end of the world and was forever finding ways to prepare, first for the atomic fallout and then the zombie invasion. He spent a lot of long nights creating hazmat suits out of plastic shopping bags and designing a distiller that could make his own urine potable.