Stephen, please....the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell lived in Canada for less than two years after he lived in Scotland. Americans are generous in giving credit to Canada for our comedians, but Bell came to Boston from Canada and lived in the US for almost four years when he invented the telephone. He patented it in the US. It's a US invention. You sound like the French there in claiming American inventions.

Well, the feller never was inspired to phone anyone til he got way over here. Thus the Canadian by choice, was indeed Canadian, like Johnny MacDonald and others. How indeed could Amreicans lay claim to a man who left scotland with his family, for the vast millions of acres of opportunity in this big open country. Mindya, as to his Dad's voluntary leaving behind Scotland, to become an inspired Canadian, ya don't need my prejudiced advice on that. Read what he himself had to say..... Alexander Graham Bell - Quote "Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought." Now there's a man who embodies the soul of typical Orcadian men who came to this country to spread their wings and before you knew it, as Al says above-noted...before ya knew it in this great free land...ya had something worth thinking about. As you know, the Bell homestead is in Brantford Ontario, restored to it's 1870 splendour with 90% of the possessions of the day still on display last I heard. Of course he later moved to Baddeck where he died. ( He taught in the USA, as many Canadians do like our Liberal Party leader, Ignatieff, who taught at Harvard. It was recently revealed by Barak Obama that he read Ignatieff while studying there.) The point is, that while many of expatriated families here still hold dear to our Orkney roots, as with Alexander Bell, once ya leave Scotland, you become of another place. But Orkney and Scotland are always in the heart. Nobody disputes that he was conceived and born proud in Scotland, but neither do they deny that it was a Canadian who invented the phone. We continue to do so, and a lad raised near here in fact holds many of the patents on the blackberry. Most Americans, for example, think that basketball too was somehow an American invention. In fact, based on the population, the USA does not have a great percentage of inventors. Americans are however historically adept at scooping the assets of abutting nations, whether it is all of California, or just some piece of technology. Many times the people who invented the blackberry phone, have been sued by American companies laying claim to some limp patent, in each case, being laughed out of the courtroom. I am not aware that our French brothers and sisters here claim American inventions, as their overall attitude towards Americans, is parallel to those in Europe and Asia and Latin America including Cuba. Conversely, many Americans do revel in the rich culture and incredible cuisine of Montreal and Quebec City. I can assure you that no Quebecois is lusting to become an American. But for example, after the Quebecer Bombardier invented the snow mobile (skidoo) it sure wasn't long before Americans started making them, without patent lawsuits from their congenial French Canadian neighbors to the north. As to humour, we have comedians here that you all recognize for sure, the greatest of which was the late John Candy. But there have been great American comedians too, such as Dick Nixon (for dark humour) and George W Bush (Satire) and Bill Clinton (comic x-rated soap opera). It became evident that American politics was as much about acting as about reality, when Ronald Regan became president, who when stacked up with others, did not a bad job of it for a cowboy actor fro Hollywood.. There was a war here in 1812 that drew the line between Canada and the USA. Fortunately, we won. On that victorious day, we laid claim to our Canadian rights, accomplishments and history, to be secure and no longer threatened by other powers outside our limits. This country is the present and future of America's place in the new world, as we supply the lions share of your oil and natural gas, and all other raw materials squandered in the USA are plentiful here. We have a French as well as a European culture to blend with our native peoples heritage, and we never fought a civil war to settle differences of ethnicity. Our national medical system was indeed a Canadian invention, and now days some Americans marry canadians just to access health care...a heart operation or cancer treatment denied at home there. So, if you doubt that Alexander Bell was a Canadian when he invented the phone, you should visit Baddeck or Brantford. The historians will sort out your history for ya. And to wrap it up with some Orcadian content and purpose, the unique thing abouot that place and culture, is that so many people from afar, Australia, New Zealand, The African Continent, and our Canada, all are reluctant to give up that piece of their soul that cries out..."we are from Orkney." Many Americans seem to place a high value on that, perhaps because as we do here in Canada, we allow our culture to become fragmented and watered down so much, that we look back in time to find out who we are. Well, gotta go now. That Canadian invention just rang...yup...the phone. > Stephen, please....the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell lived in > Canada for less than two years after he lived in Scotland. > Americans are generous in giving credit to Canada for our > comedians, but Bell came to Boston from Canada and lived in the US > for almost four years when he invented the telephone. He patented > it in the US. It's a US invention. You sound like the French > there in claiming American inventions. > _______________________________________ > Orcadia Group Photo Album > http://tinyurl.com/28bx9x > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ORCADIA- > request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message >

I will to second this one. Alexander Graham Bell is a Great Grand Uncle of mine. He was most definitely living in the US when he invented the telephone. -------------------------------------------------- From: "Mike Ridlen" <mikeridlen@earthlink.net> Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 3:34 PM To: <orcadia@rootsweb.com> Subject: [ORCADIA] Inventions > Stephen, please....the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell lived in Canada > for less than two years after he lived in Scotland. Americans are > generous in giving credit to Canada for our comedians, but Bell came to > Boston from Canada and lived in the US for almost four years when he > invented the telephone. He patented it in the US. It's a US invention. > You sound like the French there in claiming American inventions. > _______________________________________ > Orcadia Group Photo Album > http://tinyurl.com/28bx9x > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > ORCADIA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >