What makes Canada Canada? It’s a question Canadians always seem to be asking themselves, and in honor of Canada’s 130th birthday, just past, I’ve decided to do my bit to bolster Canadian identity by presenting the science behind a few things we associate with this great land.
Take beavers, for instance. Canada was built on the backs of these semi-aquatic rodents. In the 18th and 19th centuries, hundreds of thousands of beaver skins were exported to Europe from North America annually, and much of Canada was explored by people looking for new sources.
An adult beaver weighs about 16 kilograms, although some specimens as heavy as 40 kilograms have been found, and some ancient, extinct beavers were almost the size of bears. Beavers are best known for cutting down trees (usually five to 20 centimetres in diameter, though they can fell trees as much as 76 centimetres in diameter) to build dams. The resulting pools provide a haven for the beavers: they store food in them and live in a hut-like lodge whose entrance is underwater to deter predators
Beavers also appear on our nickel coins–and speaking of coins, something else unique to Canada is the loonie, our gold-colored, 11-sided, nickel-bronze dollar coin. Technologically speaking, though, the more interesting coin is the toonie, the two-dollar coin introduced in 1996. This “bi-metallic coin locking mechanism” that holds the nickle outer ring and aluminum bronze core together is a Canadian invention, patented by the Royal Canadian Mint–so every time you take a toonie from your pocket, you’re holding a shining example of Canadian technological ingenuity.
Even more associated with Canada than beavers and loons is the maple leaf. There are about 113 species of maple, and not all of them have the lobed leaf depicted on the Canadian flag, but the most commonly grown species do. Maples grow in North America, Europe and Asia (although the Asian species are very different from the ones we’re familiar with). They’re particularly widespread across central Canada, which is why they’ve become our national symbol.
Besides leaves, maple trees produce maple syrup, another product closely associated with Canada. Maple syrup is the concentrated sap of the maple tree. The sap is only two to three percent sugar; to turn it into syrup, it’s concentrated, by boiling off most of its water, to the point where the sugar content reaches 66 percent–any less and the syrup will spoil, any more and it will crystallize. The percentage is measured with a hydrometer, a sealed glass tube, weighted at one end. The farther the hydrometer sinks in the syrup, the lower the concentration of syrup.
Maple syrup is commonly put on pancakes, and what goes better with pancakes than Canadian bacon? Canadian bacon is different from regular bacon because it isn’t really bacon. Bacon is the dried, cured meat from the back and sides of a pig; Canadian bacon is cured pork loin. With the fat trimmed off, it has only 70 calories per serving and three grams of fat.
Even more famous than Canadian bacon, in certain circles, is Canadian beer. Canadians are among the highest per-capita consumers of beer in the world, and any true-blooded Canadian will tell you at great length how superior Canadian beer is to American beer. That’s because the average American beer has only 3.5 percent alcohol by volume, while many Canadian beers have an alcohol content in the 5 percent range.
UPDATE, NOVEMBER 23, 2004: This, it turns out, is a common fallacy. As an alert reader points out, the supposedly greater “strength” of Canadian beer is an illusion caused by the fact that American beer typically shows alcohol percentage by weight, not volume. See here and here for details.
There’s another difference between Canadian beers and American beers: the contents of American beer cans and bottle are measured in ounces, while the contents of Canadian ones are measured in millilitres. Alas, the metric system is not a Canadian invention: it’s a product of the French Revolution, designed to bring order to the then chaotic system of measurement in which a “foot” could be a different size in different cities. The modern definition of a metre is the distance traveled by light in 1/299,792,458 second. Other metric units have similar precise definitions, which is why, along with the fact that all elements of the metric system are in multiples of 10, the metric system is the measurement system of choice for scientists.
Now, maybe you can’t build a national identity on beavers, back bacon and beer. But they’re all things we think of when we think of Canada, and that makes them worth celebrating. Which is probably why many people celebrated Canada Day by consuming large quantities of one of them…and I’ll bet it wasn’t bacon.
