Canadian history has more detours than most people realize. Yes, there were some moments where things got so weird or unexpected, but they were important in making the country the way it is today. Here are ten strange but real moments that shaped modern Canada. Which one do you remember witnessing?
The 1998 ice storm
Anyone who was alive in Canada in January 1998 might remember how the nation looked like a movie set. Ice storms are relatively common in Canada. But what made this one strange was how destructive it was.
The 1998 ice storm destroyed power lines & plunged whole towns into darkness for weeks. It also forced the government to deploy the Canadian military in the largest deployment since the Korean War.
The storm’s power led to Canada linking its hydro systems across provinces. The nation also created a proper plan for shared emergencies, making us far more coordinated.
Canada’s loonie design
So many of us put the $1 coin into parking meters without thinking. But its design happened by complete accident. The Royal Canadian Mint originally shipped its master dies for the then-new coin. It was supposed to have a voyageur design. However, the package disappeared between Ottawa & Winnipeg.
The Mint didn’t want to risk counterfeits. It decided to use an old loon sketch that the public loved, and the nickname “loonie” later stuck. The paper dollar vanished within two years. The strange loss of the design changed how Canadians use cash & vending machines.
The Great Stork Derby
Charles Vance Millar was a Toronto lawyer with a sense of humor that knew no boundaries. He wrote a will in 1926 that promised his fortune to whichever Toronto mother had the most babies in ten years. It led to absolute chaos.
Families went to court & judges struggled to understand the legality of it. The Supreme Court ruled in 1937 that the will stood. Four different women received the money. Following the incident, estate lawyers began to modernize inheritance law & encouraged public policy clauses to become a standard part of will drafting.
A blood-sucking fish
Sea lampreys are blood-sucking fish that cause all manner of problems. They invaded the Great Lakes & almost destroyed commercial fisheries between the 1940s and 1950s.
It was such a serious problem that Ottawa & Washington created the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. The group was tasked with fighting the problem jointly.
It was a binational setup that both governments have continued to fund. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission proved that each nation could work together on projects to benefit the environment. They still do to this day.
A harpooned orca helped
In 1964, staff at the Vancouver Aquarium tried to catch a specimen for a fiberglass model. But they accidentally kept the orca alive. They called her “Moby Doll,” & crowds couldn’t get enough of her. Canadians could see the huge animal up close. It changed their opinions about them.
Marine-park captures followed for decades. In 2019, a federal law finally banned breeding & new captivity of orcas. People’s fascination with Moby Doll made them realize what powerful and majestic creatures these animals truly were.
Five identical sisters
Another strange birth event was the Dionne quintuplets’ birth in 1934. It led reporters & government officials, as well as tourists, to visit a tiny farmhouse in Ontario. They all came to see the strange sight.
Sadly, the province took custody of the girls for their “safety,” then turned around & made them into an attraction. The province built a public viewing compound of the girls.
The quintuplets sued the province for exploitation when they became adults. They won. The whole incident forced Ontario, and all Canadians, to rethink guardianship laws. It also put the question of children’s consent at the forefront of people’s minds.
Eight senators in one day
Brian Mulroney was tired of months of gridlock in 1990 over the Goods & Services Tax. He tried something nobody had done since Confederation. What did he do? He used section 26 of the 1867 Constitution Act to add eight senators overnight. It tilted the numbers in his favour.
The bill passed & the GST was born. It was a political stunt that made government officials see how important the upper chamber was for tax planning. They couldn’t take anything for granted.
A defector with a briefcase
Igor Gouzenko was a Soviet cipher clerk who changed Canada (and the world) on a late September night in 1945. What made this moment so strange was that it was almost like something out of a spy movie.
Disillusioned with the Soviets, Gouzenko left the Soviet embassy in Ottawa with special documents. The papers showed that there was a spy network operating inside Canada and attempting to steal atomic research.
Officials didn’t believe him originally. But then they finally opened the papers. The fallout was massive, including public hearings & arrests. Canada stepped fully into the Cold War.
Milk in bags
Why do we have our milk in bags? It’s to do with one weird realization during the 1970s switch to metric. Dairy processors realized that they couldn’t use their gallon-sized plastic jugs with the new litre measures. It was too expensive to change the moulds.
Their solution was to try soft plastic bags because the processors could heat-seal them to any metric volume. It worked & it was cheap. We still use bagged milk to this day, all because the dairy processors made it so.
Canada blew up a mountain under the sea
Ripple Rock in British Columbia’s Seymour Narrows caused many problems for Canadians. By the 1950s, it had torn open far too many ships. Ottawa’s solution was to erase it. Engineers drilled holes under the seabed & packed them with explosives. Then they detonated it.
It was the largest non-nuclear controlled blast in history. The blast was also successful. The explosion flattened the hazard & turned the stretch into a safe shipping corridor that modern Pacific trade still uses. It’s not every day you hear about the government detonating mountains.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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