As senior vice-president and executive publisher at HarperCollins Canada, Tupholme is responsible for the overall vision of the publishing program. Along with a team of editors, she decides which books make it to market (it’s as much about a compelling and well-written story as it is a business decision about audience reach).

She’s also a hands-on editor with more than 500 books to her credit, including novels from prominent Canadian authors such as University of Guelph professor Lawrence Hill (The Illegal) and Emma Donoghue (Room).

“The editor is the author’s champion within the publishing process,” says Tupholme, BA ’80. “The editor is the ideal reader — the careful, thoughtful, insightful reader who sees beyond what is on the page, and urges the writer to deepen and improve the manuscript in each draft.”

Hill has worked with Tupholme for 20 years — she became his editor for his second novel, Any Known Blood. “It was a very serious book, but the first chapter when I submitted it to her was high comedy,” he says. Tupholme felt this would confuse readers and suggested adding a chapter to set up the story.

“So, I went back and wrote a prologue and I still think it is one of the best parts of the book,” says Hill. “She didn’t tell me what to do, but she knows how to extract the best from me. She makes me want to write better.”

One book Tupholme is especially proud of is Margaret Trudeau’s memoir Changing My Mind, which tells Trudeau’s story from a new perspective and helped break the stigma of mental illness.

“Telling stories is how we understand ourselves, and to be part of the huge contribution that writers make to our world is a great privilege,” says Tupholme, who edited and published the book.

As an English student at U of G, Tupholme often edited papers for roommates and friends, making suggestions for more effective sentence structure or improved
arguments. She discovered she enjoyed editing as much as her friends appreciated it. A career in publishing appealed to Tupholme, an avid reader, but she knew she didn’t want to be a writer. “I do better at helping others share their ideas,” she says.

After graduation, she was a volunteer editor for a small Marxist- feminist publisher in Toronto. She then worked as a bookstore manager before moving to roles at publishers Prentice-Hall and Penguin Books. She’s been with HarperCollins for 25 years.

“Every day is different. I’m never bored. I’ve had maybe 10 total minutes of boredom in all the years I’ve worked in this field,” says Tupholme, who is also the founding chair of the International Visitors Program at the International Festival of Authors. The program helps sell works by Canadian authors to international publishers.

With the rise of digital books, she sees even more opportunity to share literature with the world. To Tupholme, it’s a job that goes far beyond words on paper.

“Books can free the imagination and deepen our humanity,” she says. “Books extend and enrich our experience in life.”–TERESA PITMAN

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“Everything was geared towards getting yogurt,” says Wight, B.Comm. ’07, of the trip with her now husband. “I cried my last day because we couldn’t get any.”

Her new love of Greek yogurt gave Wight the idea to open a similar business in Toronto. With high storefront rents and a specialized menu, finding a location was the first hurdle. She needed foot traffic, and after many walks along the PATH, a 30-kilometre pedestrian walkway beneath the Financial District, Wight saw the potential of going underground. In 2013, she launched Astarté Fresh Yogurt Bar — the first of its kind in Canada — under King Street West.

“It’s the perfect spot for my business,” Wight says of the PATH, which is used by 200,000 people daily. “I’m more morning focused. To get people comfortable with my concept, I had to be in front of them early and thinking of yogurt.”

Wight’s quick grab-and-go yogurt bowls have hit a mark with her largely corporate clientele who are rushing to work and need a quick, healthy breakfast. “I’ve converted tons of people into yogurt believers,” she says.

Wight, 30, says she’s an “outdoorsy” person, so the idea of working underground was an adjustment. And the venture was risky — she quit her corporate job as a national account manager to start her business.

Astarté now serves about 160 customers a day, offering up flavourful yogurt parfaits such as key lime, blueberry lavender, peanut butter and strawberry balsamic, and seasonal options like maple pumpkin. She sources the Greek yogurt from Shepherd Gourmet Dairy in St. Marys, Ont., and makes her own granola and preserves.

“I’m feeling reflective approaching my three-year anniversary,” says Wight, who is expecting her second child. “I’ve walked the PATH and have seen a lot of places that have gone out of business. I’m proud I stuck it out.”–DAVID DICENZO

ALSO TRY:

James Carnevale’s “food truck” isn’t really a truck at all. He scoots around Toronto and serves delicious handmade frozen treats from a tiny, three-wheeled Piaggio Ape (pronounced “ah-pay”). Bar Ape is the city’s first mobile gelato shop, and although it’s only 40 square feet in size, it’s made a big mark on the city’s food scene — Carnevale’s lemon gelato bar was named one of the best frozen treats on a stick by Taste Toronto.

“I worked on it constantly and customized it,” says Carnevale of the blue 1982 Ape, which he worked on for four years before taking it to the streets in 2014.

The Ape’s size presented a few challenges: it’s actually classified as a motorcycle, so getting a permit was difficult, and because there’s no room to prepare classic gelato, Carnevale had to get creative — he decided to make the gelato in advance and form it into quick-serve bars. The vehicle’s battery-powered freezer holds a few hundred of the hand-moulded, chocolate-dipped creations, which come in unique flavours such as saffron, pistachio and chocolate hazelnut.

With the crowds clamouring for his gelato, Carnevale, who completed U of G’s ice cream technology short course and honed his skills in popular Toronto gelato shops, recently opened a walk-up storefront.

“I’ve always liked it and I always made it at home,” he says of gelato. “I knew it was something I always wanted to do.”–DAVID DICENZO

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“The number one task consumers dislike the most about food preparation is the time spent cleaning up,” says Kalpana Daugherty. That’s what she told a panel of judges on Dragon’s Den earlier this year when she successfully pitched her UNSTICK collection of reusable, non-stick, heat-resistant sheets and liners for cooking, baking and grilling.

She invited judge Joe Mimran, founder of Joe Fresh, to join her onstage while she cooked on an electric grill using her products. The liners are heat-resistant up to 260 C and easy to clean, thanks to the non-stick coating. The products are also non-toxic and FDA-approved, and if cared for properly, the sheets and liners will last for up to 2,000 uses.

Daugherty received three offers from the dragons and asked Jim Treliving, owner of Boston Pizza, and Manjit Minhas, co-founder and co-owner of Minhas Breweries and Distillery, to split a $200,000 investment for a 25 per cent share of her company.

After graduating from U of G, Daugherty, BA ’97, spent 15 years working in corporate marketing at Kraft, Pepsi and Pizza Hut. Her priorities changed when she and her husband, chiropractor Alrick Daugherty, BA ’93, wanted to start a family and she suffered a miscarriage at work. “It was pretty devastating,” she says. “It just kind of changed my perspective on life. Life is too short.”

When she became pregnant again, Daugherty decided to quit her job. A week later, she found out she was having twin girls, who are now seven.

During a trip to China, she saw a food vendor barbecuing chicken skewers with a liner on a grill. “I stopped dead in my tracks because she was cooking them on this material. I stood there thinking how is this material not burning or catching on fire and nothing is sticking to it?” She asked the street vendor what the material was but the language barrier kept her from getting an answer.

When Daugherty returned to Canada, she scoured stores for the liners but was unable to find a similar product, so she decided to develop her own. Her biggest challenge was finding out what the liner was made of. A business contact in China pointed her in the right direction and she found a manufacturer there. She began testing her designs in her kitchen, but making 3D paper models proved to be a challenge, so she sent her pots and pans to the manufacturer to mould the liners into the right shape.

Her first product was a barbecue-grilling sheet, which goes directly on the grill. UNSTICK now includes a range of liners for bakeware, frying pans and casserole dishes, which available at grocery, housewares and hardware stores. After less than a year on the market, UNSTICK won a 2015 Product of the Year award. In September, Daugherty will participate in the celebrity-gifting suite for the 2016 Emmy Awards.

“I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “My dream has always been to take my corporate learning and launch my own brand or product line one day.” – SUSAN BUBAK

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Martin Haulena, chief veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium, directed his rescue team of eight while obtaining the necessary permits and paperwork to bring the young false killer whale back to the aquarium. Local law enforcement and about 180 volunteers helped the team as they worked to stabilize “Chester” and transport him.

“We got him into the pool and he was like a floating log, completely unresponsive,” says Haulena, DVM ’93, M.Sc. ’99. He worked around the clock providing intensive treatment as Chester was fed by syringe and kept afloat using special flotation devices.

Today, Chester is healthy and tips the scales at 300 kilograms. “He’s a big energetic goofball who just loves to play,” says Haulena. As an orphan, Chester became a permanent resident and currently shares his pool with dolphin Helen. He is known for his interactions with visitors and has befriended a little boy with autism who visits frequently — when his human friend arrives, Chester will often race around with him on the other side of the pool windows.

“To me, that’s a terrific example of how important the human-animal bond is for both people and the animals under our care,” says Haulena.

Chester is one of more than 100 marine mammals that Haulena helps rescue each year — ranging from various types of seals to a porpoise and a killer whale — with the goal is of rehabilitating and releasing them back into their natural habitat.

Haulena fell in love with marine animals when he was seven years old and touched a dolphin while vacationing in Florida. “I’m one of those lucky kids who got to do what I always wanted to do,” he says. He worked at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, for nine years before arriving in Vancouver.

His routine at the aquarium includes daily rounds to check on any recovering animals and identify new medical issues. Preventive care for the nearly 1,000 species living at the aquarium is a priority: a recent day included a physical exam on a sea otter and a necropsy on a mudskipper.

Haulena says caring for the aquarium’s animals allows veterinarians to study them in-depth, providing knowledge that helps with their rescue work and contributes to better care for animals in the wild. Through his work treating a sea lion with cancer, for example, Haulena and his team developed a method to remotely sedate wild sea lions that have become entangled in debris and garbage. This causes considerable suffering and can be fatal to the animals, and disentangling them from a boat in open water can be dangerous — Haulena is the only veterinarian in Canada able to perform these rescues. His technique, which he’s shared with other rescue groups, has helped save many more sea lions.

Haulena is currently studying the sea star wasting syndrome that is causing sea stars along the Pacific Coast to die off.

“Working with the sea stars has helped me appreciate the diversity of life on this planet,” he says. “As a kid, I thought dolphins were cool. But this work reminds me that all forms of life are so precious, and so vulnerable to what we as humans are doing to them. I’m grateful to be able to do even a little to help them.” – TERESA PITMAN

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Having more than one person with CF in a room risks transferring resistant germs between them. To allow participants to interact safely, Brock and his collaborators conceived the opera as a multimedia performance, using online applications like Skype to record duets and other ensembles, and to allow participants to meet and interact.

As an undergraduate student, Brock met Eva Markvoort, a young woman with CF who became the subject of the award-winning documentary 65_RedRoses. “I found her unbelievably inspiring,” he says of Markvoort, who died in 2010.

Markvoort’s story stayed with him, and when he and composer Gareth Williams were in Glasgow, Scotland, working on a project together, they saw an opportunity to create something that could also help those with CF. Brock and Williams wrote music for participants to sing, while specialists at Gartnavel General Hospital studied the impact of singing on the health of participants. Because CF makes breathing difficult, project researchers are exploring whether classical singing techniques, including breath control and voice lessons, can improve the physical and mental wellbeing of cystic fibrosis patients.

Brock and Williams interviewed the CF patients and learned about the limitations of their voices and the music they wanted to sing. “We wanted them to sing for pleasure, to enjoy the experience,” says Brock. The research is ongoing and the opera will be relaunched this year in Glasgow, Edinburgh and New York, with some reworking of songs to suit a more standardized performance.

“It’s like any opera with high drama and high emotions,” says Brock.

Being a playwright and librettist provides a good mix of solo work and collaboration, he adds. “The composer and I inspire each other, but there’s always that anxious part when I send my words over to see if they will work.”

Growing up, Brock lived in several different cities across Canada. He earned a degree in zoology from the University of Manitoba, and then worked in the nutritional supplements industry in Vancouver for a time.

“I wasn’t always thrilled to go to work, so I joined a community theatre group,” he says. “My partner at the time said, ‘You should find out a way to do theatre for a living — it’s what makes you happy.’”

Brock took that advice to heart. He studied creative writing at the University of Victoria before enrolling in the first cohort of the master of fine arts in creative writing program at the University of Guelph-Humber. He won the 2011 Herman Voaden Canadian National Playwriting Award and has produced several plays. In 2014 he published his first book of poetry, Everyone is CO2 (Wolsak & Wynn).

“So much of my writing deals with fragility — how we recognize fragility in ourselves and in others. And though that idea is always present in our Breath Cycle project, I’ve also learned so much about human strength,” says Brock. “Some of the most powerful singing I’ve heard in my life has come out of the mouths of the Breath Cycle singers. I love those surprises.” – TERESA PITMAN

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An award-winning page designer and assistant art director for The Globe and Mail newspaper, he aims to create eye-catching page layouts that give readers a clear idea what the story is about before they read a sentence.

“The designer is there to make the message as clear and effective as they can,” says French, adding that a skillful design draws attention to the article rather than to the design elements, including graphics, photos and typography.

Take the Globe’s front-page coverage of last fall’s final report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The story was illustrated by oversize numerals that punched out the key points: numbers of victims, witnesses and deaths associated with the country’s former residential schools.

“The story was the numbers, and the numbers are the impact,” says French, B.Comm. ’07. “It’s not about any highfalutin’ image or fancy colour.”

Most days, French, 30, helps design the newspaper’s front page, working with a “cast of many,” including editors, headline writers and the paper’s creative director. Over the past year, he’s designed more than 300 front pages and thousands more inside.

French’s design skills are self-taught, but his career path started at U of G. Always driven to do creative work, he pursued a commerce degree thinking he could “make a living doing something creative in business” such as working for a marketing agency.

During a summer job in a marketing department, French took a stab at creating promotional material for trade publications. Back on campus during third and fourth year, he then worked at Guelph’s student newspaper, The Ontarion, as photo and graphics editor, and layout editor. Recalling those days, he says, “You were able to cut your teeth doing what you wanted. Learning from your mistakes gave you the freedom to make mistakes.”

Following graduation, he worked at the Woolwich Observer. After three years there, he worked for 24 Hours, a Toronto commuter newspaper, and the Toronto Sun, among others.

French got called up to the “big leagues” in 2011. Up to 400,000 people read The Globe and Mail’s weekend edition.

Among his notable Globe projects, he points to an “Unremembered” series of articles last year about the suicides of Canadian soldiers and veterans who fought in Afghanistan, as well as the 11th-hour package of reports covering the 2015 federal election that vaulted Justin Trudeau’s Liberals into power.

Another favourite was the 2012 Remembrance Day cover, with the word “Remember” stamped over a soldier’s image. “It did what it was intended to do: cause the reader to pause and reflect.”

A fan of the Washington Post and the Guardian, French brings what he calls a simple and subtle but graphic approach to his work, as well as a refined sense of visual literacy — all without getting in the way of the story.

Sitting down to assemble a page, he knows that reporters and editors might have put months of work and passion into the article. “At the end, I’m the person responsible for taking it over the finish line, making it sing so that people connect with it.” – ANDREW VOWLES

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Even before she became a police officer, she knew she wanted to help people. As the daughter of a police officer in Guyana, she came to Canada at the age of 14. “My goal was to work with youth,” she says, so she volunteered as a probation and parole officer. That’s when she met Sid Young, a retired black police officer in Toronto, who encouraged her to join the ranks.

She was one of only two black female recruits in a class of about 300 at the Ontario Police College, but she never viewed policing in terms of gender. “I am a strong and confident person, so I knew I could do the job. It was a matter of gaining the trust and respect of the other officers.”

Thirty years after joining the police service, she says policing hasn’t changed much; the day-to-day community interaction remains a big part of a police officer’s job. Technology has had the most impact on policing, giving officers more tools to fight crime.

Catching criminals is just one part of her job; community engagement and teaching the public how to stay safe are just as important. Working in crime prevention and race relations has helped her make inroads in the community, especially the black community.

Berkeley-Brown joins the ranks of other black police officers in leadership positions, such as Mark Saunders, a graduate of the University of Guelph-Humber’s justice studies program, who became chief of Toronto Police Services in 2015. – SUSAN BUBAK

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Reid, BAS ’15, says people do more improvising at work than one might think, and learning to harness the power of improvisation on the job can help business professionals overcome anxiety and improve their communication skills.

P: How can improv make businesses better?

Jay Reid: We use improv skills as a training tool for professional development by harnessing all the skills of improv theatre that we use on stage and applying them off stage. We like to think of improv as a framework that encourages trust, flexibility and productive collaboration. Research shows that a one-per-cent increase in corporate climate — that’s a company in a good mood — leads to a two-per-cent increase in revenue.

P: How does improv help build corporate climate?

Hayley Kellett: It creates happy people. We thrive on creating a positive atmosphere. If we can
help increase positivity in the workplace, then those happy people are more likely to work harder because they’re enjoying themselves.

P: You say improv can help people with anxiety. Isn’t putting anxious people on stage counterintuitive?

HK: Improv creates a non-judgemental area where you can try things and everybody’s there for the same reason. We stress accepting other people’s ideas and supporting each other and working as a team, so there’s no pressure. We actually celebrate failure. When people make a mistake in improv, the worst-case scenario is that everyone ends up laughing.

P: Do you need to be funny to be good at improv?

JR: Improv doesn’t operate on funny, even though we see improv through a comedic lens most of the time. It operates on a framework of listening, connecting and responding. That first word, listening, is kind of strange to people when they think of improv because they think the silliest extroverted people are the best improvisers. We can take a group of relative strangers and within two hours have them smiling and laughing together, and building communities through the skills of improvisation. It has an incredible payoff.

P: What kind of feedback have you received?

JR: Quite often students say the experience helps alleviate their anxieties. It’s almost like exposure therapy. You have to step into the realm of the unexpected, and every time you step on the stage it’s the realm of the unexpected. Because life is improvised, the skills of improv can be applied anywhere.

– SUSAN BUBAK

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Success for jockey Emma-Jayne Wilson depends on making split-second decisions while guiding a 540 kg horse as it races at speeds reaching 70 kilometres per hour.

“It’s not like a car where you have steering and brakes,” says Wilson, who in 2007 became the first woman to win Canada’s oldest and most prestigious race, the $1-million Queen’s Plate. “You have to persuade a large, powerful animal that has a mind of its own to do what you want.”

Riding lessons at age nine led to an accomplished decade-long career — although she may not be a household name, Wilson is one of the country’s most successful female athletes. She is Canada’s most winning female jockey with more than 1,200 career victories, and she has earned well over $60 million in purses for her mounts.

A lifelong love of horses led Wilson to study equine management at U of G’s Kemptville campus. After graduating, she took a job working behind the scenes for a trainer. She got her start racing horses when agent Mike Luider spotted her exercising racehorses at Woodbine Racetrack. Wilson made her professional debut in 2004 and won two of her first three races. By the end of the year, the Jockey Club of Canada named her Outstanding Apprentice Jockey, and in 2005 she received the Eclipse Award for the top apprentice in North America.

Wilson, 34, still works out of Woodbine, and on race days she’s at the track by 6 a.m. to exercise horses under instruction from their trainers. She then heads to the jockey room to handicap the afternoon races.

At the height of the season, Wilson can compete in as many as 10 races a day, four days a week. Many of the horses are familiar to her, but some she will be mounting for the first time.

“Being able to read a horse, to know its personality and build a rapport quickly is the most important skill for any jockey,” she says. “Some horses are quieter and need coaxing, and others are more aggressive and need to be told what to do.”

Even with the best preparation, Wilson says being ready to adapt is crucial: you never know what will happen until the race is under way. She once suffered a badly lacerated liver after falling off her mount and landing under a horse running at full speed. “I would be lying if I said there was zero fear, but if I let it affect me negatively, I would hang up my tack.”

Jockeys work on one-race contracts — if you want to keep riding, you have to keep winning. And the more you win, the better horses you get to ride. Where some might feel pressure, Wilson feels motivation.

“It’s definitely not a ‘normal’ job,” laughs Wilson. “But I’ve earned the right to be here. It makes me want to continue to get better and achieve. It’s all about perspective.”

After 9,000 races, what Wilson still loves most is working with a horse to achieve a common goal.

“I wish I could bring people on board to experience it: the moment when I’m on a horse who’s just as determined and eager to win as I am, and we’re fighting down the lane, tooth and nail — there’s no better synergy. It’s indescribable. I think it’s the best job in the world.”

– TERESA PITMAN

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After graduating from U of G with a sociology degree in 1999, Berg went to teacher’s college where she learned sign language. “I fell in love with it,” she says. “We did a literacy program at our school, and when I was researching different techniques to use in literacy programs, I kept coming across the idea of signing with babies, which made total sense.”

Babies develop gross motor skills earlier than fine motor skills, allowing them to make hand gestures before they can speak, she explains.

When her daughter, Fireese, was born, Berg decided to stay home with her but wanted to continue earning an income. Combining her teaching and sign language background, she began offering baby sign language lessons in her living room.

To help promote her business, she made a YouTube video showing her signing with her then one-year-old daughter. Viewers often asked Berg if they could take lessons with her or become an instructor, so she developed a curriculum for her program. She now has more than 200 instructors across North America, some of whom are also stay-at-home moms, and her YouTube channel has more than 30 million views.

Sign language takes the guesswork out of trying to figure out what your baby wants. “The number one benefit is that it really helps to reduce frustration for both the baby and the parent,” says Berg. “With them being able to tell you what they want, it makes your life a lot easier.” She says babies who know how to sign have fewer temper tantrums because they can express themselves in a way their parents can understand.

As an example, Berg tells the story of her daughter, who was already signing at 10 months. When Berg gave her some Cheerios to eat, her daughter threw them on the floor and signed “more.” Puzzled, Berg asked her what else she wanted, and her daughter replied “more cheese” in sign language. “At 10 months, she put together a two-word sentence, which I never would have imagined a 10-month-old baby could do.”

Berg says that some parents are concerned that teaching their baby to sign will delay their son or daughter’s spoken language skills. “Language and speech are not the same thing,” she says. “Babies will talk when they’re ready to talk, but it gives them a useful language to use until they develop the ability to talk.”
-SUSAN BUBAK

Laura Berg shares her top three tips for teaching your baby how to sign:

Be consistent. Start with a simple, commonly used word such as “milk.” Sign the word every time you say it, much like you would teach your baby how to say and wave “bye-bye.

Begin with a few words, then add new ones as your baby learns them.

Don’t get discouraged or compare your baby’s progress with others. You and your baby are learning a new language, so make it fun!

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