A: Airbrush: A wolf howling in front of a full moon - how many hosers have airbrushed this image onto vans (or worn it on a shredded t-shirt, and we don't just mean Brett from Flight of the Conchords)? They can thank William Frederick Lawrence, the father of airbrush art. Born in Canada in the 1890s, he turned to painting after stints as an RCMP officer and a soldier and was the first artist anywhere to paint portraits with an airbrush. In the Thirties, he was finally recognized when Ripley's Believe it or Not featured him in a comic strip, but he died in obscurity.

B: Biltmore, the Stetson of the north: The pride of Guelph, Ont., began as Fried Hats (in 1917) but whatever its name, Biltmore still makes all manner of hats, from panamas and porkpies to stingy-brims, trilbys and fedoras, in the traditional manner (celeb lids it's topped include Matt Damon in The Good Shepherd). Atlanta-born entrepeneur Eric Lynes, Biltmore's owner since 2005, is also reinvigorating the brand for the 21st century. He's tweaked the fashion hats to appeal to young African-American men, a lucrative demographic. Then there's the open-source YouTube marketing campaign inviting fans to upload clips and "show us your Biltmore."

C: Canoes: There would be no Canada without canoes. Native peoples crisscrossed the country in birch bark crafts. Coureurs de bois fur traders, aka voyageurs, too. European settlers copied the natives, then invented their own style: canvas over wood. Canadian-made canoes - manufactured in the 20th century by the Chestnut Canoe Company of New Brunswick and the Peterborough Canoe Company of Ontario - are considered classics by canoeists the world over.

D: DayGlo: Neon red, fire orange, arc yellow, and saturn green - these were the original DayGlo colours. The United States military developed them during the Second World War. Soldiers tagged bombing targets with DayGlo paint; pilots could spot them from thousands of feet up. The Allies founded a factory in Canada to weave the first DayGlo fabric from cellulose acetate. DayGlo fabric made its fashion debut in the 1980s with the work of Stephen Sprouse. It's still around. It's like radium. It will not die.

E: Eskimo: Only they haven't been called that for years! It's Inuit, people! Learn the term. The most famous of our Cape Dorset artists is Kenojuak Ashevak, who at 82 remains an active printmaker. She's the pioneer of modern Inuit art.

F: Arthur Valair Fraser: At the turn of the last century, Quebec-born Fraser was the display director at Marshall Field's, the Chicago department store. He is best remembered for inventing the modern mannequin. The poseable papier-mache mannequins he created in the 1920s came to replace those that had come before, cast iron dummies that were too heavy for a man to carry, and wax figures that melted in the sun.

G: Guitars: We make world-class electric guitars. Freddy's Frets in Niagara, Larrivée's handmades, and the Furys and Dingwalls of Saskatoon, to name just a few. The most famous is probably Godin from Quebec. We know how to rock (just ask Rush) but just in case anyone's forgotten, let's remind them that it was the Canadian band The Guess Who - and not Lenny Kravitz! - who wrote the megahit American Woman.