Top 25* Innovators

Sir Charles Edward Saunders Invented the Marquis wheat cultivar, which matured 10 days earlier than other wheat, a pretty big deal in the Canadian wheat belt given the short growing season. Baldur Rosmund

Stefansson and Richard Keith Downey Invented canola (short for Canadian oil, low

being the variable-pitch propeller. Joseph-Armand Bombardier Alright, so the Bombardier company eventually lost its power to innovate, but there’s no denying that the snowmobile was a big innovation for people who lived in remote, snowy communities, and it’s damned fun, too.

Alfred Gross Canadians have a long history in telecommunications, including this inventor of the pager, CB radio, cordless phone and the walkie-talkie (shared with Donald Hings, another Canadian). He also had a sense of humour. He was once quoted as saying: “I was born 35 years too soon. If I still had the patents