As the colony grew by the beginning of the 19th century, a number of amateur "scientists", notably in Montreal and Toronto, began to record and study nature as a gentlemanly pursuit and established local learned societies.
William Logan was appointed the first director in 1842 and after establishing headquarters in Montreal in 1843 began field work searching for coal in the area between Pictou, Nova Scotia, and the Gaspé Peninsula in Canada.
At King's College (University of New Brunswick) in Fredericton, as early as 1837, James Robb taught a course in natural science that included the study of chemistry within the context of botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology.
Another development of monumental importance involved experiments by the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, in the field of electromagnetic radiation and his "transmission" of radio signals across the Atlantic from a transmitter in Cornwall, England to a receiver in St. John's, Newfoundland on 12 December 1901.
In 1909, Charles Doolittle Walcott, discovered what came to be known as the Burgess Shale, near Field, British Columbia, a rock formation that contained the very well preserved fossil remains of animals from the Cambrian geological era.
Originally staffed by university summer student volunteers, professional full-time scientific staff were hired and laboratories related to the fisheries and food processing established on both coasts, in the twenties.
A large number of farms were created across the country at locations including, Summerland 1914, Vancouver 1925, Kamloops 1935, Creston 1940 and Prince George 1940, all in British Columbia, Lethbridge 1906, Lacombe 1907 and Fort Vermilion 1907, in Alberta, Rosthern 1909, Saskatoon 1917, Swift Current 1921, Regina 1931 and Melfort 1935, in Saskatchewan, Morden 1918, Winnipeg 1924 and Portage la Prairie 1944 in Manitoba, Harrow 1913, Kapuskasing 1916, Delhi 1933 and Thunder Bay 1937 in Ontario, La Pocatière 1912, Lennoxville 1914 and L'Assomption 1928, in Quebec, Fredericton 1912, New Brunswick 1912, Charlottetown 1909, PEI and Kentville, Nova Scotia 1911.
Finally, World War II mobilization, created an acute public familiarity with the breathtaking power of science (the atomic bomb), large organizational structures, complex management techniques and state sponsored funding programmes that would characterize post-war university as well as industrial research.
The Tizard Mission, a delegation of British scientists and military experts, visiting North America to promote wartime allied scientific cooperation, met with NRC nuclear physicist George Laurence in Ottawa in 1940.
As the air defence of Canada became of paramount importance in the fifties the Survey extended its research, to the Canadian Arctic, especially between 1954 and 1957 and charted routes for the ships carrying the supplies necessary to build the long range radar stations of the DEW Line.
But during the sixties, nineteen new universities with their associated departments of chemistry, saw the light of day, including, Sir George Williams, 1960, Laurentien, 1960, Alberta at Calgary, 1960, Saskatchewan at Regina, 1961, Moncton, 1963, Victoria, 1963, Guelph, 1964, Brock, 1964, Trent, 1964, Lakehead, 1965, Simon Fraser, 1965, Lethbridge, 1967, Brandon,1967, Winnipeg, 1967, Quebec, 1969 and PEI, 1969.
The post-war molecular biology revolution, the result of the connection between biochemistry and microbiology swept academia, with 10 universities offering at least both courses, including: Victoria, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), Manitoba, Western Ontario, Queen's, Ottawa, McGill, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Laval and Dalhousie.
The NRC offered grants in support of animal, plant, cellular and population biology and in 1967 those universities receiving the most money included: British Columbia, $878,000, Guelph, $644,000, Toronto, $559,000, Alberta, $524, 000 and Manitoba, $519,000.
These studies have investigated the state of elk, moose and bison in Canadian national parks as well as northern animals including caribou, muskox, polar bears, wolves and Arctic foxes.
Other scientists of note included: Carlyle Smith Beals, 1899–1979 (astronomy), Edgar William Richard Steacie, 1900–1962 (chemistry), Helen Sawyer Hogg, 1905–1993 (astronomy), John Tuzo Wilson, 1908–1993 (geology), Marshall McLuhan, 1911–1980 (sociology/communications), Pierre Dansereau, 1911 (ecology), Harold Copp, 1915–1998 (medicine), Raymond Lemieux, 1920–2000 (chemistry), Fernand Seguin, 1922–1988 (biochemistry, TV personality), Charles Scriver, 1930 (medicine), Hubert Reeves, 1932 (cosmology) and David Suzuki, 1936 (genetics, TV personality).
In 1982, the virtual, Ottawa-based Canadian Institute for Advanced Research was established to investigate questions relating to the fundamental nature of the universe in fields such as cosmology, gravity, quantum mechanics and genetics.
The facility is located about 2 km underground in the former Creighton nickel mine of CVRD Inco in Sudbury, Ontario and was designed to detect solar neutrinos by sensing their interaction with deuterium nuclei and atomic electrons.
It will study a wide range of nanoscale phenomena, including the synthesis of nanocrystals, nanowires and supramolecular-based nanomaterials, the fabrication of molecular-scale devices, the development of nano-scaled materials for chemical reactions at semiconductor surfaces, protein design, genetic engineering and nanoelectromechanical systems.
In the 21st century, the Institute designed instruments for its international telescope programme, including the Gemini multi-object spectrograph, the JCMT auto-correlation spectrometer and imaging system and the CFHT adaptive optics bonnette.
Shuttle flights have included those by Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut (1984/1996/2000,) Roberta Bondar (1992), Steve MacLean (1992/2006), Chris Hadfield (1995/2001), Robert Thirsk (1996), Bjarni Tryggvason (1997), Dave Williams (1998) and Julie Payette (1999/2009).
Science studies during these missions have involved investigations of human physiology including space sickness, intracorporal fluid displacements, spatial orientation and the loss of bone and muscle mass during prolonged periods of weightlessness.
Weighing 65 kg and about the size of a large suitcase, the satellite, which will optically search space near the earth with its 15 cm telescope for asteroids that represent a danger to the planet through collision, will be the first dedicated to this task.
The budget of the Survey is now about $60 million a year, and the staff of 550 are located at headquarters in Ottawa and regional offices in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, St. Foy, Quebec, Calgary, Alberta and Sidney and Vancouver, British Columbia.
[41] At the Maurice Lamontagne Institute established in 1987 near Mont-Joli, Quebec, on the St. Lawrence Estuary, more than 400 staff undertake research relating to the protection of the marine environment and the conservation of aquatic plants and animals.
The Ocean Tracking Network, headquartered at Dalhousie University in Halifax was established in 2008, with $168 million in funding provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
Through the use of sensors connected to an 800 km electro-optical cable resting on the seabed of the Juan de Fuca Plate, scientists can study seismic activity, ocean-climate interactions and seafloor ecology.
The Biotron research facility, opened in 2008 at the University of Western Ontario, in London, will provide a unique laboratory for the study of basic biological systems at the ecological, physiological and molecular levels.
The importance of transferring scientific discovery to the business sector has continued to grow in recent years, and a number of 2007 medical "Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR)", with significant corporate funding, have been established to facilitate this task.
At the beginning of the 21st century, due to financial restraints, token funding efforts were made to give Canada a place with the construction and operation of the Gemini astronomical telescopes and the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.
In 2017, the government allocated Can$950 million over a five-year period to support innovative 'superclusters' to spur public–private collaboration on the ocean economy, next-generation manufacturing, digital technology, protein industries and artificial intelligence.