Brief Periods of Sunshine

In the 1970s a worldwide energy crisis wracked Canada. Searching for ways to provide energy for Canada’s future, the Canadian government encouraged the development of a new technology: solar heating. The political and economic needs of the Trudeau government and Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources dominated the Canadian solar heating industry from its inception in 1978 until its demise in 1983. Partisan politics, however, were not the only important influence on solar energy in Canada. Technologies of simulation and prediction, as well as the Canadian government’s adherence to the ideology of objectivity, also shaped the history of solar heating in Canada. By analyzing the role of simulation, “objectivity,” and political power in the rise and fall of the solar industry, this essay hopes to illuminate the importance of government in the Canadian history of technology and begin to provide a history of Canadian solar technology and industry

Demise · Electrical engineering · Ideology · Physics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solar energy · Solar Power · Canadian Identity and History · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Research, Science, and Academia

• Introduction

  Open Access•Mahdi Khelfaoui•Scientia Canadensis Canadian…•2014

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• Planning the Future

  Open Access•Henry Trim•Canadian Historical Review•2015

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• Right Research

  Open Access•Chelsea Miya, Oliver Rossier et al.•Right Research•2021

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• The Closed World

  Paul N Edwards•The Closed World•1996

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• A Perilous Progress

  Michael André Bernstein•Perilous Progress•2001

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• The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts

  Open Access•Trevor Pinch, Trevor J Pinch et al.•Social Studies of Science•1984

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• Pendulum Policy

  Open Access•John Robinson, John Bridger Robinson•Canadian Journal of Political…•1983

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