Newcomers to startup culture will quickly realize that the startup world has a vocabulary of its own. This year the buzzword of choice was “disruption,” a nod to innovation and changing technology markets. A close runner up was the relatively straightforward “stories,” the theme of this year’s festival and a reference to the increasing focus on the personal histories of company founders. The more fanciful “so-lo-mo” (social-local-mobile) was also bandied about. Popular apps like Yelp and Foursquare fall under this category, as well as Montreal startups like the Interactive Museum of Jewish Montreal. These apps make acts such as going out for lunch or walking around the city a social activity, experienced via a smart mobile device.

Luckily the varied keynote speeches and panels provided something for everyone, even newcomers to the tech world. Talks ranged from overthrowing traditional academic institutions to capitalizing on fear to secure investment. However, the real value of the festival was less in speeches and more in buzzing afternoons on the lawn of the Science Center in Old Port. Outdoor tent expositions let startups strut their stuff, and informal speaker panels offered frank advice. In the hot Montreal sun, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and journalists mingled easily. The aim of the festival seemed less about lecturing on solid business principles, and more about encouraging people to found companies and bringing those participating in Montreal startup culture together.

Through this lens, Startup Fest shines. Many of the diverse cast of speakers – such as Marc Garneau, former astronaut and current Member of Parliament for Westmount–Ville-Marie, and Ethan Song, CEO of Frank & Oak – have a strong Montreal connection. Even the distinctive water coolers were supplied by a homegrown Montreal company, Aquaovo. But the event also drew fellow founders, interested investors, and curious consumers from startup hotspots around the world, providing Montreal-based entrepreneurs with access to the global community.

Startup Fest, now in its third iteration, is just another indication of Montreal’s growing startup culture. It is a culture deeply linked to Montreal’s identity as a university city that boasts four major universities and a dozen colleges. Students have spawned companies like Wildcard and SaintWoods, as well as venture capital funds like The Founder Project. Accelerators like FounderFuel and hubs like Notman House provide access to mentorship for would-be student entrepreneurs. Forbes recently named Montreal the “new hotbed of student startup activity.”

The time is ripe for student entrepreneurship. It’s “cheaper than ever to start your own business,” says Blackboard co-founder Michael Chasen, in a keynote speech at Startup Fest.  The internet has truly democratized entrepreneurship. Now, all one needs is a computer and an internet connection to build a thriving business. With satisfying and meaningful jobs difficult to come by, students are taking matters into their own hands and creating jobs for themselves and their peers – and they seem to be good at it.

Yet Montreal is still far behind the likes of Boston and the San Francisco Bay area, in terms of innovation. Canada has yet to produce a Google or a Facebook of its own. A key difference remains in how nearby institutions of higher education support student startups. Faculty collaborating with and investing in student startups is common at Stanford, and entrepreneurship is so encouraged at MIT that they publish a “MIT Inventor’s Guide to Startups” for faculty, staff, and students.

The McGill Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies is hoping to change this. The centre hosts an annual entrepreneurship competition, the Dobson Cup, in which $60,000 is up for grabs. The competition is also unique in its support of non-profit companies, known as social enterprises, as well as for-profit ventures. The winning startups are provided with funding, expert mentorship, and the vital foot-in-the-door every company needs. The centre’s future plans include adding entrepreneurship to the McGill curriculum.

In a rapidly changing world, teaching students the skills required to build successful companies will prove invaluable. Of course, entrepreneurship is risky. At Startup Fest, Dave McClure, a venture capitalist out of Silicon Valley, made clear that “you’re going to fucking fail, so you better be passionate.” But unlike in academia, failing is embraced in startup culture. “Pivoting” is a common maneuver for companies, and essentially means to fail and try again in a different direction. Startup Fest attendees were most interested in how successful founders failed and stood up to try again. Welcoming innovation, gutsy action, and failure may be just the kind of shaking up McGill needs this summer.

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With this in mind, one might be disappointed to note that scientists at Canadian universities have won only one Nobel Prize in medicine. Frederick Banting and John Macleod won the award in 1923 for their discovery of insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas that is crucial for sugar metabolism. Compare this to Harvard Medical School, which lays claim to eight, and Rockefeller University, with fifteen, and it seems positively paltry. That isn’t to say that Canadians haven’t been earning Nobel Prizes in medicine – Ralph Steinman, a 2011 laureate, was a Canadian-born McGill graduate. Rather, there have been no prizes for research conducted at Canadian labs or universities.

Based on these statistics, some have started to fret about the state of scientific research in Canada. Nobel Prizes are noteworthy, no doubt – but they are a poor measure of overall research excellence. Attaching so much significance to their count often means biasing research endeavours toward discovery research, where the motivation is to be the first to publish. Researchers that aim to verify and reproduce results will never be candidates for Nobel Prizes, despite the equally crucial nature of their work. Reducing the contributions of Canadian scientists to a number of top-level awards won completely overlooks the value and impact of the vast array of scientific research.

Furthermore, the competition for these awards is intense. They are given once a year, for a single discovery in a broad discipline. The Nobel Prize is a childhood dream for any researcher, and for most, it will remain just that. Science is collaborative, awards are not; team members are often excluded, or recognized disproportionately less.

But for some, the value of Nobel Prizes may lie in more than just pride. Professor John Bergeron of the McGill Faculty of Medicine linked the lack of Nobel Prizes in medicine to the recent closure of the Merck, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and AstraZeneca pharmaceutical research labs in Montreal. The shutdown of these big labs, all within the past three years, led to the loss of hundreds of pharmaceutical industry jobs in the Montreal area, as well as “no pharma-based pre-clinical research in all of Canada,”  according to Bergeron.

“Nobel Prizes in medicine are an unquestioned indication of research excellence,” said Dr. Bergeron in an interview with The Daily. He makes the argument that the moves were in large part motivated by the desire to relocate labs to Nobel magnet cities like Boston.

Bergeron is likely correct in saying that big pharma is drawn to ground-breaking research that may yield new business opportunities. But the assumption that Nobel Prizes are somehow an accurate barometer of the current research climate couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact that the awards are usually given some ten, twenty, or thirty-odd years after the initial discovery was made means that they function more as a congratulatory afterthought than as a driver of innovation.

Pinning the future of Canada’s pharmaceutical industry to the number of awards ignores pressing policy issues that are driving business out of Quebec – but not out of Canada as a whole. Bergeron concedes that “Montreal was the Canadian headquarters for all pre-clinical research by big pharma. Now they have all left.” During the same two-year period, multinational pharmaceutical companies have announced millions of dollars of investment next door in Ontario. Sanofi Pasteur, a French company, plans to build a $101 million vaccine research and development facility in Toronto. Novartis, a Swiss company, and Teva, out of Israel, also plan to expand their presence in Ontario.

It seems likely that the political atmosphere is more to blame for the exodus of the pharmaceutical industry from Quebec. Even Nobel Prizes do not have the power to attract business in the face of unfriendly policy.

Bergeron points out that Canadian scientists suffer not from “a lack of training or expertise but solely because of a lack of opportunity.” Ambitious young researchers who graduate from McGill are forced to travel elsewhere to make their careers. Perhaps the immediate goal should be bringing back the jobs; from there, the Nobel Prizes will follow.

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According to the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), concussions account for 20 per-cent of all injuries in ice hockey, and only slightly less in rugby, football, and soccer. Ambitious athletes begin playing their sport of choice as young children, before their brains have fully developed. Without careful precautions, concussions can swiftly accumulate and the effects of repetitive brain injury can be quickly compounded. The more concussions one has, the more susceptible they are to another and the worse the concussion is likely to be.

A recent study of 85 brains at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy found that four out of every five were afflicted with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The devastating symptoms of CTE, which are thought to include depression and dementia, are caused by the abnormal accumulation of tau protein which leads to tissue death. The damage is irreparable, and CTE itself is incurable.

It is unfortunate that most research on CTE must currently be conducted post-mortem. The spinning, rapid acceleration, and jolted stops that cause the brain to bump violently against the skull (causing concussion) often leave few obvious external signs. It is only after mental health is noticeably impaired, or after death, that the full extent of the damage is known. NFL linebacker Junior Seau is the most recent in a series of athletes who have committed suicide and been subsequently diagnosed with CTE.

Yes, the sample that BU researchers studied was a biased one. Brains are most often donated by individuals who not only have suffered brain trauma, but who also already display symptoms of CTE. However, the findings help establish that there is a definite link between repetitive head trauma and long-term brain diseases like CTE.

Steps have been made by major regulatory bodies to reduce the prevalence of head injuries. The NHL, for example, now requires players to get immediate medical attention if they suffer a blow to the head. But athletes must still be proactive when it comes to injuries. Dr. Scott Delaney, a physician and consultant to the Montreal Alouettes, made clear in a MUHC “HealthBeat” radio interview that doctors are “still dependent on a very basic thing…the athlete coming forward to volunteer his or her symptoms.”

Further changes to the rules in the NHL made all intentional and targeted blows to the head illegal, and the rules regarding “boarding,” the act of pushing or checking a player into the boards surrounding the ice rink, were made more stringent. Detractors, like the colourful sports commentator Don Cherry, continue to glorify the unnecessary violence of the game – even when faced with evidence that fighting, and associated head injuries, have been linked to depression and the early onset of dementia. It is this culture of competitive contact sports that often encourages an athlete to continually shrug off their symptoms, leading to several undiagnosed concussions that may have long-term consequences.

A few concussions will not lead to CTE, but any sort of head injury requires proper treatment. Rola Abouassaly, a senior physiotherapist at the Sports Medicine Clinic of the McGill Sports Complex, stresses the importance of “having athletes be educated” as to what a concussion is.  “Some people don’t think they have a concussion,” and don’t realize that their dizziness or trouble concentrating may be linked to a recent head injury, she explained. The treatment for any trauma is sufficient rest in order to allow the brain to recuperate. Excessive brain stimulation should also be avoided – perhaps a difficult task for a McGill athlete.

Awareness campaigns like those carried out by the Montreal Children’s Hospital stress the importance of educating athletes. Their “Trauma Concussion KiT,” available online, includes techniques for diagnosing a concussion as well as information on symptoms and sports-specific guidelines.

Further preventative tools are also in the works. An iPad app developed by Jay Alberts, a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, aims to help coaches and athletes diagnose concussions if a physician is not nearby. A Canadian startup known as ShockBox has developed helmet sensors to detect the severity of a hit. The sensors are commercially available, and the company hopes to have them on every NHL helmet in the future, as they should be – the major leagues serve as inspiration to young athletes. When athletes speak out, with their words as well as their actions, taking care of your brain can become cool as well as common sense.

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Thomson House remains a beautifully maintained reminder of Canada’s architectural past.  Once a mansion on Montreal’s famed Golden Square Mile, it now houses the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS). Heritage buildings like the Thomson House add to the allure of McGill’s campus.

Today, most of the fifty or so homes in the McGill portion of the Golden Square Mile have been demolished to make way for larger, more modern structures like McLennan Library and the Bronfman building. Others like the Faculty Club – originally the home of Baron Alfred Baumgarten – have survived by adapting to the campus’ new needs. Despite this repurposing, it remains that these old buildings were not built with energy efficiency in mind.

PGSS aims to change this. Their project, called Sustainable Thomson House, consists of determining ways to make both the building as well as PGSS operations within the building more self-sufficient, with a lesser impact upon the environment. With a budget of $63,500, Sustainable Thomson House is one of the largest initiatives funded by the SPF.

The Post-Graduate Students’ Society insists that this is a project for the students and by the students. For the most part, this is true. Much of the operations auditing is done by students, including measurements of waste production and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as of the sustainability of food served in the independent Thomson House Restaurant and grown in the adjacent Permaculture Garden (also funded by SPF). A team of twenty undergraduate and graduate volunteers has been working on the project since January. Interested students can also participate through Environment 401 or Agriculture 490, which will offer course credit starting this fall.

However, the bulk of the initiative’s funding – an estimated $48, 000 – is going towards hiring an external engineering and architecture firm. Shona Watt, sustainability coordinator at PGSS, asserts that the investment in an external audit will be worthwhile, as it “will highlight what improvements can be done easily and economically feasibly.”

It remains to be seen how feasible the recommended changes truly are. The budget for the audits does not include actual renovations, but only the initial assessments required to possibly make changes in the future. Further funding for the project has yet to be secured. Changes of habit like decreasing waste and increasing recycling could easily be put into effect with a well-constructed plan.  But other initiatives like changing plumbing and insulation, as well as increasing solar and geothermal energy sources, may be too costly in the short term to execute.

“It’s not at all feasible to completely renovate all older buildings in the name of sustainability,” Watt admits.  But the Sustainable Thomson House team believes that small, incremental changes toward sustainability could create a powerful net effect. The audits being done at the Thomson House could serve as a template for such student- and volunteer-run projects in the future.

To inspire and educate students, the team hosted a community consultation on May 3, where they presented and discussed the project with the McGill community. Following the completion of the audits this month, the team will design changes toward sustainability for Thomson House. A second consultation is planned for the beginning of November in the form of a Sustainability Action Plan, a road map for the proposed changes spanning five to ten years.

Old buildings and waste production are not the only environmentally harmful elements that McGill could stand to change. The McGill administration recently completed their own audit, using the internationally recognized Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS). The result of this evaluation was a ranking of ‘silver,’ lower than many other universities comparable in size and endowment, like University of British Columbia. With long-term projects like Sustainable Thomson House, and a host of other smaller projects also funded by the SPF, students are trying to take sustainability into their own hands. But while their efforts are valiant and valuable, in the context of McGill’s overall environmental footprint, which reaches as far as support for asbestos production and mining, sustainability projects such as this can only scratch the surface of the University’s environmental impact.

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Reboot works in cooperation with the McGill Office of Sustainability and McGill Waste Management to collect spare and damaged computers from all over campus.  Each gadget then undergoes hardware testing and an operating system overhaul, as well as a hard drive wipe.   Missing or damaged parts are replaced, and the final product is a fully refurbished computer.

Anyone who has ever seen the inside of a computer knows that electronics repair can be tricky – so the most surprising aspect of the program may be its integration of inexperienced volunteers.  Students from all faculties drop by to help during Reboot’s office hours, where their shared interest (or just newfound curiosity) in computers is put to use testing mother boards or installing freeware like Linux based Ubuntu. The group can easily refurbish twenty computers in a week, and high stacks of CPUs take up most of the small Reboot office’s floor space.

The group could turn a profit from selling the desktops, but prefer instead to donate them to various Montreal non-profits (The Yellow Door was a recent recipient). Anyone can request a computer from Reboot, though priority is given to charities, schools, and McGill affiliated groups.  Starting next week, they also hope to sell surplus desktops to students for personal use at highly discounted rates.

Where would these computers go if Reboot didn’t exist? Most other cities have similar donations based refurbishment programs that are often run privately. According to Reboot, however, nothing comparable exists in Montreal just yet. The most probable fate for these devices would have been recycling or disposal, or storage in a dark and dusty McGill corner – even if they were in working condition. Reboot provides these computers with new homes, and also mandates that recipients return the hardware to Waste Management when it’s time for their disposal, ensuring the technology is used in full and ultimately recycled correctly.

The cooperation between Reboot and McGill Waste Management may be just what the electronics recycling initiative needs. Working together, they now provide a one-stop shop for all e-recycling. Once handed off to the co-op, individuals can be certain that their electronics will be refurbished or recycled appropriately. It is precisely this sort of unification that promises to solve the current woes of electronics recycling.  It is not for lack of options that most electronics are improperly recycled, but, rather, due to the confusion associated with too many choices.  Apple and Best Buy are examples of private companies that offer recycling programs, but both have restrictions on what they will and will not accept, and both have associated fees. Many smaller companies offer recycling, but only for specific types of electronics. Now, McGill staff and students have a simple and straightforward way to reuse and recycle.

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