During a 2004 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation event called “Who is the Greatest Canadian?” Canadians were asked to pick their most influential Canadian figures of all times. Over 1.2 million votes were cast, and people could cast multiple votes. (However, Canada only has about 35 million people altogether.) There were three organized voting campaigns, but none of their candidates cracked the top ten.

Although the top ten included two people from the 19th century, the top picks all came from the 20th century. All of them are known to every Canadian. Many of them are common answers on Canadian citizenship tests and Canadian elementary school tests. In reverse order, the top ten were:

10. Wayne Gretzky
9. Alexander Graham Bell (19th century)
8. Sir John A. Macdonald (19th century)
7. Don Cherry
6. Lester B. Pearson
5. David Suzuki
4. Sir Frederick Banting
3. Pierre Elliott Trudeau
2. Terry Fox
1. Tommy Douglas

Notice something weird? There are lots of scientists and inventors, three Prime Ministers, even a hockey player, but none of the top 10 are business tycoons and none of them are military. In all the top 100, you will find only two industrialists: John Molson, originator of Molson Canadian beer (#92) and Sir William Stephenson, who headed British and Canadian military intelligence during World War II (#54). There is also one military person who dates from after World War II, General Romeo Dallaire, who led the UNAMIR United Nations peacekeepers during the 1993-4 Rwanda mission and tried unsuccessfully to stop the Tutsi genocide. He came in 16th. The Unknown Soldier came in 21st. Canadians value their military, but not to the point of drowning out other values.

Tommy Douglas

Universal health care has been much in the news lately. The number 1 pick of Canadians was Reverend Tommy Douglas, who was the champion of universal health care in Canada. He entered office to promote Medicare. During his time as Premier of Saskatchewan, with five straight majority victories between 1944 and 1960, this system of universal health care was completely financially sustainable.

Older Canadians remember the Great Depression or the 1952 polio epidemic, before universal health care existed in Canada. Thousands of new immigrants arrive on Canadian shores every year. Many come from other areas around the world which have known pitiless sickness and hunger. Universal health care has saved millions of Canadian lives since it was first introduced in 1944. When choosing the Greatest Canadian of all time, most Canadians think immediately of Tommy Douglas.

Scientists

Two Canadians among the top ten are scientists. Sir Frederick Banting was just thirty-two years old when he discovered insulin and gave millions of diabetic children around the world a second chance at life. He and his former research assistant, Dr. Charles Best, shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery. This kind of discovery would be the completion of a life’s work for others, but Banting did not stop there. He continued to improve the lives of others through research work in cancer and silicosis. He was working on blackouts and other problems associated with high-altitude aviation when he was killed in an airplane crash on the eve of World War II.

Long before Dr. David Suzuki became the public face of science to several generations of Canadians, he was one of the first ever genome mappers, a groundbreaker whose genetic research began just five years after Watson and Crick proposed their model of DNA genetic transmission. When he started working in radio and television, Suzuki’s influence became even greater. His popular science shows have inspired many Canadians and others in forty countries around the world to become scientists. He is also a strong promoter of sustainable environmental practices and the value of natural areas.

Hockey

It’s Canada, so of course there’s lots of sports and hockey! Wayne Gretzky is still considered the best hockey player ever, and still does so much for grassroots hockey. What football is to America, hockey is to Canada. But we don’t just watch it. We play it. We live it. Just about every Canadian grew up playing hockey in the local league, from 5-year-old peewees on up. It’s a part of Canada, and Wayne Gretzky is just about the most influential person in hockey, ever.

Music and art

Nearly a third of the top hundred Canadians are artists, from painters to musicians. Canadian authors have won English language awards around the world. Number 46 on the list, Leonard Cohen, has written songs covered by so many other musicians that nearly 2,000 versions are available. He is currently on a long-anticipated world tour. No theatricals, nothing fancy, just a simple backdrop and the music. Wherever he goes, he plays to sold-out houses. Hallelujah!

Politics

Fourteen politicians made the top 100, roughly equally from both sides of the political spectrum and some others which defy economic classification. Three Canadian prime ministers made the top 10, two of them from the 20th century.

Lester Bowles Pearson brought Canada onto the world stage by creating United Nations peacekeeping. But Canadians remember Pearson best for bringing in the Canadian flag in 1965, just two years before Canada’s centennial year. It was a minority government. The final flag design was a compromise which was no one’s first choice, not even Pearson’s. It was for the best. Can you imagine Canada today under this flag, or this, or this? Can you imagine Canada today without the single red maple leaf?

Former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau believed in “reason before passion,” but his own passion forged Canada into a true independent country when he repatriated the Canadian Constitution in 1982. For the first time ever, Canadian law no longer needed final approval from Great Britain. At the same time, he also entrenched the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms within the Constitution. When Trudeau died, 50,000 people came to pay tribute while he lay in state. As his coffin was brought home to Montreal on a train, thousands of people came to a lonely part of Canada to place roses on the tracks. A former American president stood side by side with Fidel Castro as his pallbearers. Millions of people watched his funeral on television and watch his eldest son Justin Trudeau speak his eulogy.

Trudeau was a person who provoked strong emotions. On an Angus Reid poll, 42% of respondents thought Trudeau was Canada’s best Prime Minister since 1968. Canada’s current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, comes in at 12%. On the other hand, from the same poll, Trudeau and Harper are tied, with 14% of Canadians each thinking that they were Canada’s worst Prime Ministers since 1968. Whether we loved Trudeau or loathed him, not one Canadian has ever questioned that he was among Canada’s most influential people of the 20th century.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Preston Manning created a brand new right-wing party which, under a new name, leads Canada today. Within twenty years, his party made it from grassroots vision to power. Manning himself never made it to prime minister, but he still comes in among the top 100 Greatest Canadians.

Terry Fox

When choosing the Greatest Canadian of all time, many Canadians voted for Terry Fox. Here was an ordinary Canadian, who made an extraordinary commitment and gave all of us something to believe in. After he lost his leg to osteosarcoma at 18, Terry Fox decided to run across Canada on his prosthetic leg and raise money for cancer research. Nobody had ever done anything like it before. The only thing he asked of sponsors was a proper runner’s prosthetic leg. His previous one had snapped in two while he was training for the run.

When Terry Fox started on his run on April 12, 1980, it was just him and a camper van behind him. As word spread, people started coming down to the road and giving him cash donations into an empty coffee can. People gave him $100 bills, no questions, no receipts. It all went into the Marathon of Hope. He hoped to raise maybe a million dollars for cancer research, but he dreamed bigger. He said that:

“If we all gave one dollar, we’d have $22 million for cancer research, and I don’t care man, there’s no reason that isn’t possible. No reason. I’d like to see everybody go kind of wild, inspired with the fund-raising.”

Terry Fox never completed his marathon. He was forced to break it off in September at Thunder Bay, nearly halfway across the country. A statue marks the place. By that point he was no longer able to run. His previous cancer had come back and spread to his lungs. He died on June 28, 1981.

He lived long enough to see his dream come true. In the first week after he was forced to stop running, a nationwide telethon had raised $10 million. By February 1981, the total surged to $22 million, one dollar for every adult Canadian. But it did not end there. The Terry Fox Run is still held every year to raise money for cancer in fifty-three countries around the world. It still has no corporate sponsorship. So far, the Terry Fox Foundation has raised over $340 million for cancer research. Thanks to Terry’s run, up to 92 percent of patients with osteosarcoma now beat the disease, many of them without amputations.

Terry Fox was raised in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, which is just east of Vancouver. At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, a Terry Fox Award will be given to the Olympic athlete who best embodies Terry Fox’s determination and humility in the face of adversity.

Worldwide

Because the influence of the Greatest Canadians is worldwide, many are also honoured abroad. General Dallaire was made an Officer of the Legion of Merit, the highest military decoration the United States can give to a foreigner. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for defusing the Suez Crisis.

We won’t win the Nobel Prize for helping Haiti in its hour of need. That’s not why we give. Even before the earthquake, back in the 20th century, Haiti was Canada’s second largest aid recipient. When the call went out, Canadians united. Together we raised more money than anywhere else in the world, over $113 million of private donations alone. Operation Hestia has deployed a naval task force and an additional 2,000 military personnel to Haiti, everything from urban search and rescue to providing clean drinking water. Like so many other Canadians before them, these soldiers helped to improve the quality of life for others. To this day, the Netherlands thanks Canada for their help during World War II and the hard years afterward by sending tulips to Ottawa, 20,000 new tulip bulbs every year.

Jacmel’s first post-earthquake baby was born at Canada’s Disaster Assistance Response Team clinic on January 28. Maybe that’s the best measure of the influence of Canada’s ordinary people in the world.