Be Giant

Christopher Nolan's epic new film, The Odyssey, is the first Hollywood movie to be filmed entirely in Imax, the Canadian-rooted large-format film technology that's world-famous for its fill-your-peripheral-vision immersive theatre experience.

On Wednesday, July 15, Torontonians looked to the sky and found the sun obscured by haze. It wasn't smog or fog - it was smoke drifting down from 185 active wildfires in northern Ontario. As the day waned, social media feeds filled with photos of apocalyptic scenes the smoke had produced, captioned with descriptions of dystopian feelings of déjà vu.

Share When Jacob Tsimerman was a child, his grandfather, a Russian physicist, gave him a riddle about a broken toaster. "Suppose you have three slices of bread," his grandpa proposed, "and a toaster with two slots that toast on only one side. How many times do you need to use it to fully toast all three slices of bread?" The first answer most people come up with - four - is also the wrong one. The correct response is three.

If you don't know Ronnen Harary by name, you almost certainly know his work. The 55-year-old Ivey Business School grad is the co-founder of Spin Master, a Canadian toy and entertainment company, and the human most responsible for a global pup-nomenon known as Paw Patrol.

If you don't know Ronnen Harary by name, you almost certainly know his work. The 55-year-old Ivey Business School grad is the co-founder of Spin Master, a Canadian toy and entertainment company, and the human most responsible for a global pup-nomenon known as Paw Patrol.

The riverfront hamlet of Fort Liard in the Northwest Territories - population about 600 - is fondly known as the "tropics of the North." This is due to its unusual microclimate. "We have very cold winters, but very hot summers," says Angus James Capot-Blanc Jr., band councillor of the Acho Dene Koe (ADK) First Nation, which makes up most of the residents. And very high power bills, too.

Tiger mosquitoes are one of the world's most successful invasive species: hardy little striped suckers that have made their way from Southeast Asia around the world and, most recently, to Ontario. And the prolific disease spreaders are becoming ever more dangerous. Their resilient eggs help them survive Canadian winters, and there is increasing concern that they will become a vector for deadly illnesses such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

By the time Chicago-born Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski had celebrated her sweet 16, she had already built an airplane, learned to fly it and received an open-ended job offer from Jeff Bezos to one day work at Blue Origin. In her early 20s, she was called "the next Einstein"; by then, she had traded aerospace for theoretical physics. Her discovery, along with several colleagues, of the "spin memory effect" was cited by Stephen Hawking before she had even completed her doctorate at Harvard University.

Canada has built a reputation as a leader in artificial intelligence research. The more difficult challenge has been turning that expertise into viable companies. Winston Li is trying to help close that gap. His Toronto-based company Arima specializes in synthetic data: AI-generated datasets designed to replicate the patterns and behaviours of real populations without exposing their personal information.

Canada's decision to buy up to 12 new submarines from German naval giant TKMS is more than just the country's biggest-ever defence procurement deal: it's a chance to build a new industry to maintain the vessels and join a global supply chain serving countries both within and potentially outside the NATO alliance. That's the promise built into the proposed deal Canada announced this week, according to experts and executives who spoke to Be Giant.