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William Logan 1798-1875
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"It is twelve o'clock at night, and I am bushed... I have had a blow on the head from a
great stone weighing half a hundredweight when it fell upon me, fortunately from no
great height. I have had a tumble, too, on a slippery stone, striking my elbow; and I
put my foot between two stones and pinched my instep; so that I am all bruises, and
my limbs are as stiff as sticks. I'll go to bed."
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John William Dawson 1820-1899
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"All along I studied geology, especially palaeobotany, which is the study of fossils of plants... I used my knowledge of fossil plants to deduce the climatic conditions in which they grew. Our understanding of the botanical morphology and anatomy of Canadian plants grew from the study of extinct plant forms. In most countries it goes the other way!"
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Sandford Fleming 1827-1915
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"... [a traveller] lands at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and starts on a railway journey
through... Saint John, Québec, Montréal, Ottawa and Toronto. As
he reaches each place in succession, he finds a considerable variation in the
clocks by which the trains are run, and he discovers that at no two places is the
same time used."
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Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922
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"Dr. Bell would enter his laboratory and immediately stride over to the telephone and
stuff a towel around it. He did this to prevent anyone calling and interrupting his train
of thought. He would settle back in his chair, light his pipe and say, 'Now a man can
think.' "
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Reginald Fessenden 1866-1932
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"December 23, 1900...This afternoon, here at Cobb Island, intelligible speech by electromagnetic waves has for the first time in the world's history been transmitted."
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Charles Edward Saunders 1867-1937
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"Life has many twists and turns. I will be remembered for something, Marquis wheat, which resulted from work which was not even my first passion! I have proven that a person can indeed excel in very different fields and, despite my limitations, I have accomplished much by refusing to give up."
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Maude Abbott 1869-1940
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"One of my day-dreams, which I feel to be selfish, is that of going to school... If it ever
does come to pass that I get my wish, I will try to keep my resolutions (1) to study hard
and conscientiously (2) not to get wild etc, as many girls do (3) not to care for
competition but for the real study and benefit I derive from it (4) to remember that I go
to school for education, not for fun."
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Wallace Turnbull 1870-1954
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"The crying need today of aëronautics (considered as a science) is research work,
and it is simply amazing... to note how few persons are willing to take up the laws of
aërodynamics and reduce them to an exact science."
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Ernest Rutherford 1871-1937
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"[At McGill,] I am expected to do a lot of original work and to form a research school in order to knock the shine out of the Yankees! . . . the physical laboratory is one of the best buildings of its kind in the world, and has a magnificent supply of apparatus."
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Harriet Brooks Pitcher 1876-1933
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"I think also it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries. I cannot conceive how women's colleges, inviting and encouraging women to enter professions can be justly founded or maintained denying such a principle."
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Frances Gertrude McGill 1877-1959
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"I was always struck by how important forensic pathology could be in criminal investigation and how it contributed to the good of society by helping to ensure that justice, for the guilty and for the innocent, was done."
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Alice Evelyn Wilson 1881-1964
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"Each layer of rock is a page upon which is printed the story. The words are the rocks themselves and within them the seaweeds and sea-shells now turned to stone. It is a thrilling story, but you have to pay great attention to read and understand it."
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Frère Marie-Victorin 1885-1944
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"Whether botanist, zoologist, entomologist or geologist we can, by working with sound
methodology, make our modest contribution. And it is drops of water that make up the
sea. The great works of natural history are built upon the patient analysis of the
accumulated material of countless researchers."
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Andrew McNaughton 1887-1966
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"I am also deep in the project with the Air Defence Command to develop new methods
for producing high velocity [projectiles] by two novel methods. One, electrical, which
Ballard knows about, and the other the conical smooth bore gun with a projectile of
aerodynamic form..."
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Margaret Newton 1887-1971
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"Stem rust occurs in every province of Canada... In 1916 the reduction in yield of
wheat [caused by rust] was estimated at 100 million bushels, and in 1935, at 87 million
bushels..."
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Chalmers Jack Mackenzie 1888-1984
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". . . I did come out of the First World War with a firm resolution that, in the future, I would allow nothing in the way of misfortune, violent confrontations or frustrations to upset me . . . . Keeping this resolution has, I believe, made for efficiency, objectivity, and peace of mind under conditions of temporary confusion."
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Frederick Banting 1891-1941
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"It is not within the power of the properly constructed human mind to be satisfied."
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Wilder Penfield 1891-1976
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"... I realized that there was a thrilling undiscovered country to be explored in the
mechanisms of the mammalian nervous system. Through it, one might approach the
mystery of the mind... "
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E.W.R. "Ned" Steacie 1900-1962
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"He was innovative; visitors noted on his wall a picture of a tortoise with the caption,
'Consider the tortoise: he makes progress only when his neck is out.' "
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George J. Klein 1904-1992
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"No one really taught me anything like that. I was given the problem and thought
of about 15 different ways of getting at it. "
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Gerhard Herzberg 1904-1999
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"[as a student] I also had an idea about a continuous spectrum of molecular
hydrogen, which turned out to be rather foolish, but it did form the beginning of my
lifelong interest in the spectrum of molecular hydrogen."
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Elizabeth "Elsie" MacGill 1905-1980
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"At Ann Arbor I studied aircraft design and wind tunnel work principally. I intend going
in for airplane design work professionally."
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Helen Sawyer Hogg 1905-1993
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"I was nearly a chemist, but the total eclipse of the Sun on January 24, 1925 changed my mind. Our astronomy prof, Anne Young, arranged for us to travel from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts to a site in Connecticut. The glory of the spectacle seems to have tied me to astronomy for life, despite my horribly cold feet as we stood almost knee-deep in snow."
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J.-Armand Bombardier 1907-1964
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"Someday, I will invent a little machine that will float on snow, and even take me back
up these hills!"
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Alphonse Ouimet 1908-1988
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"It is the whole tremendous potential of television that must be placed at the service of
the nation, and not only one-half or one-quarter of it, if we are effectively to stem the
tidal wave of imported television which, if added to other factors, would threaten our
very Canadian identity and nationhood."
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John Tuzo Wilson 1908-1993
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"Nobody would dream of teaching science without a lab and that's what a science center is, a science lab for the public where everybody can learn at his own pace."
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Pierre Dansereau 1911-
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"The current preoccupation with productivity ... has led some of us to pose ecological problems in their ultimate terms: energy flow."
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Hugh Le Caine 1914-1977
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"When, thanks to the broad humanist view of Dr. Steacie, I was able to work on electronic music legitimately,
it was a great source of pleasure to me to think that our widely acknowledged preoccupation with science and
technology might be turned to some advantage for the arts ... " Hugh Le Caine at Queen's University 1971
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Douglas Harold Copp 1915-1998
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"In 1954, I was asked to present a talk on calcium homeostasis at the first
Gordon Conference on Bones and Teeth. As I prepared my talk, I soon realized ... it was a virgin field an exciting prospect for a young scientist. I decided then and there to make it the focus of my research career."
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Harold Elford Johns 1915-1998
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"The problem was, how are you going to deal with a source of 1000 or 2000 curies [a measure of radiation]? In those days radiation therapy used a few microcuries. I can remember people at Chalk River saying 'Johns, you're an idiot to want to use such a powerful source of radiation'."
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James Hillier 1915-2007
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"... we have developed a society, an environment where we are able to support a much larger population than this earth could have supported 100 years ago, and that is done primarily because of technology: technology of production, technology of transportation, technology of communications. (...) Quite apart from any of the intellectual feelings of what technology does to the culture, just to stay alive is going to take technology."
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Bertram Neville Brockhouse 1918-2003
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"What we basically do in physics is push something and see what happens."
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John "Jack" A. Hopps 1919-1998
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"It was a different era of heart surgery from the time of my first experience.... I had entered the world of tomorrow. From now on, my heart would respond to the stimulus of a man-made device. I had a pacemaker."
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Gerald Heffernan 1919-
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"We were roasting ore under pressure and reducing it with hot hydrogen, trying to
change its composition so it would become soluble... The equipment was leaking and
the laboratory became saturated with hydrogen. That's when I really blew myself up. I
flew six feet and smashed through the door, which fortunately was flimsy."
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Raymond Urgel Lemieux 1920-2000
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"I decided to gamble on an attempt to synthesize sucrose or sugar. The main challenge was to isolate the desired product (should it be formed in an appreciable amount) from the rather intractable and partially charred gummy material. In 1953, Georg Huber and I announced the synthesis of sucrose. This feat won much acclaim."
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Willard Boyle 1924-
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"Know how to judge when to persevere and when to quit. If you're going to do something, do it well. You don't have to be better than everyone else, but you ought to do your personal best."
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John Polanyi 1929-
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"...nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science..." |
Charles Robert Scriver 1930-
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"I am being slowly transformed from a 'biochemical geneticist' into someone concerned with quantitative traits — the complex polygenic multifactial, messy, everyday attributes of life. I find I want to know more about their ultimate and proximate causes."
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Michael Smith 1932-2000
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"In this country you can do world-class research as judged by your
professional peers."
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Hubert Reeves 1932-
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"The twenty-first century will be green, or there will not be any twenty-second century."
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