20 Winter / Hiver 2017 his article reports observations of two German scientists, a physicist and a material scientist, who vis- ited Canada as of their different formal positions. Since 1989, Walter Hey- wang, professor of Technical University of Munich (TUM) and former director of Sie- mens R&D, is visiting technical adviser in the University of Alberta, where he visits three times a year for four weeks. His main job is technology consulting and transfer and he helps different companies across the Atlantic. Robert Heimann is head of material science division inAlberta Research Council as well as professor at University of Alberta. He is responsible for technology transfer in raw material and manufacturing industries in the Canadian province of Alberta in the area of traditional materials and high power materials especially high power ceramics. He lives in Canada since 1979 (in provinces of Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta) and worked in McMaster University, University of Toronto and in industry (3M Canada) as well as Fed- eral (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.) and provincial research laboratories (Alberta Research Council) where he was and still is active in the area of material research. When a natural scientist steps in a country like Canada, he/she has reasons to study still interesting topics like ice formation, north- ern light or other similar northern climate chan- ges which characterize this land. However this is not all; as many important contributions in physical research also happen in Canada. Examples for such are: TRIUMF facilities for medium-energy nuclear and particle research in British Columbia with planned “Kaon factory” for medical research, under construction SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) in Ontario, Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics as well as high energy physics group at Carleton Univer- sity in Ottawa and OPAL project (Omni-Pur- pose Apparatus for Linear Electron-Positron Acceleration) which collaborates with CERN. Also many space research projects should be mentioned as well e.g. Mobile Servicing System for Space Station, VIKING project satellite and interesting Space Shuttle experiments. Finally the works of Erner Israel, University of Alberta, with Stephen Hawking in Cam- bridge, UK, about black holes must be named which are very topical today. Despite all of these, Canadian contributions are under appreciated in the view of Europeans, who compare things with United States. This holds even more in terms of technical-indus- trial applications, in which the neighboring United States with ten-fold development puts Canada in the shadow. This puzzles us more when we see for example how Bell Northern has established itself beyond a Canada-wide telephone com- pany. Why? The enormous area of the country has a determining role in creating the demand for telecommunications. Likewise there are problems like transportation in the vast country under harsh climatic conditions which must be resolved, and Bombardier, which was founded based on local solutions, found a worldwide reputation. The energy issue adds another dimension. So Hydro-Québec, a pioneer in 735KV-distribution, conquered longer distances. Nuclear energy has another leading role based on heavy water moderated CANDU reactor system and the low energy SLOPOKE system, to heat the isolated settle- ments in Northwest Territories. The raw materi- al industry can proceed by developing extrac- tion procedures for heavy oil, zinc and nickel and biotechnology with the first application of cloning in beef industry. The medicine has of course a major role as such a young country shows an extraordinary long tradition in that. In 1923, two Canadians F. Banting and R. Macleod won the Nobel Prize for discovery of insulin and its working mechanism. Their colleague, C. Best, made a breakthrough for insulin mass production as a medicine. The remarkable status in medical technology with important contributions like imaging systems, prosthesic devices and new drugs benefit a lot from their exemplary social healthcare system. And as another example: in Alberta there is a fund to generously sponsor the medical research and developments. However we should not still use these to com- pensate the prevalence of physics and technol- ogy in United States when comparing with that of Canada. This is because Canada is much younger as an independent country and so far it was only a raw material producer and in many aspects it is still at the beginning of industrial- ization. Large dependence on the reservoirs of raw material and a less diversified economy of Canada, for example oil and natural gas and coal of Alberta, forest industry of British Col- umbia and Quebec, potassium and uranium mining of Saskatchewan as well as nickel, zinc *with permission from Wiley-VCH GmbH. Letters from Canada Below is an English translation of“W. Heywang, und R. B. Heimann,Als Physiker und Materialwissensch- aftler in Kanada, Physikalische Blätter, Volume 47, Issue 10, October 1991, Pages 943-944”, DOI: 10.1002/phbl.19910471017. The first paragraph is the article’s abstract. In 1991, two German scientists posted to Canada shared their impressions with colleagues ... T * translated by: Daryoush Shiri, PhD, MIEEE Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.