Story by Susan Bubak
Photography by Dean Palmer

Until two years ago, Cameron Fryer’s experience with beer included a robust appreciation for the beverage and jobs that included almost every aspect of beer aside from actually making it. “I sold it, promoted it, served it, mopped it off of floors and delivered it,” says Fryer of his history with beer. “It just seemed like a natural thing to transition into making it professionally.”

Fryer, BA ’04, and Russell Bateman launched Royal City Brewing Co. in 2014, turning their passion for beer into a thriving Guelph-based business. “Russ and I started up the business because we really like beer, and we saw an opportunity in Guelph to come in and be a more local player,” says Fryer.

Starting their own brewery allowed them to be their own boss, but neither of them had much beer-making experience.

Fryer’s brewing knowledge was limited to a crash course on beer making he received while working an earlier job at Great Lakes Brewery in Toronto. After learning the basics from the head brewer, he began making beer at home. The learning process was “trial and error — mostly error,” says Fryer. Since then, he and Bateman have honed their beer-making skills into an art.

Royal City Brewing’s small scale and unique flavours set it apart from other breweries. When it opened, the brewery had just enough equipment to brew beer for its taproom and a handful of licensees. Since then, the brewery has expanded in size and capacity, and has made about 200 different types of craft beer. By next year, Royal City Brewing expects to be “one of the bigger small breweries in the province.”

Fryer studied history and German at U of G, but it was an elective beverage management course that piqued his interest in craft beer. Drinking his first Rauchbier, a German smoked beer, was a pivotal experience, introducing him to the diversity and flavours of different beers. “It’s now one of my favourite styles and has inspired a lot of our own brewing,” he says.

After graduating, he got a job teaching English at a high school in Nuremburg, Germany. “I actually landed in the beer heart of Germany,” says Fryer of the fortuitous post. Aside from teaching there for just over a year, Fryer spent time “learning about beer and tasting a lot of beer, and that furthered my interest in it.”

Fryer and Bateman grew up together in Aurora, Ont. They both attended U of G, but Bateman left before graduating to start his own business.

Royal City Brewing is brimming with Guelph pride (the city is also known as the Royal City). The walls of the taproom are lined with posters of their beer labels, which reference Guelph landmarks such as the covered bridge and Exhibition Park.

“When we first got going, we really wanted to be Guelph’s brewery,” says Fryer. “We wanted to share the enthusiasm and the love that we have for this place through what we’re doing beer-wise.”

Two-thirds of the brewery’s 15 staff are U of G graduates, including freelance graphic designer Cai Sepulis, BA ’02, who designs their retro labels and packaging. “We want to be Guelph’s brewery and she draws Guelph,” says Fryer. “She does some of the best labels and design work in the industry.”

The label for Gordon Hill Hefeweizen, for example, depicts a cyclist on the arduous Gordon Street hill. “I used to ride my bike up that hill every day,” says Fryer. He now lives in the Ward — a short walk from the brewery — which inspired their 100 Steps Stout.

Smoked Honey, Hibiscus Saison and Exhibition IPA are the brewery’s core brands, followed by its “Royal City regulars”: 100 Steps Stout, Suffolk St. Session Ale and Two Rivers Unfiltered Ale. Other beers such as Earl Grey Porter and Autumn Ale make seasonal appearances, while specialty blends such as Pear Vanilla, Octoberfest and Chocolate Raspberry are brewed once a year. Rotational brews and one-offs are also added into the mix.

Fryer and Bateman came up with the idea for Smoked Honey before they started the brewery. “That was the one recipe we knew we were going to go with,” says Fryer, describing it as a hybrid of his two favourite beer styles: an English brown ale and a German smoked lager. The flavour is created using beechwood smoke malt and local honey, which is fermented out for a light finish.

[pullquote]Craft beer is not determined by the size of the brewery, but by the way it makes its product,” says Royal City Brewing Co.’s Cameron Fryer. The main ingredient in a craft beer is grain, whereas macro brews typically use corn syrup, a cheaper alternative with a similar sugar profile that produces light-coloured, light-bodied beers.[/pullquote]

For Hibiscus Saison, Royal City Brewing works with The Custom Tea Company, which provides the hibiscus tea, and Escarpment Labs, which provides the yeast. Both companies are run by U of G grads, and received funding support from the Hub, an entrepreneurship program run by the University’s Centre for Business and Student Enterprise. “We just started it in May, and it’s been flying out the door,” says Fryer of the hibiscus brew. The tea infusion gives the beer a pink hue and a juicy tartness.

Fryer describes the current popularity of craft beers as a “reawakening” of beer tastes in Canada from the standard light lager. “I think people’s paletes are really adapting and changing now,” says Fryer, adding that his father is among the newly converted.

When developing new flavours, Fryer and Bateman work backwards, starting with their vision for the final product, then selecting the ingredients and processes to get there. “What do we want the final product to taste like?” says Fryer. “What do we want in that glass?”

Much like a chef decides which flavours pair well together, Fryer and Bateman try to come up with flavour combinations that make good brews. “We’re just trying to imagine what goes well together and tastes well together, and how to get it in beer,” says Fryer.

Certain flavours come from the yeast itself, whereas other flavours are added at different stages. “You can affect the outcome of the flavour of the beer at every stage of the brewing process,” says Fryer.

He compares the beer-making process to making a cup of tea: just add hot water to grain instead of tea leaves. Mashing replaces steeping, where water is added to the grain and heated to extract the sugar. The resulting liquid goes into a kettle along with other flavouring agents. The starch is broken down into simple sugars such as glucose and maltose, which are easier for the yeast to digest, and then rinsed.

The sugars are boiled for pasteurization to eliminate any bacteria that can negatively affect flavour and to evaporate excess water. Hops represent the majority of flavouring agents and are added early or late in the brewing process. A heat exchanger rapidly cools the beer from 100 C to 20 C to kill any remaining bacteria. Fermentation takes about two weeks.

Despite the work perk of regular taste testing, working with beer all day has its downside. “My overall beer consumption has gone down quite a bit since we opened,” says Fryer, adding that brewing beer is hot and heavy work. “You’re covered in it and wearing it at the end of the day. You don’t always want to drink it when you get home.”

Unorthodox yeasts on the rise

Of all the ingredients in beer, yeast has the most impact on its flavour. The alcohol in beer is the by-product of yeast fermentation. As yeast feed on sugar, they produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. Different yeasts produce different flavours, depending on their genetics.

Those single-celled microorganisms are turning into big business for microbiology grads Nate Ferguson, B.Sc. ’12, and Richard Preiss, B.Sc. ’14, and graduate student Angus Ross. In 2015, they launched Escarpment Labs, which develops yeast strains for breweries across Canada.

Royal City Brewing has been a testing ground for many of their yeasts. “We’ve been working with them since day one,” says Preiss. “Before they even opened, they were the first brewery we approached with this idea of producing local yeast in Ontario. They were very supportive of that idea and they continue to be really supportive.”

Their research and development involves producing new flavours of beer using different combinations of yeast and trying them out on consumers. Escarpment Labs received a grant from Gryphon’s LAAIR (Leading to Accelerated Adoption of Innovative Research) program to work with Prof. George Van Der Merwe, Molecular and Cellular Biology, to study and commercialize Ontario wild yeast strains for craft beers.

Their fermentation facility is currently housed at Royal City Brewing, where they ferment test samples of yeast to see how they grow, taste and smell. They measure flavour compounds in U of G labs.

“We’re making these test beers, these experiments, inside a brewery, so it’s a saleable product,” says Preiss. Some of their specialties include saison and sour beers made with yeast blends that aren’t found in traditional beers. “They create a profile that no one yeast alone can create,” he adds. “They’re very yeast flavour-driven beers. It’s a really good showcase of what yeast can do in beer.”

Getting the beers out to consumers is as easy as selling them in the brewery. “I think it’s really great that we get so much support from the brewing community here,” says Preiss. “That’s really rewarding, being able to taste the end result that someone has created with our products.”

The perfect pairing

Beer and cheese have more in common than you might think, sharing a long history as farmhouse fermentation products. Certified beer expert Mallorie Edward, who teaches a beer seminar series at U of G, offers five beer and cheese pairings to please the palete.

• •  Fresh goat’s cheese with a German or Belgian wheat beer.
• •  A soft brie or a washed rind cheese with a Belgian-style beer.
• •  Sharp cheddar with a traditional English IPA.
• •  Aged Gouda with a Marzen or Oktoberfest lager, or a malty German-style beer.
• •  Blue cheese with a barrel-aged porter or stout.

The post The craft of beer making appeared first on .

By Andrew Vowles
Photography by Dean Palmer

Evan Fraser’s career epiphany came one afternoon in the early 1990s while he was weeding a strawberry patch. That day, during a summer spent working on his grandfather’s fruit farm near Welland, Ont., Fraser was thinking about next steps beyond his university anthropology studies, including the possibility of taking over the farm. Then his step-grandmother drove up in her air-conditioned Lincoln Town Car and lowered the window to say hi.

Until her 50s, Kay Fraser had stayed at home to run the farm along with Evan’s grandfather, Frank, a graduate of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College. Feeling restive, she decided to take the advice of one of her sons to become a stockbroker. “That unleashed a formidable force,” says Fraser. Starting with a few well-off acquaintances, Kay built a clientele and a new lifestyle for herself. “She almost certainly earned more in commissions that afternoon than I made all summer on the farm,” says Fraser, laughing in his Hutt Building office, which displays black and white family photos on the farm. “Not only that, her commission was paying my wage.”

Instead of farming, he opted for grad school — better to write and talk about farming, he thought. “I’ve got food in my genes, both from a consumer and a producer perspective,” says Fraser, whose father is an animal welfare scientist and mother is a U of G graduate who has run a bed and breakfast.

That decision ultimately landed Fraser at U of G in 2010 to take up a new Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security. Geography professor John Smithers was department chair when Fraser arrived. Sporting a neck scarf and looking “like a cross between the Tasmanian Devil and Grover on Sesame Street,” says Smithers, the new guy “blew into the building with a bundle of energy and enthusiasm.”

Today Fraser is a bit more measured, but only just. Wearing a heavy checked shirt, jeans and running shoes, Fraser, a youthful-looking 43, might be taken for one of his own grad students, with all the energy of a twenty-something. “He’s very enthusiastic and optimistic,” says Dave Hobson, a technology transfer manager in U of G’s Catalyst Centre and Fraser’s weekly jogging buddy. “He’s not motivated by material things and money. We had a meeting two days ago with three people in suits, and Evan shows up in a T-shirt and khaki green slacks.”

In public talks about our collective food future, Fraser paces the stage and delivers his points with the impassioned cadences of an evangelical TED talker. He lays out his view of the food crisis in a crisp, punchy style whose folksy language doesn’t detract from the seriousness of his message. “There is a mismatch between what we produce and what we know we should be producing, and if we are to nutritiously feed the future, there needs to be a realignment in terms of the world’s agricultural systems,” he tells the audience at this fall’s annual president’s dinner.

Says Smithers, “He really does have an appreciation that food is a basic human need that we can’t take for granted. The things he’s interested in are part of the campus DNA — not just food but justice and development elements. Justice and equity map onto the food legacy.”

That message reflects what Fraser has learned since that day in the strawberry patch. He studied anthropology at the University of Toronto (U of T) before completing grad degrees in forestry and environmental studies at U of T and the University of British Columbia. After his PhD in 2002, he worked in a policy institute with former MP Lloyd Axworthy. A year later, he headed to the United Kingdom for a position at the University of Leeds, which was launching a new school of sustainability.

By the time he returned to Canada, Fraser had published numerous academic papers and book chapters. He’d also begun attracting mainstream attention for his more popular writing. He arrived in Guelph in the midst of media interviews about his new book, co-authored with journalist Andrew Rimas, called Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. The book explores how mismanaged agro-ecosystems have contributed to hunger and other issues that led to unrest and conflict in parts of the world, including the 1930s American dust bowl and the Irish potato famine.

That lesson has repeated itself more recently, says Fraser. The 1990s Rwandan genocide was preceded by periods of drought or environmental degradation that spurred migration into already crowded urban areas. Similarly, he says, a drought in Russia cut off Kremlin wheat exports to the Middle East in 2010, which helped spark the 2011 Arab Spring. “Some of the big arcs of history are precipitated when food systems are not sustainable,” he says, adding that population growth and climate change often expose other political and economic problems, making civic unrest and international conflict much more likely.

At U of G, he set about developing a food security research, teaching and outreach program to address what he says is one of the world’s greatest challenges: how to sustainably and equitably feed the projected human population on Earth by mid-century. The Feeding Nine Billion project is intended to provide sound information on food systems and food security.

Kelly Hodgins, MA ’15, is project coordinator of Feeding Nine Billion. She came to U of G in 2013 to study the role of businesses in food security and was taken by Fraser’s friendly demeanour — a first impression that was only strengthened when he invited his grad students for Thanksgiving at his home. “This food prof is actually cooking food and bringing people together around food,” she recalls. “He’s walking the walk.” Other grad students have looked at food waste, local and global food systems, climate change and urban migration, and urban agriculture. Fraser says he likes to mentor students with activist leanings and prefers not to micromanage, calling his supervisory style “benign neglect.”

Two years ago, Fraser and Hodgins launched the Feeding Nine Billion challenge, a two-day contest that sees student teams from a handful of universities designing ideas for improving food security. This year’s event held in early September brought together more than 40 University of Guelph undergrads from across campus. Feeding Nine Billion has teamed up with U of G’s transdisciplinary “Ideas Congress” course run by Profs. Dan Gillis, School of Computer Science, and Shoshanah Jacobs, Department of Integrative Biology. The class is intended to help students develop their food security ideas, and to connect them with related initiatives both on and off campus. “The idea is to impart skills and confidence for students to make a difference in the world,” says Hodgins. “We’re engaging students in social innovation.”

Widening their audience, the Feeding Nine Billion team has made an animated YouTube series on the global food crisis, which has been viewed more than 280,000 times, and has been used as a teaching aid in university and high school classrooms. Fraser continues to write extensively about food in articles that have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Walrus, Foreign Affairs and CNN. In 2014, he published a graphic novel, called #Foodcrisis, whose imaginary apocalyptic narrative shares Fraser’s five-part prescription for staving off a global food disaster: improved food distribution, sustainable higher farm production, support of local food, environmental protection and public engagement.

Fraser says food security is an intergenerational issue — one whose solution will lie largely with today’s younger audience, including his three children ages 6, 11 and 13. It’s tomorrow’s producers and consumers that he has in mind when publishing a graphic novel or airing those YouTube videos. “I’m worried that many North Americans assume that everything is okay with our food system,” he says. “The food crisis of 2008 to 2011 suggests otherwise.”

This summer, Fraser was named director of the University of Guelph Food Institute, a portal that connects Guelph food researchers with Canadian and international partners to improve food systems, and to raise Canada’s profile in the global food economy. Earlier this fall, he took on another challenge when he became scientific director of a seven-year, $77-million project called Food From Thought (FFT), involving more than 100 U of G researchers and many more partners in Canada and abroad. Fraser says Food From Thought is a huge boost for team members and the entire campus of what’s billed as Canada’s food university. “This has created opportunities to do big things,” says Fraser. “There’s huge momentum.”

It’s perfect fodder for someone described by friends and coworkers as a big-picture thinker and an investigator driven as much by curiosity as by conviction. He’s accompanied U of G ecologists Kevin McCann and Neil Rooney to Cambodia to look at small-scale fishing and farming, and he spent 10 days with population medicine professor Cate Dewey, “bouncing around in the back of a beat-up Land Rover in rural Rwanda” to see rice-growing projects run by the World Bank and small-scale farming by HIV-positive women in remote mountain villages.

Those experiences — and their lessons about the social nuances of sustainable production — play into Fraser’s own research studies of the social and environmental effects of food price volatility and ways to reduce waste in global food systems. We need 21st century technology to solve this century’s challenges, says Fraser, but we need to be mindful of potential consequences. Those technologies could accelerate the decline of rural communities and leave farmers disenfranchised, both here and abroad. “What does a self-driving, GPS-guided tractor do for a farmer in Malawi?” asks Fraser, who also plans to study data ownership and privacy issues in agri-food systems along with U of G engineers and computer scientists.

Fraser figures he’s making change in wider ways than he could have done back on his grandfather’s fruit farm. It’s his global view on food security that in turn lures tomorrow’s potential change-makers to work with him. Referring to his grad students, he says young researchers are equally drawn to U of G by its combination of rigorous academics and a chance to contribute to real-world change.

“We have to strive to explore the full complexity of these issues,” says Fraser. “There’s no simple populist answer about food and sustainability. I’m determined to try to explore these issues in a way that’s accessible and relevant.”

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By Andrew Vowles

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he next time you sit down for a meal, line up for takeout or cruise the aisles of your supermarket, consider this: You want safe, fresh food, but how much will you pay for it? You want affordable, abundant food, but what if you save money at the expense of the environment or your health?

Tackling these issues is the point of Food From Thought (FFT), a new $77-million project involving researchers at the University of Guelph. The seven-year project announced this fall will bring together more than 100 Guelph researchers along with various external partners. In the process, they’re addressing another paradox: how to produce enough food for a growing human population — predicted to reach nine billion people by mid-century — without ruining the Earth’s ecosystems in the process.

“We’re talking about changing the way we produce food in Canada,” says population medicine professor Jan Sargeant, one of 10 principal investigators in the project.

Feeding all of those people will require more food. But our efforts to grow more food increasingly threaten the very life supports — air, water, soil and biodiversity — that sustain our agri-food system.

“We want to sustain these ecosystem services while putting food on our plates,” says Malcolm Campbell, a professor and vice-president (research). He researches plant-environment interactions in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and he’s the institutional lead for the Food From Thought project. “Those two challenges collide and create one super-challenge.”

Agriculture consumes water and mineral resources. Farming is our largest source of water pollution through runoff of fertilizers and pesticides. Livestock contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the health of animals and people. Some 30 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.

“Population growth and urbanization are pushing up our demand for food while climate change, volatile energy prices and water scarcity are going to make food harder and more expensive to produce,” says geography professor Evan Fraser, scientific director of Food From Thought. “Additionally, for all the good things that agriculture can do, we have to acknowledge that in many parts of the world, agriculture causes major environmental problems.”

Production is one side of the problem. The other side is consumers. We waste almost one-third of the food we make, and what food is not wasted is poorly shared. Parts of the world struggle with obesity, while others endure malnourishment and hunger. But the United Nations estimates that there are about 2,850 dietary calories available daily for every man, woman and child on the planet. “There’s more food available per capita today than at any point in human history,” says Fraser.

In this century, how we produce and distribute food — and what kinds of food we produce — will be a more important issue than simply producing more calories. What’s needed today, say FFT principals, is a “digital agricultural revolution” that will allow us to grow more and safer food on less land and with fewer inputs.

“The digital agricultural revolution will deliver the right amount of food at the right location for real-time management of individual plants and animals,” says Campbell. Precision agriculture will rely upon information technology and “big data” to produce food. Those information tools will serve as the brains in robotic milking systems; in drones and satellites that monitor soil moisture for irrigation requirements or optimum planting times; and in smartphone apps that allow farmers to identify insects in their fields to help predict and control pest infestations. Imagine self-driving tractors that automatically plant, fertilize and irrigate crops without wasting seed, nutrients or water.

Under Food From Thought, these tools will help researchers study food safety, sustainable food production and agriculture’s impact on biodiversity.

FOOD SAFETY & LIVESTOCK HEALTH

Big data is increasingly important to ensure food safety and livestock health. Current attempts to keep livestock healthy have contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which threatens both animal and consumers’ health. Pathobiology professor Bonnie Mallard is using genomics to screen and breed healthier livestock lines. Her patented immune response profiling technology identifies animals with naturally high, average or low immunity to various pathogens. This allows breeders and farmers to select animals for better disease resistance, and benefits consumers eating products from healthier animals treated with fewer antibiotics and other drugs.

Food science professor Jeffrey Farber worked for Health Canada for about 25 years before joining Guelph in 2015, where he runs the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety. He plans to research innovative technologies for reducing food-borne illness, particularly in low-moisture foods such as nuts, dried apples, dried strawberry and chocolate.

Farber says big data will allow researchers to look at varied problems. Imagine simulation systems that allow scientists to model how pathogens behave as they travel through the gastrointestinal tract and their effects on gut microbes. For consumers, that might lead to new products such as probiotics in food that nurture good gut bugs and help control the bad ones. On a larger scale, imagine being able to weave data about microbial pathogens with geographic information systems designed to capture weather and climate patterns. Farber says that kind of information could help predict food-borne disease outbreaks.

His work intersects with studies by Jan Sargeant, who has led Guelph’s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses for eight years. Preventing the spread of disease from animals to humans will also be easier with better information systems, says Sargeant. She says integrating production information with data on disease spread will help predict and stem infectious disease outbreaks. “We can do more meaningful things to prevent disease outbreaks in animals, thereby improving animal health and welfare, and protecting human health.”

SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION

Big data can help make farming more efficient, allowing farmers to shrink agriculture’s environmental footprint. “Agriculture creates a leaky system,” says plant agriculture professor Clarence Swanton, who studies how plants compete and communicate to thwart pests and disease. Referring to excess use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers that feed algal blooms and dying water bodies, he says, “You can look at any watershed and see the impact of agriculture.”

Elsewhere on campus, Guelph crop scientists are using genomic information to develop more nutritious plant lines suited to local conditions, including simulating changes expected to be wrought by climate change. Learning more about farm animal genetics offers a route to breeding livestock that converts feed into meat or milk more efficiently — U of G researchers have already improved Canada’s dairy industry by providing producers with more efficient breeding stock that cause fewer greenhouse gas emissions. And they’ve developed crop varieties that are more productive and hardy.

By improving farm operations, those tools may help keep costs lower for both farmers and consumers. Ten years ago, Swanton bought 100 acres near Eramosa north of Guelph, where he now grows corn, wheat and soybeans. Swapping his weed scientist lab coat for his farming dungarees, he ponders the effects of this summer’s drought in southern Ontario. He harvested fewer soybeans than normal this year, and wonders whether he might have improved his harvest by finding a more drought-resistant soybean variety or a more targeted monitoring system to track field conditions.

AGRICULTURE & BIODIVERSITY

Farming practices cause up to 270,000 square kilometres of the Earth’s land mass to be deforested or turned into desert every year. That has to stop, says integrative biology professor Paul Hebert: “Our need to feed humanity is despoiling vast amounts of land.” We also lose untold numbers of species that play a role in ecosystems and ultimately sustain human life.

Under the International Barcode of Life project, he and other researchers around the world intend to catalogue species in an effort to preserve organisms and ecosystems. DNA barcoding, a technology developed by Hebert, distinguishes species by reading a telltale snippet of their genetic material. Analysis and cataloguing takes place on campus at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics within the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario.

Beyond mapping biodiversity, DNA barcoding has proven useful in identifying mislabelled food items in restaurants and supermarkets; in regulating the cross-border movement of endangered species; and in enabling Canadian food exporters to demonstrate product authenticity. Hebert imagines new uses for barcoding on the farm of the future.

“By next summer we will deploy a DNA-based monitoring system across southern Ontario that will track shifts in the density of crop pests,” he says. Much like a network of weather stations collecting information about rainfall or temperature, this system will analyze insects from traps deployed in farm fields to alert farmers about emerging pest problems. Ultimately, he says, the technology will allow farmers to diagnose problems right in the field and apply pesticides only where and when they’re needed.

Far from pitting agriculture and biodiversity against each other, Food From Thought will bring together agricultural scientists and ecologists. It has to, says Swanton. “In agriculture, a less diverse system is easier to manage,” he says. “It’s a change of thought: How to make the system more diverse to enhance ecosystems and maintain agricultural production?”

Farming in one place can affect an ecosystem thousands of miles away, says Kevin McCann, an ecologist in the Department of Integrative Biology. Snow geese feed on grain grown in the southern United States, bulking up for their annual migration north to Canada. Plentiful farm crops mean more snow geese, which mean larger flocks arriving in Hudson Bay. The result: the Hudson Bay lowlands are decimated as explosive numbers of geese strip the landscape of vegetation. “This is a global issue, and needs people thinking from the local to the global scale,” he says. “Is there a sweet spot of production while preserving biodiversity?”

Campbell thinks there is, and that Food From Thought can help find it. He expects the initiative will yield ideas for increasing food production while protecting ecosystem services, supporting the agri-food economy and ensuring healthful food for consumers.

“To ensure food security, we must safely, sustainably and nutritiously feed the world’s growing population while protecting the world’s biodiversity,” he says. “The University of Guelph, and Canada, will lead the world in meeting this challenge.”

The post A new food revolution appeared first on .

Story by Andrew Vowles
Illustrations by Gary Clement

As an immigration and refugee lawyer in Toronto, Jackie Swaisland has encountered her share of horror stories about the ordeals of migrants. Still, when news outlets broadcast images last fall of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, the Syrian refugee crisis took on added poignancy. Swaisland had just returned to work from her first maternity leave. “Like parents all across the world, I thought: ‘What if that had been my daughter?,’” she says. “It struck really close to home.” She felt driven to act.

She’s one of many U of G graduates who are helping refugees or internally displaced people, now numbering in the tens of millions worldwide. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says those numbers have reached their highest point since the Second World War, driven by recent conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Ripples from the Middle East have reached other parts of the globe, notably Europe, where Edward Koning grew up in the Netherlands. The U of G political science professor — and, as of last year, a permanent Canadian resident — says Canada’s geographical distance allows us to be more selective of prospective migrants than many European countries facing floods of people spilling over their borders. He says we could be doing more.

“The story of Canada as the most generous place for refugees is a little self-congratulatory,” says Koning, who is studying immigration policy in Europe and North America. Referring more generally to the country’s careful selection process for admitting immigrants, he says Canada tends to accept applicants based on their potential for finding work. Government-assisted refugees to Canada, who are registered as refugees with the United Nations, receive public assistance for at least a year.

Still, there’s no denying the refugee crisis has touched a humanitarian chord in many Canadians, including Swaisland.

Stunned by those TV images last fall, she launched the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program (RSSP). Taking time off from her work at Toronto law firm Waldman and Associates, Swaisland, BA ’03, worked with University of Ottawa law professor Jennifer Bond to enlist practitioners across Canada for this new venture.

Under the network, legal experts offer pro bono services to groups and individuals looking to privately sponsor refugees to Canada. Within days, they received more than 100 responses. Today, the network involves 1,300 lawyers and law students in 11 major centres. The RSSP trains lawyers in refugee sponsorship issues and matches them with prospective private sponsors. So far, the group has helped sponsors submit applications for about 2,500 refugees — mostly Syrians but also from Burundi, Somalia and Afghanistan. Swaisland now helps run the program’s Toronto chapter.

Earlier, Swaisland served as co-counsel in a successful court challenge of cuts to federal health-care benefits for refugees imposed in 2012 by the former Conservative government. Earlier this year, the new Liberal government — already committed to resettling thousands of Syrian refugees — restored full benefits.

“One hundred thousand refugees have better health care as a result,” says Swaisland, 35. “It’s amazing, knowing that you have been a small part of helping so many people. How often do you have an opportunity to help on that kind of scale?”

Swaisland arrived at U of G to study philosophy, with a minor in business. “I wanted a university with a sense of community and I heard that Guelph was social justice-oriented.” She went on to complete degrees at Queen’s University and Harvard Law School, and has worked at Waldman and Associates since 2009.

“Lawyers are people who can evoke change in society,” she says. “People who can challenge how things work and enter politics often have a legal background.” Practising refugee law involves a high proportion of pro bono cases and more than a little resilience. “You deal with people who have faced trauma and who have been through things nobody should have to deal with.”

While at U of G, Swaisland was involved in student governance and worked on Interhall Council. So did Michael Stephenson, who came to U of G to study biomedical science. After graduating in 2002, he went to medical school. One day he heard a talk by a man who had been tortured in Iran and said Canada’s health-care system had been vital to his recovery. “I’ve always been interested in the care of more vulnerable populations,” says Stephenson, who spent time travelling through Central and South America, Asia and East Africa.

His residency took him to a Montreal clinic where half of the patients were refugees. Later he worked in Toronto at Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services, a community health centre focused on refugees. After moving to Kitchener, Ont., in 2012, he realized that services were lacking right where he lived.

“I heard again and again there was a huge need in the region,” he says. “Refugees were facing a lot of access issues, and health providers misunderstood coverage and entitlement. I heard stories of insured refugees being turned away from walk-in clinics and emergency rooms.”

Working with local social service agencies, he established Sanctuary Refugee Health Centre in 2013. Today about 1,400 patients — mostly from the Middle East — are registered with the clinic. Stephenson, 37, retains a full-time social worker and a registered nurse, as well as other part-time specialists. He relies on volunteer receptionists, nurses and translators. Funding and administration are ongoing challenges, but he loves helping to improve people’s health and change their lives.

“I have the good fortune of being able to assist somebody to become established in Canada,” he says. “My patients have been through horrible life-changing events. Helping them move past this is an important part of settling into Canada.” Recalling his anger over the 2012 health-care cuts, he says he was among numerous practitioners who joined the court challenge to overturn that decision.

Prof. Edward Koning’s research also looks at migrants’ access to health benefits and social services. He says the Harper government invoked fairness and equitable access to health care to justify its cuts. Right idea, wrong approach, he says. To ensure the best chance of integration and to quell tensions between groups, Koning says the same benefits and social services need to be offered to all migrants.

Earlier this year, Koning found himself in demand as a local speaker on the Mediterranean refugee crisis. That’s where he met Jaya James, B.Comm. ’02, a policy adviser with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs based in Guelph. When Ottawa announced plans last year to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada, James, 38, was drawn to the mounting efforts to sponsor local refugees and raise funds.

[pullquote]”THERE’S BAD IN THE WORLD, SO LET’S GO HELP FIX IT.”[/pullquote]

She took a six-month leave from work to devote her efforts full-time to the cause as the volunteer director of Guelph’s Refugee Sponsorship Forum (RSF), which supports private refugee sponsors in the city. The organization recruits, trains and screens volunteers for various tasks, including transportation, housing, food and clothing collection, counselling for work and health care, and English-language training for new arrivals. More than 800 volunteers are organized into teams under the RSF umbrella.

“There’s a sense of relief because they got out [of the country], but there’s also anxiety because they had to leave some immediate family behind,” says James of the new arrivals she’s met, including many multigenerational families. “You can see how grateful they are, but also how concerned they are.”

By the time her volunteer appointment ended in late June, more than 20 families — mostly from Syria — had settled in Guelph and Wellington County. She expects to join the forum’s advisory committee and help with fundraising: the group hopes to raise $100,000 to support RSF operations until the end of 2017.

Last spring, Stephenson returned to campus to deliver the Last Lecture to the 2015 graduating class. He says Guelph introduced critical thinking skills and enabled him to investigate history, political science and the arts — all useful grounding for dealing with humanitarian issues. He encouraged graduates to apply these skills to make a difference in the world.

Next spring, it will be Swaisland’s turn to deliver the Last Lecture. Before that, her volunteer work is being recognized this year by awards from the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and the Advocates’ Society, and with a Precedent Setter Award for being a “leader of tomorrow.”

She says much of her conviction stems from her U of G days. There’s a sense of enthusiasm and optimism around campus, she says: “There’s bad in the world, so let’s go help fix it.”

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Story by Susan Bubak | Photography by Jennifer Roberts

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou are what you eat — that’s especially true of professional athletes whose success depends on what they consume before, during and after each game. As the sports nutritionist for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jennifer Sygo is part of the team behind the team that keeps the players in top shape.

“A lot of people have been waiting a very long time for this team to win, and I’m so excited to have a tiny role in helping these players be the best they can be,” says Sygo, who began working for the Leafs last summer.

The team is already very health-conscious, so it doesn’t take much convincing for the players to adopt a healthy diet and lifestyle. Most of the players have been athletes since childhood and grew up in families that instilled healthy eating habits. You won’t find any junk food in their locker rooms because Sygo ensures that healthy alternatives are always within reach.

Sygo also works with national and Olympic athletes in various sports, and provides nutrition services to the Toronto Raptors. She says the biggest difference between working with professional athletes and the public is the access players have to experts who help them eat well, including personal chefs, dietitians and nutritionists. Even when they’re on the road, sports teams have healthy meals delivered to them so they don’t need to rely on fast food. “There’s no shortage of getting good food in their hands,” says Sygo, whereas the average person may not have the time or money to spend on a specialized diet.

Both professional athletes and their fans share a love of junk food. “Athletes are also human, and fries taste good to all of them,” she says. As a registered dietitian, she makes recommendations on how to make healthy choices, but ultimately it’s up to her clients — athletes or not — to decide what they put in their bodies. Each player is different and so are their dietary needs — some need to lose weight while others need to gain it. Sygo works with each athlete to develop a diet plan specific to their needs and lifestyle.

“Nutrition can make a big difference in performance,” she says, recalling her earlier work with a junior hockey player. He was eating a protein-heavy diet with minimal carbs because he wanted to avoid gaining weight. “We worked on a more balanced meal plan, and he noticed an almost immediate improvement in speed and endurance on the ice, not to mention mental focus off the ice,” says Sygo.

Not surprisingly, her own recipe for success includes a healthy diet and an active lifestyle. A sports fan since childhood, she grew up “playing a little bit of everything.” Her favourite sport was basketball, but she also played volleyball and enjoyed track and field, ultimate Frisbee and swimming. Now she prefers running. “These days it’s more about being healthy and active with my kids.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, Sygo decided to apply her passions for science, sports and working with people in a career that combined all three: sports nutrition.

She enrolled in what was then the human biology and nutritional sciences program at U of G and completed a master’s degree in 2002. She took additional courses and internships to achieve the professional designation of registered dietitian (RD). “It took almost nine years from the start of my undergrad to the time I got my RD, but it was totally worth it.”

She brings her message to the masses with a regular column for the National Post, and on television and radio programs. Her 2014 book, Unmasking Superfoods (HarperCollins Canada), was a national bestseller.

What are some of her most popular columns? “Whenever I write about the paleo diet, I get a lot of attention,” she says. Paleo involves eating a caveman’s diet of unprocessed foods such as fruits, vegetables and meat, while excluding grains and dairy. “It’s nonsense,” she says of the paleo diet. “You’re cutting out large portions of what would be considered to be a healthful diet: grains, dairy and even legumes.”

Another column addressed “dietary dogma” or the strong – and often inaccurate – opinions that people have about diet and nutrition. “It seems that if you yell the loudest you get the most attention, so we have a lot of people who are making claims about certain diets or certain foods or certain ways of eating as being the right way in almost a religious kind of way,” says Sygo. She’s not the only one concerned about people taking non-expert nutrition advice. Dietitians around the world have thanked her for addressing the topic because their clients often receive conflicting advice from celebrities and the media.

One of the most common food myths she hears from clients is that eating one type of food is going to change their lives, help them lose weight or prevent disease. “The idea that eating a certain berry will help you lose weight or eating a particular vegetable will prevent cancer is unrealistic,” she says. “You really have to look at the totality of someone’s diet to see how their weight and their health are going to be affected.”

The way we eat is just as important as what we eat, she says, because making sustainable choices allows us to eat foods that are healthy and produced with minimal environmental impact. “Do berries from the Amazon jungle need to be on our table if we can find something that’s equally healthy and local, and that requires far less energy and resources to produce and get to consumers?”

Although it’s her job to help people follow a healthy diet, even Sygo has a food weakness: cereal. “I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but obviously that’s not a terribly balanced diet.” She admits that she wasn’t the healthiest eater when she was a kid, citing Kraft Dinner as one of her favourite meals, but that has made her more sensitive to her own clients’ food vices. Now she eats a salad every day and enjoys preparing healthy meals for her family, including her signature beef barley soup.

Sygo keeps her family’s fridge stocked with healthy foods such as milk, yogurt, eggs and fruit. Her family tries to eat meals together whenever possible, and she encourages her kids to eat at least one bite of whatever is on their plate.

“We try to enjoy a wide variety of foods, and over time, kids will develop a palate for things you might have thought were impossible for them to like at first,” she says. “For example, my kids love chickpeas, kale chips and mangoes and they usually eat their veggies, but if you offer them candy or french fries, they’ll be more than happy to eat those, too!”

Food fact or fiction? Jennifer Sygo sheds light on popular food myths:

I have to drink eight glasses of water a day.
That’s a massive myth and it’s one that unfortunately still shows up in well-regarded places. You’ll see nutrition professionals and doctors recommending it in magazines, and it’s not based on any real data. It’s based on the idea that people generally need about two to 2.5 litres of fluids from all sources per day. That includes fruit, vegetables and foods that contain water like soups and yogurt as a totality. An individual’s water use is really variable, depending on your size, how active you are and your sweat rate.

Sports drinks are the best post-exercise beverages.
It depends on the sport, athlete and various other factors, even the weather. In some cases, sports drinks can be a real benefit to athletes, especially when it’s hot or humid, or if the athlete is already dehydrated, which can happen in a tournament setting, a long run or ride for 90 minutes or more, or if an athlete has already trained once that day and is feeling tired. But for most athletes and weekend warriors, water is best.

A gluten-free diet is healthier.
I do believe that gluten-free diets have their place — obviously if someone has celiac disease, there’s no question. There’s also thought to be a condition called non-celiac gluten sensitivity that could affect five to 10 per cent of the population. For those individuals, following a gluten-free diet makes good sense and it may be medically necessary. For the rest of us, there really isn’t any convincing evidence that you need to be gluten-free.

Whole grains are better for me.
Yes, their nutrient content tends to be higher than what you get from a refined grain. For example, quinoa is particularly high in magnesium, which is a nutrient that North Americans generally don’t get enough of. It plays a very important role in our cardiovascular health, in particular blood pressure control and possibly strokes. Whole grains have a higher amount of those key nutrients such as magnesium, fibre, B vitamins and iron, so you have the nutritional benefits. They also tend to be eaten in intact form, which is also a benefit. You’re eating the quinoa as actual quinoa versus a ground-up form, turning it into a flour. When you eat any food that’s been pre-ground or taken from its original form and made highly digestible, you tend to absorb more of the calories from that food.

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By Andrew Vowles | Illustration by Cai Sepulis

[dropcap]When[/dropcap] Kailey Morin looked into Guelph’s first-year seminar program as an undergrad, she wasn’t looking to change her life or career goals. She was initially attracted to the descriptions in the course calendar, including her ultimate class choice, “Rags Seldom Turn to Riches,” a seminar course on poverty
and income inequality.

“I wanted to get in because they’re such cool classes,” says Morin, who graduated in 2012. “They’re small with appealing topics.”

For Morin, that small class had big consequences. On a class trip, she visited Regent Park, a low-income Toronto neighbourhood with a high proportion of recent immigrants and refugees. Years later, that visit came up when Morin interviewed for a job with the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture in Toronto.

“They asked what I knew about newcomer services and I told them I had an introductory insight into the challenges of Regent Park,” says Morin, who got the job as a community engagement coordinator. “I ended up working on a lot of projects in community development. I went full circle.”

[dropcap]Morin[/dropcap] is among numerous students and graduates who regard the U of G’s first-year seminar (FYS) program as a pivotal learning experience. From small class sizes to offbeat topics and academic skills, the seminars offer various benefits to students. They have also proven a boon to U of G instructors looking to broaden their teaching portfolio, and pursue interests and passions beyond their specialization.

The FYS program was launched in 2004 and attracted widespread interest for five years. After a two-year hiatus due to inadequate funding, a $2-million boost from the U of G Alumni Association and business executive Tye Burt, BA ’80, restored the program in 2011. Today, some 40 seminars are offered each year, taught by faculty, senior administrators and professional staff. Each course takes up to 18 incoming students, allowing for close engagement with the instructor.

“When you come into university, you expect a 700-person lecture hall,” says Morin. “It’s nice when you’re new to make friends in a small space like that.”

Elizabeth Jackson, community engagement officer with Guelph’s International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, teaches “Reading Stories, Reading the World,” a seminar that links literacy and citizen engagement. She says small seminar classes enable the students and instructor to share their stories with each other, making learning personal. Valesca de Groot, a student in the class last fall, agrees.

“The small class stimulated more communication,” she says. “We talked about current issues in a way that’s not possible with 500 people. You can connect more with the teacher.”

Program director Jacqueline Murray says the seminar topics are intended to connect students with societal issues. Samuel Mosonyi, BA ’14, majored in both political science, and criminal justice and public policy. He learned about community service and engagement through a first-year seminar taught by Murray called “Politics, Science and Culture of Hunger.” Mosonyi and his classmates wrote a proposal to address food insecurity in Vancouver’s low-income Eastside neighbourhood that was evaluated by the director of the national Meal Exchange program.

“In first year, we were able to work on projects that contributed to the betterment of society,” says Mosonyi, who is now in law school. “It wasn’t until university that I really started to engage with community and take on a lot of leadership roles.”

Jolene Labbe, BAS ’14, completed the same class. Now a researcher at McGill University, she works in climate change adaptation with the Government of Nunavut. She handles a mix of environmental and cultural issues, including the impact of sea ice reduction and permafrost thaw on hunting and fishing, as well as roads and buildings.

“The only way we are going to tackle climate change is by bringing together science, social sciences, humanities,” says Labbe. Recalling the range of topics and perspectives brought to that first-year seminar, she says, “We have to look at these things in tandem. My everyday job is understanding science but also going beyond understanding science and what can we do to decrease these impacts.”

Murray says seminar topics are wide-ranging and often intentionally provocative. And any first-year student can take any seminar, regardless of discipline or degree program. That aspect makes Guelph’s program stand out from first-year offerings at other universities.

According to studies led by Murray, FYS students report greater skill development and carryover to other courses, especially in critical thinking and collaborative learning. Some also report spending up to five times as much time and effort on their FYS courses than on all others combined in a semester. Another study shows FYS students expand their research into a wider range of resources than students not enrolled in a seminar.

Instructors also benefit, says Murray. Many view an FYS course as a chance to explore course topics beyond their usual curriculum assignments. It’s also a place for experimenting with less conventional teaching methods and assignments. For example, instructors have assigned students to produce a radio documentary, devise a project with a community group and explain science to street youth. Teaching a first-year seminar can be a morale-booster for instructors, who report returning to their regular assignments with a sense of rejuvenation.

“It’s way too much fun,” says former chief librarian and chief information officer Mike Ridley of teaching in the program. Ridley has instructed several seminars, including “Twitter: #Profound or #Pretentious,” which required students to write essays composed strictly of tweets. “You can’t be in the back of the room and not be involved.”

Murray says teaching in the FYS program has impacted her own life. The history graduate says, the FYS topics she’s covered, including sex and gender, have made her more science-savvy.

“All educated citizens need to understand science to be good citizens, to know what decisions to make about in vitro fertilization, climate change or sending people to Mars,” she says. “I’ve found my inner science person, which I never knew existed. I can learn about science and understand, and be part of the discussion.”

With the opportunity for students to experiment with subject matter they might not cover in their chosen discipline, and for faculty to creatively offer introductory courses, FYS classes quickly fill up each semester. Murray would like to offer the program to more of Guelph’s incoming students — she’s sold on the learning benefits.

“I see students take one course and blossom,” says Murray. “They develop intellectually in a smaller group. You see them grow right before your eyes as people, learn who they are, change majors and find direction. That’s just an amazing thing to be part of.”

A closer look at a few FYS courses:

The #StationaryCrew
Students gain insight into culture and community by examining eight public artworks in Guelph, including campus icons the Begging Bear, Old Jeremiah (the painted cannon in Branion Plaza) and the Gryphon statue.

The Science of Wars
This seminar explores the impact the Star Wars films have on propelling current scientific research, pop culture, language and diction, artistic expression and morality.

Stupidity and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century
Students critique the concept of stupidity and explore its relationship with popular culture through diverse media such as YouTube, Twitter, movies, literature, etc.

 I Fought the Law
Working collaboratively, students explore scenarios based on current legal dilemmas, and examine the histories, current tensions and possible resolutions of conflicts in such areas as child welfare, drug use, political activism, racial profiling and prisoners’ rights.

 Sleep: 1/3 of Your Life Spent with Your Eyes Closed
Focusing on the art and science of sleep, topics include contributors to insomnia, circadian rhythms and biological clocks, dreams and nightmares, cultural determinants of sleep patterns, sleep disorders and sleep aids.

The post From Star Wars to the science of sleep, first-year seminars offer a unique learning experience for students and instructors appeared first on .

Story by Teresa Pitman

The baby mountain gorilla cradled in his mother’s arms is very sick: he’s lethargic and not nursing, and has a yellow discharge from his eyes and nose. Veterinarian Mike Cranfield, DVM ’77, suspects a respiratory virus complicated with a secondary bacterial pneumonia. Without medical intervention, the baby will die.

Cranfield, along with Congolese veterinarian Eddy Kambale and several park rangers, have walked an hour through community farmlands to the Virunga Massif park boundary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and then endured another hour of steep climbing through thick rainforest vegetation to reach this troop of mountain gorillas. Now they move cautiously: the troop of eight includes three mature silverback males weighing up to 400 pounds each and one younger blackback male. The gorillas watch warily as the veterinarians approach.

“Gorillas are vegetarians, so silverbacks and blackbacks won’t attack you as food, but they’ll do what they have to do to protect their troop,” says Cranfield, co-director of Gorilla Doctors, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing gorillas back from the brink of extinction through life-saving veterinary medicine.

Kambale anesthetizes the mother with a dart and the countdown begins: the veterinarians have 40 minutes until she wakes up. Moving quickly, Cranfield and Kambale inject the baby and mother with antibiotics. No reaction from the baby. They then collect samples from the mother to help diagnose the medical problem. Cranfield also wants to swab the baby’s nose to gather secretions for testing. As he gently turns the baby’s head, the tiny animal lets out a squawk. The male gorillas charge.

[dropcap]That[/dropcap] baby gorilla’s life represents hope for a critically endangered species. In the mid-1980s, research by American gorilla expert Dian Fossey indicated fewer than 250 mountain gorillas remaining in the Virunga Massif, home to one of two mountain gorilla populations. Because of their restricted habitat and slow reproductive rate (about one baby every four years), the work to protect and help increase the gorilla population has been slow, difficult and dangerous.

The mountain gorilla’s habitat is limited to two protected areas in Africa: the 450-square-kilometre Virunga Massif, which spans national parks in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda; and the 331-square-kilometre Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. The land surrounding the parks is some of the most densely populated in Africa, and the countries the gorillas call home are among the most volatile in the world.

As a result, gorillas face numerous threats, including poaching and habitat loss. But the biggest health threat may come from human-borne infectious diseases. Gorillas share more than 98 per cent of their genes with humans, making them extremely susceptible to human viruses and bacteria — with no immunity, a common cold can be deadly.

Gorilla Doctors is continuing and expanding on Fossey’s appeal to save the species by providing veterinary care to individual gorillas in their habitat. Co-director of the organization since 1998, Cranfield oversees a team of 12 African veterinarians, plus other support staff, most from the communities near the gorilla ranges. The organization works in Africa providing preventive and clinical care for mountain gorillas and eastern lowland (Grauer’s) gorillas, even performing surgery on the jungle floor. It also provides health care and treatment for orphaned gorillas in three sanctuaries, and supports health programs for the people and their animals living in the area as part of its “one health” approach. In addition, Cranfield’s team conducts research, and regularly collects gorilla and human medical samples to help predict new pandemics through the United States Agency for International Development’s Emerging Pandemics Program.

Their efforts seem to be working: today, there are 880 mountain gorillas in the world, with nearly 500 living in the Virunga Massif. An improvement, but the species remains at high risk for extinction.

[dropcap]It’s[/dropcap] a long way from the Riverview Park and Zoo in Cranfield’s hometown of Peterborough, Ont., to the mountains of Africa. While attending the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) with plans of a career in the dairy field, Cranfield worked at Riverview as a zookeeper in the summer months. The experience sparked his love of wildlife. “I liked working with cows and other livestock, but those (zoo) animals were something special.” He still returns to Riverview each year to work for a week.

After graduating, he worked in a large animal practice before landing the first joint residency with the Toronto Zoo and OVC in zoological medicine and pathology. He later moved on to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, where he focused on research and the preventive health care of its 1,500 animals. Cranfield joined the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project, the precursor to Gorilla Doctors, in 1998.

“Mike’s easy to get along with and a lot of fun, but he has this strong commitment and cares deeply for the gorillas and the people he works with,” says Dale Smith, a pathobiology professor at OVC who has worked with Gorilla Doctors in Africa identifying diseases affecting the gorillas and potential risks to humans. “And he’s right out there working in the field with everyone else.”

Cranfield usually spends about five months a year in Africa (he’s spent almost all of 2015 there), and much of that time is spent in the jungle. Gorilla troops are monitored daily by trackers, and teams of veterinarians perform jungle rounds to each group once a month to perform health checks, recording information such as body condition, activity and respiration for each gorilla group. If a gorilla is suffering from a human-induced or life-threatening injury or illness, plans are made to medically intervene. The vets can follow a troop for up to four hours through dense vegetation to find a clear shot to deliver antibiotics or sedate an animal. If a gorilla spots a tranquilizer gun, it will often vocalize an alarm and the whole troop will race away. Gorillas have bitten trackers and veterinarians while trying to protect their families.

Heavy rains often turn the pathways to mud or force the team to climb steep terrain in layers of wet, slippery vegetation. Other days, extreme heat adds to the difficulty. Park rangers and porters assist the veterinarians by carrying equipment bags, which weigh about 30 kilograms each.

Gorilla Doctors works closely with governments and the United Nations to monitor safety issues in the region, and their work has been suspended because of political unrest and warfare in DRC. In the last 10 years, 140 government park rangers in DRC have been killed protecting the gorillas. Gorilla Doctors had one close call — a team in DRC was held at gunpoint by rebels, but no one was hurt.

Cranfield says despite the risks and hard work, the interventions they perform are necessary.

“We feel if we make some headway with gorillas, we can help other species, too,” he says. He calls gorillas a “flagship species” — if habitats are preserved for them, many other endangered animals that share their territory are also protected. Cranfield also suggests proactively vaccinating gorillas against disease to ensure their survival.

Some conservationists say the organization is going too far, and their interactions with the gorillas are making the species less wild. Of the 880 gorillas in the world today, up to 500 are human-habituated, meaning they are accustomed to the presence of humans. Ecotourism also plays into this — every year 30,000 people travel to Rwanda alone for a chance to visit the gorillas. The money generated helps the park and the gorillas, but exposing the animals to so many people also increases the risk of disease transmission.

Cranfield argues the gorillas’ situation is already abnormal.

“It was imperative to act quickly, which stopped the downhill trend in gorilla numbers, and now it’s the only known population of great apes to be on the increase,” says Cranfield. “And the truth is, the gorilla habitat and behaviours have already been affected by the tourists and communities. It’s not a natural situation at this point.”

Cranfield feels Gorilla Doctors has achieved a good balance by focusing on treating human-induced or life-threatening situations. The veterinarians always weigh the emotional well-being of the troop against any intervention before deciding on a course of action. If a mother is killed and an infant needs treatment, for example, the vets will study the interactions between the baby and its father or other members of the troop, and balance the need for medical treatment with the fragile social implications of an intervention. The organization has never removed an animal from the wild — orphans are only confiscated from poachers who have taken them from their habitat.

This balanced approach seems to be working. A comprehensive study led by American primatologist Martha Robbins published in 2011, shows the life-saving veterinary care provided by Gorilla Doctors may be responsible for up to 40 per cent of the increase in the gorilla population. That, Cranfield says, makes the effort worthwhile.

[dropcap]Back[/dropcap] in the Virunga Massif, with four charging male gorillas coming straight for them, Cranfield and his team had only one course of action: “We just got out of there as fast as we could,” he says. “It was very unnerving.” With the team at a safe distance, the silverbacks are calmed and the veterinarians can monitor the mother and baby as they recover.

Cranfield didn’t get the nasal swab, but when the team returned to check in on the troop the next day, he could see an improvement. The baby, now alert and inquisitive, was nursing and appeared to be on the road to recovery.

For Cranfield, the thrill of having an impact and working hands-on to save a species is just one aspect of his job that he loves.

“Gorillas look at you with intelligence in their eyes,” he says. “While I appreciate the challenge of a complex clinical case, my favourite days are when I can observe the gorillas in a relaxed situation, just doing their normal activities.”

How you can help the gorillas:

• Conserve energy at home by reducing energy and water use.
• Invest in “green” companies that aren’t harming the environment.
• Donate at  gorilladoctors.org.

Gorilla Doctors

The post Gorilla Doctors brings veterinary care to the jungle floor to save critically endangered mountain gorillas appeared first on .

When Scott Duke moved across the country to small-town Revelstoke, B.C., he had a clear plan: snowboard 100 days of the year.

To put that plan into action, he needed a job. For Duke, who first ventured into the world of entrepreneurship as a teenager, this didn’t mean working at the local coffee shop or ski hill; it meant starting a business. He quickly established his sixth startup company, Duke’s Dogs, a hot dog cart in the downtown area.

“It was a way to earn enough money to comfortably support myself while working minimum hours that didn’t conflict with snowboarding during the day,” says Duke, B.Comp. ’05. “It also had low overhead, high margins and didn’t require staff. I still think of it as one of my more successful ventures — it achieved everything it set out to do.”

That was seven years ago. Today, Duke, 33, is still based in Revelstoke, but he’s moved on from the hot dog cart. He’s now the owner of Stoke FM, a radio station he started in the basement of his house, and a property management company. He’s also a city councillor.

“I’m into whatever I can learn,” Duke says of his business strategy. Since graduating he’s also run a jet-ski rental business, a boat-cleaning company and a wakeboarding camp. Not everything worked out: a snowmobile rental company was a flop but still a learning experience.

Many entrepreneurs create a business based on their passion or interest. For Duke, the product or service he offers is secondary.

“What I’m passionate about is finding voids in the marketplace and figuring out ways to fill them.”

DUKE’S KNACK for spotting an opportunity goes back to his teenage years in Mississauga, Ont. Seeking a better alternative to his local high school, he settled on an arts school. He wasn’t particularly artistic, but he did see an opening in the music program, where few students played the saxophone. After a year of intensive classes to learn the tenor sax, he applied and got in.

His first business was Fleece It, a project he started with other students in his entrepreneurship class. They made fleece gloves, hats and scarves, and Duke did the majority of sewing and production on his mother’s sewing machine.

In high school he also discovered software programming, which he enjoyed. Most diehard computer science students he knew headed for the University of Waterloo, but he liked Guelph’s location, size and culture. “It has a small-town feel but it’s not a small-town school.” With a tech boom going on, companies were plucking students out of computing programs almost before they could complete them. Within the first year of Duke’s degree, that boom went bust.

But he gained other benefits besides learning how to program. Duke says Guelph taught him how to continually learn and the importance of social interaction. And he found something else while on campus: a way to combine his longtime love for the outdoors with a budding passion for entrepreneurship.

Duke was five years old when he started waterskiing on Georgian Bay — he switched to wakeboarding at 12. Into his teens, he realized that keeping up watersports would take equipment, which required money, and “profits are better than wages.”

During his U of G studies, he started a painting outfit in Muskoka, Ont., which grew to include 25 employees. “The work was never for work — it was to learn and support a fun habit. The only way to make money and have free time to wakeboard was to run something of my own,” says Duke, who also learned about the stress of entrepreneurship when he landed in the hospital with an ulcer.

After graduating, he opened Basecamp, a wakeboarding camp on Muskoka’s Lake Rosseau, and ran it for five years. By the time he sold the business, it was the largest wakeboard facility in North America.

“I’m of the thought that you’ve never ‘made it,’” says Duke. “I’ve just lived my life always doing what I wanted to do. There was a time I wanted to own a successful wakeboard facility. After I accomplished that goal and learned all I could from it, there was no reason to continue running the business.”

During those years, he began spending winters skiing in the British Columbia interior. In 2008, he moved to Revelstoke, a former railway town that has become a winter sports destination and is home to about 8,000 people. “I came out here for the lifestyle — same as any decision I ever made in my life.”

AS AN OUTSIDER, Duke spotted an opportunity. Revelstoke had a commercial radio station, but he saw room for a community-based alternative. Not that he had any experience in radio: as a student, he wasn’t even involved with Guelph’s campus station.

“Think of someone running a radio station and you think of someone passionate about music,” says Duke, whose station bio gleefully highlights his lack of radio and music credentials. Despite his musical taste being “generic,” he saw a gap in the marketplace, and after some research, knew he could fill it.

Stoke FM began in his basement — he funded its startup costs by holding concerts, and raised the necessary $10,000 after three events. To get it up and running, he had to learn about equipment and operation, which included bolting a 17-metre antenna to his house. He also had to navigate the strict regulations of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, and Industry Canada. After just four months on the air, the business broke even. Stoke FM stayed in Duke’s basement for two years, where he picked the music and hosted a morning show, until earlier this year when the station moved to a downtown office space. It now has five employees and owns 85 per cent of the market share. But Duke doesn’t count it as a success quite yet.

“The first cheque I put in the bank from a radio advertiser gave me a great feeling of accomplishment,” says Duke. “But those feelings are always temporary because running a business has daily ups and downs. For instance, today I have three ad sales calls and I have to sell all of them to ensure we have enough cash flow this month to make payroll in eight days. The day I hand off a fully operational station to a new owner, I’ll consider the business a success.”

Duke also operates a property management company with his partner, Eve Northmore. It started as a vacation rental business, but he saw a development boom coming to town. Revelstoke Property Services now manages 160 units, both residential and commercial, and also includes a cleaning company.

Being an entrepreneur in a small town can have its challenges: staffing shortages, limited resources and a small customer base. But Duke says less competition is a big benefit. Where some see obstacles, Duke sees opportunity.

“What’s nice about a small town is they’re like Petri dishes: you can do something here, test it out and then scale it up.”

LAST FALL Duke won election to city council. From its blue-collar roots in rail and logging, Revelstoke has become a tourism magnet with more resort properties. “I really like it here,” says Duke, who has created a hobby farm in the backyard he shares with Northmore, complete with chickens and daily fresh eggs. “It’s not that I can save the town (from development), but I can be a part of making it better.”

Earlier this year, Duke launched yet another new company to buy and sell other businesses, and he’s taking continuing education courses through York University and the International Business Brokers Association. He says his biggest challenge is concentrating on a single career path, but thinks the business brokerage could ultimately be his main focus.

“I think biting off more than you can chew is really the only way to grow,” he says of his growing portfolio. “Constant learning and the application of new knowledge is truly the key to success. I think most people understand this, but they’re too nervous to practically apply what they’ve learned or they’re too lazy to learn in the first place.”

As for Duke’s pursuit of the ideal lifestyle, he may not be snowboarding 100 days of the year, but his priorities are the same: work hard at what he loves, play hard as much as he can and choose the path that’s right for him, even if it’s a more difficult one.

“I ride my bike to work and I can go skiing on Canada’s highest vertical mountain during my lunch break,” he says. “Yesterday I did a business deal in the gondola going up to the top of the mountain to have coffee. Although I have to piece together many smaller ventures to total an income that’s equivalent to one decent-paying managerial job in the city, it’s worth the trade-off many times over.”

Listen live to Stoke FM

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