Essentially concerned with distance education as innovation in higher education, this paper identifies specific aspects of this innovation through references to three Canadian institutions offering university level courses for credit. It is primarily concerned with Athabasca University in Alberta, a distance education university which originally set out very deliberately to be innovative in all those dimensions that characterize a university, and over time has become more and more traditional in what it does and how it conducts its affairs. References are also made to the Open Learning Institute in British Columbia, which has successfully managed to offer university, technical/vocational, and adult basic education programs under one organizational roof, and the Tele-Universite in Quebec, which offers courses and programs that are much more innovative in their orientation and interdisciplinary character than those offered by the other two institutions. Examples drawn from these three institutions include innovations intended but not achieved; intended innovations that did succeed; and innovations that resulted but were not intended. The concluding section raises some questions about the nature of higher education and the pattern of relative success exhibited by the innovations identified in the paper, and presents some speculations about the directions that future developments in distance education may take in Canada. (DJR)