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File No. 198347 · Adjudicated
Alexander Graham Bell
inventor, scientist, and engineer — Inventor of the telephone
Born
1847
Birthplace
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
Citizenships
UK / CA
Canadianness Score
🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁
2.0/ 5
Weighted across 6 scored criteria
Designation
Gets Yearly Letters from the CRA 📬Not born or raised there — but the CRA always knows where to find them.
Scorecard
Path B — not born on Canadian soilI. Origin
Born on Canadian soil — no
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
Canadian parentage — no
No Canadian parents on record
Citizenship on record — yes
Held — by descent or naturalisation
II. Residency
Formative years spent in Canada — no
Raised elsewhere
Lived in Canada by choice — yes
Residency on record as an adult
Worked or filmed in Canada — yes
Credits filed north of the 49th
III. Cultural evidence — not scored
Section III is recorded for the file only. It carries no weight under either path.
Publicly claims to be Canadian — not scored
Says so, out loud
Canada claims them back — not scored
Claimed, enthusiastically
Fun fact
Bell conducted his first successful long-distance telephone call between Brantford and Paris, Ontario in 1876.
The verdict
Invented the telephone in Canada, died at his Nova Scotia estate, and sold the Canadian patent rights that became Bell Canada — but started life in Scotland and became an American citizen too. Canada claims him as strongly as any country can claim a genius who belonged to the world, and honestly, we're not giving him back.
Adjudicated by
The Standings Committee
Status
Final — appealable
Related files
More from the files: Gets Yearly Letters from the CRA 📬
References — en.wikipedia.org