I had my first Blackberry when I was running the dockside monitoring program on the north end of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I was the Port Supervisor for a private company contracted to monitor compliance with federal fisheries regulations, and I had a company Blackberry. My job was to manage and coordinate a team of people that monitored all commercial catch coming into port, from massive industrial trawlers to lone little hook and line vessels. We tagged halibut, logged otolith samples, inspected holds, and I coordinated with everyone from government authorities to the companies buying the fish to the freelance taggers I hired during halibut season.

BBM (Blackberry Messenger) kept my teams connected. It was the prelude to today’s iMessage. I could transfer files, pull up vessel hail-ins on the fly, and fire off emails. The was the T9 era, where typing on a phone required extreme thumb dexterity…unless you had a Blackberry. I remember a girl I was seeing once replied to one of my texts with “How do you type so fast?” I didn’t tell her my wizardly secret was the Blackberry keyboard.

This device wasn’t just a phone. It was a command centre that fit in my pocket. But maybe most importantly, it was a flex. It wasn’t just any smartphone. It was ours. Made in Waterloo, Ontario. Born in Canada, and it took the world by storm.

I ended up living in Kitchener, Waterloo’s sister city, years later. By then, Blackberry was a shell of its former self. I had a Samsung Galaxy SIII in my pocket by then. However, I could never type on a glass touchscreen as fast as I could on that Blackberry, and that’s maybe part of the point I’m trying to get at.

Blackberry wasn’t the only the only time Canada aimed for the stars in the technology space. Here’s but a small sampling of what Canadian entrepreneurs have brought to the world:

• Nortel
• The G-suit
• Sonar
• The alkaline battery
• The pager
• The Wonderbra
• Mapping the human genome
• The garbage bag

There was a time when Canadian innovation was bold and world-changing. Entrepreneurs and investors took big risks and made big plays. It made noise and helped shape the world.

Our people did this even when our population was small and our tech infrastructure a fraction of the size of what was available in the US or Asia. Still, we took risks and produced ideas. Blackberry was a Canadian success story that landed in pockets around the world. It launched the smartphone era. There was a few years there when it felt like everyone was carrying around a little piece of Waterloo.

What made it all the more impressive was how Blackberry carried itself with almost stereotypical Canadian humility. It didn’t shout. It barely marketed itself. It was simply practical, secure, and excellent. Perhaps that was why it fell.

Blackberry is something else entirely today. It no longer makes smartphones. It pivoted years ago into corporate cybersecurity software. To be fair, it’s good at it. Blackberry is a respected company in the high-stakes world of corporate boards and CEOs. And that’s part of Canada’s problem in the tech world today.

Our nation’s tech scene is mostly gone. So much of it is buried behind building enterprise tools, like corporate AI and workflow platforms. Backend optimization software. Communications encryption. Stuff the regular person has no need for. None of it touches the public the way Blackberry once did.

We’re busy building corporate infrastructure, not experiences. And with the illegal trade war started by the United States, I’m not sure there’s much future in that. We need, more than ever, Canadian tech that shows up in people’s lives. Spreadsheets don’t cut it. We need the ambition to build thing people will fall in love with.

I understand why it happened this way. Our startup ecosystem lacks risky venture capital. Our universities train top talent, but they mostly move to the US as opportunities dry up in Canada. It’s almost impossible to build loud. You can’t be bold in the current investment environment in Canada.

But I think we need to remember what it felt like to build for the world. Not just for B2B sales decks, but for impact on regular people’s lives. For presence. For identity. Just like when we built Blackberry or invented the Wonderbra.

Now, follow me down an imaginary path for a moment. What if Blackberry made a comeback? What if it gives the world what it desperately needs, and wants, at this critical moment in time: a real alternative to Android and iOS? Imagine a new Blackberry operating system, built from the ground up for users. A new device, maybe even with a keyboard?

If any Canadian company could do it, it’s Blackberry. The institutional expertise is still there, even if much of the individual talent is long gone. They would need the kind of bold, risky capital investment Canadian tech is not used to. But that’s the point. If anyone can do it, it’s Blackberry. After all, they’ve done it before.

Unlike Nortel, which no longer exists, Blackberry is still here. It’s in a sleepy cocoon. But cocoons are not crypts. They are a place of transformation. Imagine, if you’re still with me here, if Blackberry re-emerged as an innovator, a transformer once again in the world of communications. A new operating system to take on the oligarchic dominance of Android and iOS, backed by Blackberry’s signature brand of security, privacy, and dependability.

I don’t think Canada’s spirit of innovation and risk is gone. Like Blackberry, it’s simply sleeping. I see glimmers of it coming out of Montreal and Vancouver. A few bold projects are starting to take place, like Eh! (a new social network being built) and Canada Learning Code. They need more oxygen, sure, but these innovative projects are being born.

My Canada includes a Blackberry. It includes the belief that we can build something like that again. Something that doesn’t skulk in the shadows, chasing after a few bucks from big American corporations, but takes the stage and declares “I Am Canadian!”

We can do it. And when we do, I hope it clicks as perfectly as a Blackberry keyboard.