A Canadian housewife has left scientists red-faced by demonstrating her own alternative to “teleporting”, the holy grail of science fiction and physics whereby matter is transported from one location to another using beams of energy.

Mary Canuck of Kamloops, British Columbia, staged a demonstration for the press in the kitchen of her duplex home today.

Scientists announced this June that they were able to transport “physical characteristics” between atoms. But Mrs Canuck scoffed at the idea that this was a new development.

“I’ve been doing similar work for years,” she said.

Mrs Canuck then picked up a toaster and wowed the assembled reporters and photographers by carrying it to a laminated benchtop on the other side of the room.

“It’s much bigger than some tiny little atomic particle, and I didn’t need a PhD, a big computer or laser beams to move it from there to here,” she said.

Mrs Canuck repeated the demonstration with an electric jug, an electric blender and a coffee cup with a picture of Garfield and the word “Mary” printed on it.

To demonstrate that the technique also works with organic material, Mrs Canuck then transported herself from one side of the crammed kitchen to the other and back, prompting gasps from the crowd of onlookers.

The press corps examined the objects, including Mrs Canuck as far as decency would allow. They observed that all items appeared identical and intact compared with their pre-transfer state.

Mrs Canuck acknowledged the use of a car, aircraft or the postal service may be required to teleport objects over long distances using her technique. And in the case of the postal service, delays may occur over the Christmas period.

“But the fact is I’m way ahead of those scientists in the sheer amount of things I can move around.”

Star Trek star William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk), also a Canadian, lauded the achievement.

“This is very similar to the technique we used on the set of the show. After we shot a scene in the transporter room, I would just walk to another set and we’d shoot the bit where I’d arrived on whatever planet we were visiting,” he said.

“I found that I could generally move from the transporter set to the next one without any real change in my appearance or composition. Although sometimes I would get waylaid by Leonard Nimoy wanting to bounce script changes off me or help him clean his prosthetic Vulcan ears. They used to get quite contaminated with earwax over the course of shooting an episode.

“I must admit that Mary seems to have refined the process somewhat and it’s a prime example of Canadian know-how. We invented the telephone up here you know.”

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said they weren’t convinced by Mary Canuck’s experiment, as the findings had not been peer reviewed. “And she has no academic qualifications whatsoever,” said the institutes HJ Kimble, who worked on the teleporting project.

“Frankly I don’t believe Canadians have much more than quaint beer commercials and maple syrup as their claim to fame.”