In his new book, The Butler Speaks, Charles MacPherson (a.k.a. Charles the Butler) shares his hard-won wisdom on everything from entertaining to organizing Asian cutlery. We caught up with the Toronto-based founder of North America’s first and only butler academy to discuss cellphone no-nos, famous fictional butlers, and why there’s nothing rude about tooting—as long as you own up and say excuse me.

I don’t want to make too fine a point of it, but we were supposed to talk at noon and it is now 1:30. Does one’s etiquette fly out the window while promoting one’s etiquette book?

I am so embarrassed. We had two of the numbers in your phone number inverted. Normally, I would never be late.

One of the things you suggest in your book is that before an event, a host should brush up on recent headlines.

People are sometimes afraid to go to an event because they don’t know what to talk about. By picking up a newspaper, it’s easy to get a general sense of what’s going on, so that you can either make conversation or at least be able to listen and comment intelligently.

So, if I was hosting you at a dinner party, I might say, “Charles, I just read a fascinating article in the Business Insider where Mark Zuckerberg says that checking your smartphone at the dinner table is not rude.” And you would say…

I completely and respectfully disagree with Mr. Zuckerberg. The reason is that sitting down to have a meal is about giving your attention to that person or that group. If something is so important that you have to be emailing or checking calls from the table, then you obviously don’t have time for the people you’re with.

And you’re also implying that your time is more important than anyone else’s.

Exactly. I will excuse it if the person I’m dining with is a surgeon and has someone else’s life in their hands, but that’s about it. Mothers may not like this, but just because little Johnny is sick, there’s no reason to disrupt the whole table. In that case, you need to put your phone on vibrate, then excuse yourself to the washroom if you need to make a call.

In general, does the shift towards an on-the-go, efficiency-obsessed society fly in the face of old-school etiquette?

It doesn’t fly in the face. But it means that etiquette needs to change. Etiquette is really about social interactions amongst ourselves and being respectful of each other, which is hopefully something we all still care about.

Is there still a big market for butlers out there? I know people with housekeepers and even drivers, but beyond a few billionaire families, who uses butlers?

There is actually a large demand, and it’s not just billionaires. In the movies, the butler is a person who answers the doors and spills soup on you if he doesn’t like you, but in reality, he is running errands, making an appointment with the air conditioning guy, picking up dry cleaning, and making sure the kids are with their tutor after school.

I was reading that a graduate from your academy can expect to make $50,000 in his or her first year on the job. No, wait—I say “his or her,” but is there such a thing as a female butler nowadays?

There is. Right now, about 10 per cent of butlers in private household service are female, but in the hotel industry it’s about 50/50.

Okay, back to the 50 grand. That is a huge starting salary for a job that doesn’t require a university education.

We place butlers starting at 50 to 60 [thousand dollars] and we’ve done up to a quarter of a million dollars. It really depends on level of service that is expected: Are you running just one households or three households? If you are in charge of three houses that each have a staff of 10, that’s 30 people you’re in charge of. That’s like managing a small company.

Did you watch Fresh Prince? I’m reminded of the episode where Geoffrey tells Hilary that there is nothing demeaning about serving other people.

I don’t recall that exact episode, but I can hear him saying that. The truth is that the work I do is not at all demeaning. Look at the incredible people I’ve been able to meet. Where else would little Charles MacPherson have had an opportunity to sit down to tea with the prime minister? I’ve met movie stars and captains of industry and watched history unfold.

Speaking of fictional butlers, you must have your favourites.

Of course. There is the fabulous Mr. Carson on Downton Abby, but probably my all-time favourite is a sad one—Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day. He is the perfect butler, but he is such the perfect butler that he sacrifices love in his life.

How have you managed to balance your personal life and professional life—is there a Mrs. Charles the Butler?

There is a Mr. Charles the Butler. We’ve been together for over 20 years. In the early years, I was very lucky that he was a really patient person. He worked as a flight attendant so we were used to being separated and it was okay.

Last question—I came across a video clip of you where you are offering etiquette advice. You say, “If you’re going to accidentally toot on the plane,” and then it cuts off.  Can you complete the sentence?

Well, everyone toots—it’s just a fact of life. You just say excuse me and carry on.

LIGHTNING ROUND!

Swiffer or old-school mop?
Never a Swiffer.

Salt or pepper?
Pepper.

Prince Harry or Prince William?
Prince William.

Best subject in school?
Theatre.

Favourite colour?
Red.

Favourite breakfast?
Oatmeal.

Desert island album?
Kylee Smith.

Biggest indulgence?
Homemade yogurt.

As a purgatory between home and where you want to be, airports tend to crush the spirit of weary travellers. Sometimes, the only thing that breaks up the blandness is the occasional nuisance.

But then there’s the Singing Baggage Handler, located just after U.S. Customs at the departures area of Pearson’s Terminal 1. He’s a ray of hope, tossing baggage where it needs to go to the tunes of Bob Marley—and if anything can make travel go down easier, it’s a good Bob Marley cover.

The still unnamed Singing Baggage Handler seems to connect with people, too. Actor and director Sarah Polley enthused on Twitter that he deserves presents for his vocal contributions. Former Degrassi: TNG actress Lauren Collins tweeted that he always calms her nerves, and blogger @stressbubbles refers to him as a “day-changer.” We’ll just call him the only good thing about standing in line at customs.

According to the guys in those “We Want It” ads, the City of Toronto will recycle pretty much anything. But it’s taken some environmentally-conscious Torontonians to figure out a way to keep sex toys out of the landfill. Enter the folks behind Come As You Are: Last month, the co-operatively-run sex store launched Canada’s first program to properly dispose of old silicone sex toys—and they’re encouraging anyone with a worn out toy to bring it in.

Come As You Are already has systems in place to recycle batteries and chest binders and this next step has been in the works for several years now, according to one of the co-op’s worker-owners, Jack Lamon.

Lamon stresses that the materials will be disposed of in a safe and sanitary manner, and won’t be resold to customers (they’re considered a biohazard, after all). “We want to make it very clear that we are not sending anything back to the sex-toy food-chain.” Instead, the old toys will be broken down to their recyclable
parts, and dispensed of accordingly.

Patrons can bring in old silicone toys and vibrators to the store (please wash or boil the toys first), where they can be exchanged for a 15 per cent off coupon.

In his new book, Full Count: Four Decades of Blue Jays Baseball, the local sportswriter and host of The Jeff Blair Show looks back on Toronto’s team through its formative years, its glory era, and the last 20 years of meh. We sat down with Blair to discuss the current state of “dream team” disappointment, drinking the Kool-Aid, and why, sometimes, Madonna trumps baseball.

People keep saying that it’s too early to be let down by the Jays so-called dream team, but come on! When can we all admit this is a nightmare?

Most baseball people would say that 40 games is when you can really judge a team—you’ve gone through the rotation several times, so you have a better idea of the long range. That said, I’m worried about a few things—the defence hasn’t been that good, they’re striking out a lot, and the on-base percentage is awful.

Presumably, getting on base is pretty important.

Right. I can see where people are worried. The hardcore fan who’s followed the team might be willing to be patient, but what happens when you raise expectations is you’re getting a whole bunch of people who bought into the sizzle.

Did you drink the Kool-Aid coming into this season?

Not really. I predicted that they’d finish second in their division and would lose in the first round to Texas. I never looked at this team as a World Series team because I don’t think it is. One of the reasons I held back a bit was because I thought José Reyes would get injured.

And he did.

Yes—although the artificial turf here is so bad that I thought he was going to blow out a knee or hurt his hamstring. I never thought he’d do it to himself by sliding into second.

You were ranting about the crappy turf on your show the other day. Please explain.

There are only two teams in baseball that use artificial turf—Tampa and Toronto. Essentially, it’s a layer of carpet over a layer of dirt on concrete. Just standing on it hurts your knees, so imagine playing 81 games on it.

Why don’t we have real grass?

One of the problems is that the Rogers Centre is a multi-use facility. Putting grass down would be really difficult with concerts and the Argos chewing it up. Also, you can’t just lay down the grass. You have to lower the existing foundation. It’s not something you can do overnight and it’s pretty costly—$5 million or $10 million.

This is Rogers. That’s a couple of bucks!

Yeah. Ultimately, they are going to do it—probably in four or five years.

Who would you say has been the biggest disappointment so far this season?

Probably José Bautista. It’s not entirely his fault—you can’t really criticize a guy for not playing hurt, but I know the fans are feeling dissatisfaction. We’re seeing a lot of what we saw last year—he’s arguing with umpires when the call doesn’t go his way. I know one of the things the Jays were working on at spring training was trying to change the culture of the team. This was a really whiny team last year.

In your book you talk about a lack of hometown heroes. What about Brett Lawrie? Could he be that guy?

I would like to think so, but I’m not sure that the way he plays is conducive to a long career. He’s intense; nothing is done at half speed. Baseball is the type of game where if you hit a routine ground out, you’re going to be out at first—it doesn’t matter how fast you run, so there are times when you have to monitor your intensity. He doesn’t have that filter.

Why wouldn’t the coaches tell him to smarten up?

Everybody does, but it’s the way he’s wired. Until he jams his shoulder sliding into home plate for no reason, it’s not going to register.

The Blue Jays brass decided not to make a big splash over the 20-year anniversary of the first World Series win. Was that a good call?

At the time I didn’t think so, but I get it. Just a few years ago they had a big function to honour Cito Gaston’s career and it was all of the same guys from the World Series team, so it would feel like a re-do.

I guess you end up looking a bit like Al Bundy.

Exactly. One of the big complaints about the Blue Jays is that they have been stuck in the past. They used to do these things called Flashback Fridays where they’d bring out one of the old guys. I used to laugh and think that Kelly Gruber must live in the area, because every second Friday, there he was. Rogers did marketing studies and realized they needed to do something to bring in a new, younger fan base. It worked. You go to a Jays game now and there are a lot more young people.

You go to a taco restaurant on Queen West and every other person is in a Jays hat.

Right. They had to make a break with the past to move forward.

Since we’re allowed to be as nostalgic as we want to be, where were you on Oct. 24, 1992?

I was in Montreal writing for the Gazette then, so I was sitting at home watching it on my couch. When they won in 1993, I was in Montreal at a Madonna concert. Afterwards, I can remember walking by a bar and looking at the TV right when Joe Carter hit his home run. There were people around and it was like, “meh.” No reaction. I still get grief for that, but I wasn’t covering it and I had plans.

Hey, you’re preaching to the choir. I would have been at that concert.

It was The Girlie Show. It was a great tour.

LIGHTNING ROUND!

Don Cherry or Ron MacLean?
Neither (dislike both intensely).

Hot dog or pizza?
Hot dog.

Favourite sports book?
Bang the Drum Slowly.

Field of Dreams or Bull Durham?
Bang the Drum Slowly.

Rogers Centre or ACC?
Rogers Centre.

Desert island album?
London Calling, by The Clash and a Bob Marley box set.

Celebrity crush?
Drew Barrymore.

If Instagram does anything well, it’s food photos. Sure, many are unnecessary, and there’s always that friend who uses really weird filters for their brunch pictures, but it’s all in good fun.

And then there’s Toronto-based Instagram user @madvillan, who takes food photos to the next level. Otherwise known as Milos P., he describes himself as a baking enthusiast, but what makes him unique is how he shares that passion with online followers. Every month, Milos posts a photo of some cookies he just baked, and the first five people to comment on the picture get a batch hand-delivered to their door. He takes reaction photos, too, with recipients enthusiastically showing off their cookie loot.

It’s sort of like  Milos is Toronto’s Instagram Cookie Monster, with one notable exception: Rather than um-num-num-ing all the cookies himself, he’s clearly an ace sharer. So to him we sing: M is for menschie, and the menschie goes to you.

It’s a Tuesday evening in Toronto, and a clean shaven, handsome guy decked out in motorcycle gear is walking briskly towards St. Clair subway station. He checks his watch—it’s just a few minutes after 6 p.m. “Ah, right on time,” he says, pleased.

He lifts the black duffel bag slung across his shoulders and passes through the turnstile.

“He should be waiting by the streetcar platforms,” he says.

He notices a tall man in a red shirt leaning against a pillar.

“I think that’s him… hey buddy, what’s up?”

Grinning, the guy in the red shirt introduces himself as Brian, a thirtysomething North York resident who has made the trip midtown for a very special purpose: To buy a copy of The Toronto Violation Project, an adult film, directly from the man who stars in it.

Meet Voodoo. He’s one of the top male performers in the adult industry. His latest porno is set in Toronto. And he wants to be your mayor.

The Toronto-born Voodoo—a.k.a. Alex Torres—has hundreds of titles under his belt, including Busty Bonitas Bon Bons and Throat: A Cautionary Tale. He’s a multiple AVN award winner and is the ex-husband of superstar porn actress Nicole Sheridan.

“Have you ever seen Boogie Nights? That’s a lot like how my story was,” the 35-year old says as we settle in to chat at a midtown cafe. Back in 1999, he had finished a degree in photography at Humber College and was working at a downtown Chapters when he felt he needed an adventure to help figure out “what he was going to do with the rest of life.”

He decided to go on a motorcycle tour of the U.S. It was during his final stop in Los Angeles that he ran out of money. “I went to the clerk of the motel I was staying at and asked him if he knew how to make a quick buck,” he explains. The clerk knew a casting agent in the porn business. Up for anything, Voodoo agreed.

Fifteen years and thousands of women later, Voodoo has experienced it all. In 2011, he raised the ire of the Federal Aviation Authority after he videotaped himself having sex while skydiving. (An investigation later determined he did not break any federal laws.) A year later, he was back in the headlines after alleging he had sex with Lindsay Lohan while her father Michael slept upstairs. Lohan’s father slammed the story, calling Voodoo a “delusional moron.”

“I was a complete wild man [in Los Angeles],” Voodoo says. “I was doing a lot of drugs, having too much sex, and was out of control. I was living in a big house in a gated community… but coming home, sometimes, it was really lonely. If it wasn’t for my dogs, you’d contemplate suicide once in a while. It gets pretty depressing. People don’t see that side of the entertainment industry.”

Voodoo decided it was time to reset his gears.

Moving back into his childhood home two months ago in the Dufferin and St. Clair area, Voodoo now lives with his 62-year old mother, who makes sure her son has a healthy breakfast before he starts another day on the job—hawking his latest porno across Toronto.

Filmed last summer in various locations—and positions—across the city, The Toronto Violation Project is a porno with a sense of civic pride. Accompanied by co-stars Karlie Montana, Emma Sky, and Hayden Wildhart, Voodoo set about filming his carnal capers around local landmarks: oral sex on the ledge of the 42nd-storey balcony of the One King West Hotel, a sly masturbation session at the Rogers Centre, and bare breasts at the CN Tower are all captured in the film.

Voodoo uses Twitter to arrange meet-ups with fans interested in purchasing the DVD and will travel anywhere on the TTC line. “It allows me to charge a premium price. On the internet, you can watch all this porn for free. This way, you can get my autograph and meet me,” he says.

But Voodoo is ready to put the adult industry behind him in order to fulfill a childhood dream: entering politics. Come 2014, Voodoo plans to run for mayor of Toronto.

“The L.A. life, as far as sex, drugs, rock and roll—I’ve given that up. I’ve sold my L.A. house,” he says. Now, he’s focusing on the issues that will shape his mayoral platform.

He cites entertainment as his number-one priority. “I’m a fan of the casino idea. It’s going to create a ton of jobs and bring a new level of internationalism to the city. As mayor, I wouldn’t fight for one casino; I’d turn the whole lakeshore into Las Vegas.”

A red light district is sorely needed, too, says Voodoo. “As much as I’m for the sex trade, I don’t think it should be in your face,” he says. Believing that Toronto still has a ways to go when it comes to being a sexy city, Voodoo plans on encouraging more massage parlours to be built.

He’s disappointed with the state of our transit, specifically the St. Clair West project. “I’m not a fan of what the [David Miller] administration did. I love streetcars, but the planning and engineering are poor. It’s an absolute mess.” He supports Mayor Rob Ford’s subway-expansion plans and emphasizes the need to come up with incentives for people to leave their cars at home.

His biggest frustration, however, is what a “filthy” city Toronto is. “Garbage is on the street, it’s in the laneways, there’s graffiti.” Voodoo attributes his sensitivity to his mother’s influence. “She’s a local fanatic about keeping the neighbourhood clean. She will go out and yell at people for [littering],” he laughs.

For now, the man who calls himself “Canada’s greatest export” spends his time selling his porn projects and working on his tell-all memoir, The Book of Voodoo. But the next election is never far from his mind. In fact, he’s already planned what his first act as mayor will be: have sex in his office.

Under the high-peaked ceilings and aged brick walls of a 140-year old former church on Dundas East, the tools of the religious trade have been converted into a refuge for the needy. Pews that have been turned around act as benches, so people can speak to one another. Computers hum in the corner, the old tube monitors flickering with news and YouTube videos. Men sleep on the bare wooden floor, socks tucked neatly into shoes, unzipped coats acting as makeshift blankets. In the far corner of the former sanctuary, a red-orange glow from a stained glass image of Jesus bathes a small ring of people softly singing hymns.

In his clean sport coat and pressed pants, with his bright orange bicycle helmet dangling by his side, John Deacon stands out in the dishevelled crowd. He leads the assembled in song, softly plucking at the strings on his guitar. His guitar case leans against the wall, casting a shadow over a box filled with second-hand shoes. At the All Saints Community Drop-in Centre, Deacon plays for the poor.

Toronto’s needy have become a cause for the 63-year-old insurance broker. Walking along Toronto’s downtown streets, he stops to talk to the city’s hidden people—the homeless shivering in the cold, the shadow curled up in the corner, the bundle of rags huddled on subway vents. In doing so, Deacon provides what many street people say they need to keep on going: friendship.

“It makes a hell of a difference,” says Paul Brown, who panhandles for change by St. Michael’s hospital, where Deacon stops regularly to chat. “It lets you know you’re still human.”

In addition to his efforts to connect with street people, Deacon tries to humanize the homeless and put a face on poverty by documenting his experiences in little vignettes on his blog, A Visitor’s Guide to Street People, many without a Home. Deacon writes the majority of the posts, with two street people contributing occasional stories.

In 2009, a friend pushed Deacon to start his blog, which contains more than 600 of his posts, and has been visited more than 60,000 times. “I think there’s enough writing by business people for business people. The wealthy have enough voices,” says the salt-and-pepper haired, spectacled Deacon. He grew up in Rosedale, where he lived in a house even larger than his current four-bedroom 2,500-square-foot residence in Thornhill. Deacon lives with his wife, and has three grown children. He is a partner at a downtown insurance firm where he works with his brothers.

His blog tells stories of the street people and the world they live in. People like Michelle, who proudly cuts her own hair, or Brian, who used to have an apartment, until it was bought and developed, and he couldn’t afford the increased rent. Interspersed among these posts are Deacon’s own musings about social housing, on the plight of the poor, and on the responsibilities of the wealthy. “I want people to read the blog and respect the homeless,” says Deacon. “Is this my blog? Or is this a vehicle to honour people who don’t have much honour?”

Many of the blog posts begin by citing passages of scripture, because religion is an important part of Deacon’s life. He leads prayerful song services and a discussion group for drop-in centre visitors. According to minister Ken Davis, Deacon was instrumental in the launch of their church, The Olive Branch Community Church. Deacon pushed for community outreach and urged members of the affluent church to live its message and help the poor. “John kept us tied in,” Davis says. Deacon made sure the church advocated on behalf of, gave money to, and offered services to the less fortunate.

Davis, who has known Deacon for almost 20 years, has read Deacon’s blog and seen his passion first-hand. “John has never stopped talking about the homeless,” Davis says. “To him, they’re not the homeless. They’re people.”

Deacon wasn’t always as concerned about the homeless. His transformation from a businessman who would walk past street people without a glance to the friend of the poor occurred in the early 1990s. Before that, “I had this sense that I could do better,” he says. Then, he met Al.

Although Deacon only knew Al for a short period of time, the encounter was key in changing Deacon’s understanding of the homeless. “You might say that the encounter had marked me,” Deacon says. “Al was a major contributor to my thinking of street people as something other than beggars.”

Then there was Chris. Chris frequented the south-east corner of Bay and Adelaide, and was one course away from graduating from Columbia University with a Master’s degree in philosophy. When his girlfriend left him, Chris couldn’t handle it and dropped out of school. “It was then I learned that, for many street people, a broken relationship can be one of the reasons they’re out of the street,” Deacon says. “Just as my street friends counter the dehumanizing effect doing business has on me, my befriending them can reverse the dehumanizing effect of being cut off from others.”

Deacon says the relationship is mutually beneficial. “If they are hospitalized, I go to see them; were I hospitalized, they would come see me,” he says. “Some do visit me at my office, especially if it has been some time since I have seen them on the street. In dropping by, they might hit me up for some money, but invariably what they give in return is their time and their honest inquiry about how I am doing.”

One of Deacon’s closes street friends was Robert Garrison. Garrison, originally from Montreal, lost his wife and children in 1984 in a car crash with a cement truck.

“Robert’s life ended then,” says Deacon. Garrison moved to Toronto, learned how to get by on the streets, and became Deacon’s tour guide for that aspect of the city. Garrison knew every shelter inside and out; he even had a calendar of which meals were served where on which days.

“He knew it as well as I know insurance,” Deacon says. “Garrison would visit me at the office; he would tell me he was ‘just dropping by to make sure you’re doing okay.’” He would bring along glass jewellery he said he made for Deacon’s wife.

Garrison, Deacon says, was addicted to crack cocaine and died in 2007. Deacon, though, still doesn’t hesitate to help his friends or give them money. “I see myself no more different than they are,” he says. “I can’t say every dollar I’ve ever earned has gone to something beneficial to me or my family. You wouldn’t ask me what happens to every dollar I earn,” he says, “so why should I ask them? It’s an indignity.”

Deacon says businessmen have a responsibility to do more than make money. “We have a responsibility to be a good neighbour. I think this is something other business people could be doing, and it would make them a better business person.”

Between 2006 and 2009, Deacon organized what he called “rich man, poor man” lunches at George Brown College, and would invite both business and street people to come by, eat a good meal, and talk to each other. Lawyer Michael Powell, who knew Deacon through the Olive Branch Church, attended a few of the lunches, even though he hated the name, calling it pretentious. The experience, he admits, did affect him. “How many times have you ever talked to a street person?” he asks. “Most people don’t get to talk to them like a normal human being. These guys each have their own different stories.” He says the meeting “humanized them.”

“Some people in our Christian faith just talk the talk,” he says. “John walks the walk. He’s the real deal. He puts his money where his mouth is.”

Deacon stopped hosting the lunches because his street friends wouldn’t always show up. “Sometimes, they would get distracted by other things, some would forget the date, mainly because their routine is established by something other than a calendar,” he says. “I’m sure some didn’t come because they were afraid of being ‘scrutinized.’”

In any case, Deacon says he has realized it’s important to meet with homeless people in a place where they feel comfortable, instead of a place he chooses.

But Deacon’s interactions go beyond the people he meets on the street. Hercules Pilatos ran a travel counter, first in a grocery store, then at a location fronting on Yonge Street, before it went out of business. Shortly after, his mother was hit by a bus. He lost all his money, and had to sell his apartment. Depressed, he began living out of the back of his car. “I needed a friend,” he says, recalling how Deacon helped him get back on his feet. In this case, that involved Deacon sitting in on a welfare meeting and, later, helping Pilatos secure a place in a government run program that provides housing for mentally ill homeless individuals so they can become healthy again.

Pilatos is now the proud renter of an apartment on Sherbourne. He is convinced he couldn’t have done it without Deacon.

“John saved my life.”

Get this: That dad dropping his kids off at team practice is a neuroscientist who knows how electricity moves in your brain. The cyclist who just passed you on the morning commute is an expert in ancient life forms, and the street photographer who just snapped a shot of your man purse is figuring out how to reproduce human skin. Young scientists are lurking everywhere, because Toronto is a place they want to be. It’s where they can research at a hospital on University Avenue, walk over to MaRS to figure out how to sell their ideas, then cross the street to teach a class at U of T. And aside from the institutions building shiny labs and lobbying the government for tax credits, this city is where communities of nerds and geeks overlap—tinkering, experimenting, and encouraging each other to do the same.

“We have an expert in everything in Toronto,” says Tom Schweizer, the head of a new pod of neuroscientists at St. Michael’s Hospital. “We’re collaborating more than we used to, and we’re not as siloed as we used to be.” That’s why OCADU prof Kate Hartman can get 30 strangers out for a meetup about making electronics you can wear, and Hacklab’s Chris Olah can go from being an unconnected teen mathematician to a director of a thriving hackerspace in just a few years. They, and the rest of the thinkers on our list, are why Toronto is at the forefront of disease prevention, physics, engineering, and, hey, fun. The brainiacs who follow are some of the best that we’ve got—a few are well-established, others are rising stars—but they’re also just the tip of the iceberg.

The skin-graft revolutionary (and fashion blogger)

Lian Leng, 29

PhD student, Laboratory of  Lab-on-a-chip Devices, University of Toronto

Home hood: Yonge and College

Why shouldn’t a fashion blogger who does photo shoots for American Apparel also create a revolutionary treatment for burn patients? By day, Lian Leng is a PhD student designing a new method to create skin grafts. By night (and weekends), she indulges in her love of cameras and fashion, taking photos for her year-old style site, Torontostreetfashion.blogspot.com, which she runs with her twin sister, Qin, an illustrator.

Currently, helping a severe burn patient involves hurting them: In a skin-graft procedure, a patient’s own skin is transplanted over a burn, but removing healthy skin for the graft creates another painful wound, increasing infection risk and adding to recovery time. A mechanical engineer, Leng studies microfluidics, the precise manipulation of small amounts of fluid, and while researching different ways to create soft materials that integrate human cells (like replacement blood vessels or cardiac tissue), she decided to focus on skin.

The Montreal native holds a small, clear rubber board that resembles an electric circuit. “The wells are loaded with different materials, including a liquid solution with cells,” she explains. The laws of physics (if you want to be technical, it’s “fluid mechanics,” nerds) drive the materials through tiny channels, which spatially organize the various solutions—including alginate, an ingredient in brown algae that becomes a gel when mixed with water—into a “liquid sheet” that can be fine-tuned into different thicknesses, replicating the differences between, say, skin and muscle tissue. The result is a soft sheet of flexible material that Leng calls a “a scaffold for skin.” She’s hoping that when it’s used on a patient, the alginate will slowly dissolve as the skin cells multiply and knit together.

Working with doctors at the burn unit at Sunnybrook hospital, Leng wants to refine the material’s properties until it can be used to replicate samples of a patient’s skin. This would be a groundbreaking achievement, greatly reducing a patient’s pain from a skin graft and cutting costs dramatically. “A commercial collagen graft is $4,000 for a four-inch-by-four-inch section,” says Leng, pointing out that most Sunnybrook patients have burns on at least 40 per cent of their bodies. “This tool is a few hundred dollars.” Using a patient’s own cells would also reduce the chance that the graft would be rejected, minimizing post-operation infections. The journey from lab to trauma unit is a long one—Leng hopes to have human trials by 2015 or so.

Goldie Nejat, 33

Assistant professor, mechanical and industrial engineering, University of Toronto

Home hood: University and College

“I just walk around thinking about how useful a robot would be over here, or how useful a robot would be over there,” says Goldie Nejat about her daily commute. Last fall, she won a Young Engineers Medal for the two main projects she’s got on the go. The first is Brian, a pleasant-voiced robot who hangs out at long-term care facilities, encouraging the elderly to eat their dinners, telling them jokes, and teaching them how to play card games. The second is MARP, a search and rescue robot equipped with 3-D mapping technology, so it could locate survivors or subsequent collapses after natural disasters. With robots to handle repetitive, mundane, or dangerous tasks, the rest of us would have more time to do the skilful, precise work that (so far) only humans can.

The champion of unsung invertebrates (also, a bike nut)

Jean-Bernard Caron, 38

Curator of invertebrate palaeontology, Royal Ontario Museum

Home ’hood: Greektown

The Burgess Shale in B.C’s Yoho National Park is the world’s most important fossil site, a treasure trove of 505-million-year-old marine life preserved in a remote bit of the Rockies. As a teenager in France, Jean-Bernard Caron became fascinated with the lost prehistoric world after reading Wonderful Life, a book about the Shale by Harvard scholar Stephen Jay Gould. Twenty years later, he’s become the leading Canadian expert on the site, celebrated internationally for his discovery last year of one of the world’s most primitive creatures with the beginnings of a spine. Now, he’s designing a new gallery at the ROM to share it with everyone else.

“Like most things in Canada, it’s better known outside of Canada,” says Caron, who cycles to work, even in the winter. He first visited the Burgess Shale as a volunteer before starting his master’s in 1999, and travels there with a team of researchers every other summer. The site can only be accessed during July and August—a helicopter flies them out with four to seven weeks worth of supplies, and leaves them there to set up camp and erect a very necessary bear fence.

Most fossils are preserved hard surfaces, like bones, beaks, and shells. For mysterious reasons, the soft mud on the B.C.-Alberta border has proven exceptional for the preservation of delicate tissues, allowing Burgess Shale palaeontologists to examine small, long-lost animals in amazing detail. Last year, Caron settled a decades-old palaeontological debate when he proved that a weird, wormlike creature called Pikaia gracilens did, in fact, have a feature that would evolve into a backbone. That makes it one of the oldest known vertebrates, an ancestor to every spine-possessing animal in the world, including humans. “Most people don’t want to be related to this animal, because he has no brain, a small head, and lots of muscles, like a prehistoric bodybuilder,” says Caron. Even so, the French magazine La Recherche called his Pikaia research one of the most important scientific discoveries of 2012.

And yet, Pikaia isn’t Caron’s only baby: He’s also a champion of unsung invertebrates, our spineless, less complex ancestors. Right now, he’s cataloguing the 500,000 specimens in the ROM’s vaults—like Nectocaris pteryx, a meat-eating squid that used a small, external funnel to travel via jet propulsion—and planning the museum’s first new permanent gallery since the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal opened in 2007. The 10,000-square-foot Gallery of Early Life will have interactive displays to teach visitors about the four billion years of evolution that took place before the dinosaurs even showed up. It will have one of the largest invertebrate displays in North America, after the Smithsonian. “All of my colleagues around the world are very jealous,” says Caron of this chance to showcase our tiny, overlooked ancestors.

The electronic clothing designer (and avid rock climber)

Kate Hartman, 32

Assistant professor and director of the Social Body Lab, OCADU

Home ’hood: Trinity-Bellwoods

Massachusetts native Kate Hartman came to Toronto two years ago, after finishing her master’s at New York University. She was wooed by OCADU to start the Social Body Lab, which has a wide, modern mandate to examine how humans interact with technology. Hartman’s main interest is “wearables”—technology integrated into clothing and accessories—and she organized a meetup to see who else was into them. Thirty people showed up, from dancers to chemical engineers. “I was like, ‘Wow, okay, I don’t know if that would float in every city,’” says Hartman, who heads to Queen West’s White Squirrel coffee shop most mornings to work on her upcoming book on wearables. “Toronto is pretty exciting—there are lots of people thinking about what’s possible and what’s next.”

Wearables can be utilitarian, like the Nike Fuel Band, which helps runners track their stats. That doesn’t mean they have to be ugly. Hartman teaches her undergrads the basics of electronics and coding, but also that their projects should have “off value,” meaning they’re still pretty or fascinating when they’re not turned on. One of her lab projects is a set of modular lights aimed at eliminating both the forgetfulness and vanity associated with bicycle safety lights: cool pieces that people will want to wear all day, that can switch on after dark to illuminate the ride home. “Not something that you’d find at MEC, like a blinky bike light, but something kind of beautiful,” explains Hartman, who also spends time climbing at Joe Rockhead’s. She’s been a DIY–type her whole life, but has always been concerned with beauty and whimsy—New York’s MoMA has in its permanent collection her 2008 piece, “Botanicalls,” a setup that allows thirsty plants to telephone or tweet their owners to ask for a drink.

Jason Fish, 35

Vascular biologist, Toronto General Research Institute

Home ’hood: Beach

We know that lack of exercise can lead to stroke and heart attack, but Jason Fish is trying to figure out why exactly couch potatoes get narrowed blood vessels. In his lab at MaRS on College Street, he studies tiny, transparent tropical zebrafish, observing what controls the growth of blood vessels. “It’s nice because they grow fast, and develop a beating heart in one day,” says Fish of his fish, which are also used to study how blood vessels feed tumours. Fish is mostly in it for the purity of science, but the eventual goal of his research is clinical trials and patents that will hopefully help treat a whole host of illnesses, from heart disease to cancer metastasis. The father of two won an Early Researcher Award last year, and was just named a Canada Research Chair. Fish focuses on microRNA, extremely small individual molecules that tell cell proteins what to do. One of the questions he wants to answer is why, exactly, they sometimes tell arteries to thicken or harden, and stay that way, especially when people’s vices include smoking or delicious but deadly junk food.

The cancer-fighting triple-threat (and squash fiend)

Josh Silvertown, 35

CEO, Armour Therapeutics

Home ’hood: Yonge and Eglinton

Why put dollars into rent when you can put them into research and development?” asks Josh Silvertown, who runs three separate companies from his house. The first is Armour Therapeutics, which is named after Armour Boulevard, the North York street he grew up on. The company builds on his research at the University of Guelph, where he graduated from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at 26—the school’s youngest-ever PhD. Armour is developing AT-001, a therapy to fight late-stage prostate and breast cancer by blocking the hormone relaxin, which fuels fast, aggressive cancer cell growth. “Most people who are at the end stages of prostate cancer are no longer sensitive to existing therapies,” says Silvertown. “Drugs that extend life only four months are already billion-dollar drugs, so I know there’s a market.”

The dad of 18-month-old twins is also the COO of Quantum Dental Technologies, which has developed a laser that can fill cavities before they even show up on X-rays. A former director at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, his more personal project is DreamCatcher, an online mentoring program he founded to match teens in remote northern communities with professionals who can help them pick interesting careers. “It’s in every high school in the Yukon,” says Silvertown, who somehow also finds the time to play squash almost every day.

José Zariffa, 33

Scientist, Toronto Rehab

Home ’hood: Yonge and Eglinton

For years, electrical stimulation has been used to help people regain the use of their limbs after a spinal injury. But crude treatments that shock nerves into a reaction result in jerky, unnatural motions, making patients reluctant to use them.

“It was an open loop, stimulating the nervous system without reacting to what was actually happening,” says José Zariffa, who’s been published in every medical journal that counts.

“We want to build a bridge between the nerve and the artificial device.” The Montreal native is heading up a new research team at Toronto Rehab, developing tools that plug right into the nervous systems of stroke and spinal injury patients. By decoding the messages being transmitted through the nerve, they’ll develop prosthetics that continually respond to a patient’s body, ones that move smoothly and won’t be embarrassing to use. Two levels beneath the University subway line between Queen’s Park and St. Patrick stations, the hospital has a huge basement workshop that allows researchers to make prototypes on site, judge the usefulness of their ideas, and bring them to market as quickly as possible.

“It’s the only place with such a great cluster of both rehab and neural engineering,” says Zariffa. “This is one of the best rehab research institutes in the world.”

Tom Schweizer, 39

Director of Neuroscience Research, St. Michael’s Hospital

Home ’hood: Oakville

Driving is often crucial to a sense of independence—Tom Schweizer knows this, because he spends his weekends chauffeuring his two kids around. He wanted to help doctors figure out when to give stroke patients back their keys, so he built a super high-powered driving simulator inside an MRI scanner. “The whole brain lights up like a Christmas tree during a left-hand turn at a busy intersection,” says Schweizer, describing how the MRI uses blood flow to track brain activity. St. Mike’s has just made Schweizer its first-ever Director of Neuroscience Research, heading up a team of 21 scientists that’s also studying distracted driving. It recently had 27-year-olds use the simulator while mimicking the use of cellphones and hands-free devices. Bad news, chit-chatters: The research shows you can’t talk and make that left turn at the same time. Schweizer hopes his work will eventually have implications on driving policy.

The math savant (and university dropout)

Chris Olah, 20

Director at Hacklab, Thiel Fellow

Home ’hood: Chinatown

As a teenage math savant with few people smart enough to talk to, Chris Olah discovered a website about hackerspaces, spots where science-minded tinkerers pooled their expertise and tools. On it, the then-15-year-old was thrilled to see a listing for Hacklab Toronto, in Kensington Market. “It was just an amazing place to be,” says Olah, now a director at the lab. “The first time I really felt connected to a community, with peers in my age-group.”

Two years ago, Olah left the pure math program at U of T: He had other things to do, like design 3-D printers and software, and felt that took priority over university. He applied for, and won, a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship, a prize handed out by entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who believes higher education is a waste of money that stifles brilliance, and so gives college-aged kids cash to drop out of school.

For two years, Olah will be paid to pursue whatever work interests him. He flies back and forth between Toronto and San Francisco (where The Thiel Foundation is based), using his grant to mess around with laser cutters, vegan cooking, and gardening, as well as studying the gender gap in math. His most enduring obsession is 3-D printers, some of which he calls “glorified hot glue guns that produce sculptures designed on a computer.” The trendy tech toy of the moment, 3-D printers have finally reached a cheapish price point (about $500–$1,000) that allows just about anyone to make just about anything. (The race is currently on to make the world’s first 3-D printed house.) When Olah used Hacklab’s 3-D printer to make a working vacuum cleaner, he found that the existing design software was super expensive. So he came up with ImplicitCAD, a program that helps turn mathematical visualizations into real objects.  Olah is keeping ImplicitCAD open source, giving imaginative but underpaid artists, designers, and hobbyists full access to a quality design product, for free.

Rachel Friesen, 33

Radio astronomer, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto

Home ’hood: Riverside

To observe the radio waves emitted around brand new stars, Rachel Friesen has to compete against every other astronomer in the world. Only the best researchers get time on the best telescopes, and she’s been to Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, and the Nobeyama observatory in Japan.

“I’ve got pretty big questions—where did our solar system come from? Where did we come from?” says Friesen. She focuses her gaze on molecules containing carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen drifting around hidden parts of the universe, and says “the dark parts of the Milky Way are basically stellar nurseries.” One current spot she’s contemplating is a molecular cloud in the sword of the Orion constellation, which we can all see on a clear, dark night.

Yup. We figured that out.

1921: Toronto-based researcher Frederick Banting isolates insulin. He becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine two years later.

1938: Grad students from the University of Toronto build the first working electron microscope.

1963: U of T scientists discover the self-renewing potential of stem cells, and inadvertently pioneer a new treatment for bone marrow diseases.

1983: The first successful single-lung transplant is completed by Toronto thoracic surgeon Joel Cooper.

2011: U of T astronomers spot the two largest black holes in the universe discovered thus far, each with a mass equal to 10 billion suns.

2012: Researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre uncover the ability of some malignant cells to lie dormant and evade chemotherapy—a major breakthrough in treatment of the disease.

2012: In about an hour, ROM technician Ian Morrison pieces together the jaw of a ceratopsian fossil (cousin to the triceratops) after professional palaeontologists—including the ROM’s dinosaur expert—spent years being confounded by it. The creature was renamed Gryphoceratops morrisoni, in Morrison’s honour.

Playing Olivia Chow in the CBC’s new biopic, Jack, Sook-Yin Lee is reserved, romantic, and 100 per cent clothed. Fans of the chronically subversive filmmaker and radio host may wonder if their girl is going soft. We spoke to the non age–specific Lee about why playing a political widow is way more challenging than getting nude onscreen.

Did you audition for this role or did they come to you?

I had read about it in the paper and I thought it sounded like it could be very compelling. As an actor, I don’t go out for most auditions. I pretty much only work on my friends’ movies when they ask me, but then my agent called. She had been out for dinner with the casting director for Jack, who wanted to see me. It was a strange process. Auditions are different now. When I went in, they were like, “talk to the director,” and he was Skyped in on a laptop from L.A.

When you say you don’t audition for movies, is that because you’re busy with your own projects?

I’m super busy with Definitely Not the Opera, and when I do have time, I want to work on projects I care about. Too often I’ve been in crappy movies. I’m the crack whore with the midget. There are so many issues with the mainstream movie and TV industry: Not only are there crap scripts, but the mood on sets is so depressing. A few years ago I made a conscious effort to say, okay, I’m going to do something different. There are not very many roles for women that are interesting—never mind Asian women.

Had you spent much time with Olivia Chow before you played her?

I’d seen her at functions and she’s also the MP in my riding. When I was making the movie Toronto Stories, I wanted to shoot in the ROM, which they don’t allow very often, and she went to bat for me.

How did you go about capturing her character?

For the movie, we only had access to her for one day because she’s so busy. She invited us—myself and the actor who plays Jack—to her home, which I was surprised to find was a few blocks away from mine. Olivia herself is a woman of few words; she’s a woman of actions. She tended to give short answers so I had to lean on my investigative experience as a broadcaster to get information.

Did you speak any Cantonese beforehand?

Well my parents spoke it in my house, so I know things from my childhood, like “shut up,” “eat your food,” and “I’m going to hit you.” For the movie, though, we had a translator, and I worked with a dialect coach. At first I wondered if I was going to be able to do this and then the woman who was working with me said, “Sook-Yin, you grew up with this. You know it in your bones.” Once I got it, I couldn’t drop it.

What did you learn about the relationship between Jack and Olivia?

They were so compatible and they never fought. Actually, she did tell me about the one fight they ever had—on a whitewater canoeing trip—but I think that was it. I’m sure they had trials and tribulations like any marriage does, but they seemed to just work shit out. And also there was the chemistry. When I asked her what she first liked about Jack, she said, “He was hot.” When they first met it was like a barn on fire. It culminated in some kind of hotel pool.

Really? You don’t see that in the movie.

I know. I wanted that to be in it, but there was a lot of stuff with makeup and wet hair. When Olivia told me the story, I was like “Oh my God, that’s so passionate,” and she was like, “What are you—a prude?”

You, a prude. That’s pretty classic. I was thinking this movie is pretty un-shocking as far as Sook-Yin projects go. There’s no nudity.

Nudity is still shocking. I find that shocking. It’s funny because a lot of people are asking whether Jack is my foray into the mainstream. I guess because it’s on TV people assume that it is lighter, but on all counts this was a very challenging project.

What did you think of Seth Macfarlane’s “WE Saw Your Boobs” song during the Oscars?

I thought Shatner overshadowed the boobs—he was a lot funnier. Was I offended about the boobs, though?

Yeah—there was a lot of backlash. Basically that he was taking talented actresses who gave great performances and reducing them to a set of boobs.

I wasn’t offended. I think it was probably done in the spirit of satire. I thought it was very strange that Michelle Obama was giving out the best-picture Oscar.

Agreed!

It sort of ties back to Jack. In previous generations, we didn’t want to see the person behind the mask. Like what did we really know about John A. MacDonald?

I think he was a booze bag.

Right, I did hear that. And now we have Barack Obama making the rounds on late-night talk shows and the first lady handing out Oscars.

Any chance you’d consider a Keeping Up with Sook-Yin reality show?

I’m not sure that there’d be an audience. Much as I like to communicate and reveal and express myself, I think having that all the time would be very annoying.

You’ve famously refused to reveal your age. What’s the thinking there?

I think because I didn’t, and then people wanted to know, it became, “Why do I have to tell you? Don’t I share enough?” It’s a complex thing. I have a fear of death. That’s probably what it comes down to.

LIGHTNING ROUND!

Pub or club?
Both.

Favourite cocktail?
Tall vodka soda.

Early mornings or late nights?
Late nights.

Favourite junk food?
French fries.

First record?
The White Album by the Beatles.

Concert you wish you’d been to?
Nina Simone.

Favourite colour gumball?
Turquoise blue.

Jack airs on CBC-TV Sunday, March 10 at 8 p.m.

The Internet is wrong about many things, but its love of cats certainly isn’t one of them.

Alex and Vicky Ba are two of those sensible cat enthusiasts, and for five years they’ve taken care of a stray black-and-orange feline named Tigress.

But in January, Tigress went missing, and when Alex and Vicky went to look for their stray friend, they found her emaciated and meekly meowing in -20 C weather. The sores running down her flank had been exposed to the elements, and upon first examination the veterinarian thought she was dead.

The mounting vet bills were too much for Alex and Vicky, yet there was hope for Tigress. The newly formed WatchCat Coalition publicized a fundraising campaign and the internet, brimming as it is with feline affection, did not disappoint: Donors contributed over $2,200, enough to pay the bills. Tigress’s status has since been upgraded to frisky, and the internet got a few more cute cat pictures in the process.