Canada wasn’t really taken seriously, dismissed as a land of ice, snow, and igloos.
As a Swiss-Canadian, I understand this shortfall all too well. Made in Canada and Made in Switzerland stands for plenty of great quality products, but rarely for people to be taken seriously in music or acting. Show-wise, we’ve always been chuckled at.
Now, if the world doesn’t seem to take the showbusiness from my two countries seriously, what about other achievements? Well, look at that — things get more concrete here. Let me pick out two achievements from Canadian history that impress me for one particular reason: neither of these accomplishments became a money machine. More on that later.
Before 1922, people with type 1 diabetes were facing a practically fatal disease. The sweet life became a death sentence. But then some resourceful researchers at the University of Toronto got onto the trail of an extract that turned the whole thing on its head. The two gentlemen, Banting and Best, isolated an extract from the pancreas that could lower glucose and blood sugar. Come again?
A finding alone isn’t enough for science, though. But that’s how science is — it insists on test results to back up the theory. A five-year-old named Teddy Ryder, already suffering from type 1 diabetes, lay in Toronto General Hospital. His parents allowed the test to be carried out on their boy. Teddy survived the treatment and had seventy-one more years of life ahead of him.
Out of a fatal disease, a therapy was born: insulin.
Discovered in Canada.
Another researcher at the same University of Toronto, George Klein, noticed after the Second World War how many soldiers with catastrophic injuries nevertheless survived. Thanks to penicillin.
The war left people with spinal injuries stuck in crappy wheelchairs that could barely be moved. This gave George Klein in Toronto no peace. He built today’s modern electric wheelchair. Complete with all the comforts that let patients become mobile again. The wheels were driven separately, and a joystick let the thing drive, steer, and — most of the time — even brake. Many veterans, at least, were glad that their fate became a little easier thanks to these mobile wheelchairs.
Now to the point of “Made in Canada.”
The two stories of three researchers from the University of Toronto extended and eased the lives of millions of people.
But the truly remarkable thing about it is the business model behind both discoveries. Banting and Best sold their insulin patent for a single dollar. Their comment: “Insulin does not belong to us. It belongs to the world.”
George Klein invented the joystick wheelchair, but gave the patent away free of charge to the United States Veterans Administration. George hoped this would get the wheelchairs produced faster and get them to patients sooner.
Both inventions could have made Banting, Best, and Klein billionaires. But all three gave that up in favour of the idea of making the world a little better.
How absurd does such an enormous financial renunciation seem to us in the year 2026, faced with all these billionaires?
I want to imagine that somewhere out there, right now, someone is selling a patent for a dollar. And that it’s enough.
