Be Giant
@be-giant.bsky.social
Reporting on the thinkers, builders and problem-solvers shaping Canada's future. Non-profit. Non-partisan. Sign up for our weekly newsletter: begiant.ca/newsletter
Winnipeg is home to Canada’s oldest and largest mosquito-control program. The goal? Less than one mosquito bite per minute. 🦟 www.begiant.ca/stories/plac...
Winnipeg’s century-long battle against mosquitoes
The goal? Less than one mosquito bite per minute
begiant.ca
Most high school science projects end in a gym fair. Nivatha Balendra's was the kickoff to potentially disrupting a $50 billion industry. Read Courtney Shea’s profile of Balendra to see how she’s converting food waste into non-toxic cleaning agents: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
The Canadian entrepreneur turning garbage into hand soap
Nivatha Balendra's company has defied biotech odds, going straight from laboratory breakthrough to commercial production
begiant.ca
Earlier this month, Jacob Tsimerman won the Fields Medal, aka the Nobel Prize of mathematics. Nobody expected what he would do next. Here, Luc Rinaldi interviews Tsimerman about his move to OpenAI and how he plans to help make it safer: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Why Canada’s greatest math genius is joining OpenAI
Fields Medal winner Jacob Tsimerman on how worried we should be about artificial intelligence, and how he plans to help
begiant.ca
Toronto’s skyline is famous for its boxy, blue-glass towers. But a quiet technological revolution is changing that. Read @novakovicto.bsky.social's look at how mass timber – also called engineered wood – might be the future of Canadian housing and infrastructure: www.begiant.ca/stories/idea...
Would you live in a highrise made of wood? Inside Canada’s mass timber construction boom
Climate-friendly mass timber is speeding up construction and, surprisingly, improving fire safety
begiant.ca
Mine-waste piles have long been seen as an environmental liability – until now. Canadian startup Arca is using WALL-E type rovers and giant microwaves to turn crushed rock into massive carbon-capture machines. Here’s how: www.begiant.ca/stories/idea...
This rover can help piles of mine waste ‘inhale’ carbon dioxide
A Canadian startup is working on tailings technology to remove billions of tonnes of CO² from the air
begiant.ca
Social housing activists are calling it “the most important transformation that is happening anywhere in the country.” Our long-read on the Regina youth fighting North Central's housing crisis with a land bank model that converts derelict lots: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Meet the teens revitalizing Regina, one empty lot at a time
Youth are at the centre of ‘the most important transformation that is happening anywhere in the country’
begiant.ca
Why were school buses in B.C. cruising around loaded up with 5,000 pounds of sandbags? It was all part of a pilot testing how EV batteries can store and send power back to the grid during peak hours. Our dive into the potential for this new tech: www.begiant.ca/stories/idea...
How electric school buses could help fuel the power grid
With vehicle-to-grid charging, it’s possible to give power back to where it's needed during peak periods
begiant.ca
#Breaking: @utoronto.ca math professor Jacob Tsimerman is one of the winners of the 2026 Fields Medal – often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics. He's also very handy with an escape room. Read our longread profile: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Did you know there is a Nobel Prize… for math? Tomorrow, U of T mathematician Jacob Tsimerman might become the first recipient of the Fields Medal to call Canada home. Learn more about the research that’s made him a frontrunner: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Indigenous-owned businesses in Canada are scaling quickly. Our data shows that: 📈 57% plan to hire in the next year, and 🌐 56% are exploring international market expansion. But it's still an uphill battle, filled with structural barriers. Here's why: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Indigenous founders in Canada are expanding their businesses faster than their peers: poll
Indigenous entrepreneurs over-index on scale and ambition, according to Be Giant's data
begiant.ca
From stormwater facilities and public pools to power stations and bus garages, Pat Hanson is beautifying Canada’s civic infrastructure one building at a time: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
“My objective is world dominance in clinical enterprises.” 🇨🇦 @uhn.ca President and CEO Kevin Smith is pitching a national plan to build a $100B health science power base in Canada. Read @cfrangou.bsky.social's profile of the “Wayne Gretzky of health care”: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
UHN’s Kevin Smith has a grand vision to supercharge Canada’s health science sector
The CEO of Toronto’s University Health Network has a bold proposal: Canadian world domination in clinical enterprises
begiant.ca
Did you know The Odyssey’s journey to Imax theatres has Canadians behind it? Read our deep dive into the story of the innovators behind the new Keighley camera, used by Christopher Nolan to make his latest film – the first Hollywood movie filmed entirely in Imax. www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Why Christopher Nolan dedicated The Odyssey to this Canadian man
The movie was shot using an Imax camera named for David Keighley, whose work helped revolutionize filmmaking
begiant.ca
An insufficient number of air-quality-monitoring stations across Canada leaves many communities, particularly those in rural areas or the Far North, without accurate air quality information. @hgwatsonwrites.bsky.social www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Is Canada measuring air quality accurately?
A Canadian scientist’s efforts have improved monitoring, but lack of coverage and communication still leaves communities at risk
begiant.ca
@utoronto.ca math prof Jacob Tsimerman is one of the frontrunners for the Fields Medal. To be announced next week, it’s one of the highest honours a mathematician can earn. (It’s often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics.) Luc Rinaldi’s longread profile: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
What I learned locked inside an escape room with one of the world’s most brilliant mathematicians
Jacob Tsimerman is a frontrunner for the prestigious Fields Medal. He‘s also handy with the occasional dragon’s egg
begiant.ca
How did Ronnen Harary create one of the biggest toy companies in the world with no experience? Read his advice to young entrepreneurs: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Yes, some ticks can cause a red meat allergy. The condition is called alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), and reactions can be as mild as diarrhea or serious as anaphylactic shock. Read more about the rising tick population in Canada: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Some 280 remote communities across Canada aren’t connected to the power grid, and rely on costly diesel generators. What if they could use the earth’s natural heat instead? Here, a dive into the clean energy movement taking hold in the North. www.begiant.ca/stories/plac...
Could a geothermal greenhouse for Fort Liard mean more fresh vegetables above the 60th parallel?
More than 280 remote communities in Canada remain unconnected to North America’s electricity grid or natural gas pipelines
begiant.ca
Tiger mosquitoes are one of the most successful invasive species – & there’s concern they could spread diseases such as dengue & Zika in 🇨🇦. Here, Dr. Victoria Ng on her citizen science study that will shape public health planning: begiant.ca/stories/people/tiger-mosquitoes-canada-citizen-scientists
Tiger mosquitoes are spreading in Canada – and citizen scientists are helping track them
The invasive mosquitoes are already established in Windsor-Essex. Volunteers are helping to figure out where they're headed next
begiant.ca
The governments of Alberta and Canada have signed an MOU with the Oil Sands Alliance, one step closer to increasing oil production and to Pathways, the world’s biggest carbon capture and storage project. Get Pathways' backstory with Tim Harper's longread: www.begiant.ca/stories/plac...
The staggering ambition behind the world’s biggest carbon capture plan
Inside the complex Canadian effort to plunge 40 million tonnes of CO² deep into the ground
begiant.ca
Tiger mosquitoes are an invasive, disease-carrying species first detected in Windsor-Essex in 2016. Current surveillance programs are costly & limited, so PHAC senior scientist Dr. Victoria Ng found a solution: a study that taps citizens to help collect data. www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Tiger mosquitoes are spreading in Canada – and citizen scientists are helping track them
The invasive mosquitoes are already established in Windsor-Essex. Volunteers are helping to figure out where they're headed next
begiant.ca
Pawpaws are part of a broader push in North America to bring back native plant species long ago cleared from the landscape. www.begiant.ca/stories/plac...
A typical EV battery still has 80%+ storage capacity left at the end of its vehicle life. Moment Energy buys discarded EV batteries, bundles them, then uses them to store enough power for 100s of homes or a factory – for up to four hours. www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Can four SFU grads remake the electricity market with old EV batteries?
Moment Energy bundles discarded batteries into packs that can store power for when it's most needed
begiant.ca
By her early 20s, this physicist had already built an airplane and learned to fly it, landed an open-ended job offer from Jeff Bezos and was cited by Stephen Hawking. Sabrina Gonzales Pasterski, who now works @perimeterinstitute.ca, on why she now calls 🇨🇦 home. www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Why physicist Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski chose Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is tackling some of physics’ most mind-bending problems in a Waterloo, Ont., lab
begiant.ca
The Synthetic Society is a population-level synthetic dataset of 40 million Canadians with tens of thousands of attributes. If 100 people live in a postal code, Arima makes 100 synthetic profiles for it with similar characteristics, patterns and behaviours: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
The Toronto founder who built a ‘synthetic’ Canadian population
Winston Li’s Arima is giving marketers an AI advantage by modelling real people without using their actual data
begiant.ca
Winston Li’s 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. Here’s how it works: www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
The Toronto founder who built a ‘synthetic’ Canadian population
Winston Li’s Arima is giving marketers an AI advantage by modelling real people without using their actual data
begiant.ca
Canada is set to buy 12 new subs from German naval giant TKMS. So just what’s involved in the care and feeding of a submarine fleet? For starters, two massive maintenance facilities, one on either side of the country. www.begiant.ca/stories/plac...
Canada’s new submarine deal is set to spur a new industry
From building a submarine shipyard in Halifax to beefing up supply chains, Canada’s new sub economy is taking shape
begiant.ca
Earth holds a mind-boggling amount of heat. So what if geothermal power plants could be built almost anywhere and produce clean electricity? www.begiant.ca/stories/idea...
How tapping into geothermal power could yield limitless energy
Can next-generation geothermal power plants solve Canada’s surging electricity needs?
begiant.ca
Reports of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses are skyrocketing: in 2010, there were 143 recorded cases of Lyme disease in Canada; in 2025, there were 7,105. So why are the numbers of ticks increasing? www.begiant.ca/stories/peop...
Pawpaw tastes far more tropical than you’d expect from a North American fruit, like a delicious cross between a banana and a mango. A longread on how an Indigenous-led movement is restoring the tropical-tasting, climate-resilient fruit tree: www.begiant.ca/stories/plac...
The quest to bring the ancient pawpaw fruit back to Ontario
An Indigenous-led movement is restoring the tropical-tasting, climate-resilient fruit tree
begiant.ca