Innehållsförteckning för April 2022 från Toronto Life

As anti-Putin protests broke out around Toronto, City Hall flew the Ukrainian flag, the Toronto sign and the CN Tower were lit up in blue and yellow, and the LCBO pulled Russian products from its shelves. Those small acts of solidarity might have seemed insignificant, occurring some 7,500 kilometres from Kyiv, but they were just as much about supporting the local Ukrainian community—upwards of 375,000 in Ontario, more than any other Canadian province—as sending a message abroad.…

In early 2020, the biomedical AI company BenchSci had just raised $22 million in Series B financing and was ready to go on a hiring spree when everything suddenly went remote. To make sure employees still felt connected to each other—despite the absence of a physical office—they bought everyone Oculus Quest VR headsets. “We were trying to think of a way for staff to blow off steam together,” says Vanessa Ribreau, BenchSci’s chief people officer. The company is still navigating privacy concerns when it comes to hosting work meetings within the Oculus network. So, for now, employees use the headsets socially—to play games together, meet up for virtual walks, or even stroll around BenchSci’s virtual office, where their avatars often bump into each other. Other perks of the job include…

Over the past two years, Danny Tseng has fielded the same request from clients over and over again: Help me draw a line between work and home. “Covid has created a situation where the stresses of those realities have melded together,” says the co-founder of architecture and interior design firm Syllable Inc. “Our challenge was to create a separation.” The firm had built laneway houses for people with work-from-home needs in the past, but those structures require permits, which can be costly and time-consuming—plus, not everyone wants, or can accommodate, that much extra square footage. So Tseng and his partners came up with the YardPod, a customizable, prefab backyard workspace. Syllable’s insulated, all-season structures are a compact 108 square feet—roomy enough for an office, workshop or studio, but small enough…

Dear Office Diplomat, I started a new job last year and have been working remotely ever since, so I’d never met my colleagues in real life until recently. It turns out I really don’t like them. Looking back, there were a bunch of red flags—a total frat-boy vibe, with thinly veiled misogyny in the Slack channels—but since I wasn’t around them in person, I could just turn off my computer and tune them out. Now that the situation’s very much in my face, it’s extremely off-putting. I don’t want to quit, but I don’t want to be part of this culture either. What are my options? —Colleague Fatigue, Liberty Village You can learn a lot from the snippets of conversation you overhear on the way to the boardroom or from the…

Just Boardrooms is the Airbnb of meetingroom rentals: the company doesn’t own office real estate, but rather acts as a platform through which companies can rent out their underused spaces. Prices for one of their 50-plus workspaces in the Toronto area range from $25 to $90 an hour for a small meeting room and up to $325 an hour for a luxe spot at the Design Exchange. “The nature of work is forever changed,” says managing director Anthony Santilli. “I don’t think we’re going back to working 100 per cent from the office or 100 per cent from home. There will be a need for a third space—and here we are.”…

I was born in Egypt and moved to Mississauga with my parents and siblings in 2012, when I was eight. Our neighbourhood, near Winston Churchill Boulevard and Britannia Road, is a friendly melting pot, with families from all over the world. I’m in Grade 12 now, and I’m studying remotely this year. I’ve found it difficult to stay on top of my studies when I’m learning through a computer in my bedroom, so I’ve been meeting with a tutor online for extra one-on-one help. One Saturday morning in January, I was in the middle of a tutoring session when I smelled smoke. At first I figured it was coming from the kitchen, but then my mom barged into my room in a panic and told me that the neighbours’ house…

Train Wreck Nicholas Hune-Brown’s feature on the Ontario Line outlined the desperate need for better transit in the city, and the vehement opposition to where the line is slated to go. Readers had strong feelings—mostly that the resistance is NIMBYist in nature. “This is an immensely well-done story. It covers all sides of the issues and tries to provide the reader with a lot of perspectives. “One of my favourite passages in the article: ‘The benefits of a subway line…are so distant that they can seem almost abstract. The kid from Don Mills and Eglinton who, 12 years from now, will be able to get a job downtown won’t show up to any town hall sessions. The couple who will move into the apartment building created by transit-oriented development two…

CAROL MacDONALD Co-founder and president, Gotcare, a home health care agency COMPANY HQ: Junction Triangle FOUNDED: 2018 EMPLOYEES: 13 HOW MUCH YOU SPENT INITIALLY: “$270,000 from angel investors. We spent it on building the minimum viable product.” YOUR TURNING POINT: “At the start of the pandemic, our revenue dipped by 30 per cent, because clients were initially worried about letting personal support workers into their homes. But everything rebounded that summer, primarily due to families bringing their loved ones home from long-term care facilities. Now we’re doubling our revenue year over year.” YOUR BIG-TIME BACKERS: “We’ve raised a total of $1.5 million, with support from the Telus Pollinator Fund for Good, Red Thread Ventures and SheEO.” TECH JARGON YOU USE TOO MUCH: “‘Pivot.’ For Gotcare to be successful, we’ve had…

In early 2020, Fuse Create, an ad agency with 80 employees, had outgrown its longtime Adelaide Street home—not in size, but in spirit. The 14,000-square-foot brick and beam space was very much an old-fashioned office, says CEO Stephen Brown. “Our lease was up in the next year, and our creative team said they’d love something more accessible to the community, instead of feeling locked up in a tower.” Then came Covid, and the Adelaide office sat mostly empty for 19 months. “By the third month, we knew we could get our work done virtually,” says Brown. The firm leaned hard into fostering a collaborative virtual environment by hosting trivia nights and baking lessons, and sending out care packages. Since everyone already had a laptop, there was minimal disruption on the…

Early in the pandemic, e-comm startup SnapCommerce switched to a remote model, making it a permanent priority. To help employees adjust, the company offered a one-time $500 WFH stipend to kit out home offices, a $360 annual wellness benefit and a weekly $25 UberEats credit. It has since instituted flexible hours, whether that’s starting and ending a little later or blocking off time midday for errands. The result: morale and productivity are up. “Giving staff time to take care of personal hurdles means they work when they focus best,” says Natasha Lakhani, VP of people and talent. “It’s win-win.”…

When the braintrust at Wealthsimple conducted an internal poll last year, a majority of the staff said they’d happily return to the office if safety measures were put in place. To accommodate existing team members and new pandemic hires who wanted in-your-literal-face face time, the company moved from its 6,000-square-foot Chinatown office to a huge space at Adelaide and Spadina in a heritage building previously occupied by Shopify. Here’s a look inside. WHAT: Fintech company Wealthsimple WHERE: 80 Spadina Ave. HOW BIG: Approximately 32,000 square feet…

MICHELE ROMANOW CEO and co-founder, Clearco WHAT THEY DO: Provide financing and financial services to tech startups FOUNDED: 2015 HQ ’HOOD: Downtown EMPLOYEES: More than 500 In-person, remote or hybrid? We have adopted a flexible work-from-home policy, but we also have a physical office for those who want to use it. One employee perk we introduced during the pandemic was… a $300 work-from-home stipend to help staff create a comfortable space. We also ran Clear Days last summer and fall, which gave employees one Friday off a month. Who doesn’t love a long weekend? For our company, the pandemic was… scary and challenging. We had to throw the playbook out the window. We adapted, and we grew like crazy. We’re now valued at over $2 billion. One thing I miss…

“I put about 20 per cent of my earnings into a stock portfolio” REGULAR EXPENSES RENT $1,900, including utilities. “All of the restaurants and shops I need are within walking distance, which is great,” says Ahmet. INTERNET $50 a month, for unlimited high-speed internet. “I get a deal because my building has a contract with FibreStream.” PHONE $50 a month, with Fido. FITNESS $105 a month, for a membership at Basecamp, a rock-climbing gym. “I go three or four times a week.” TRANSPORTATION $110 a month, for TTC and Uber. “I work from home, so I don’t leave my neighbourhood that much.” GROCERIES $350 a month. “I shop at Metro every now and then, but I order most necessities, like cleaning products and bulk foods, on Amazon, where they’re cheaper…

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the HR, payroll and benefits software company Humi has been offering its new employees onboarding kits prior to their first day of work. The perks include work-from-home essentials (a monitor, laptop and accessories), company-specific swag (a deck of cards, notepads, hats and sweatshirts) and customized items (like the new hire’s favourite snacks). According to Andrea Bartlett, the company’s director of people operations, “Those are the kinds of things we would learn about each other naturally if we were working together in person.” Bartlett’s team selects the contents of each kit based on conversations with incoming staff about their tastes, hobbies and interests, and on a survey that screens for dietary restrictions, go-to restaurants and ideal work set-up, among other things. Some new Humi hires…

ON THE MORNING OF JULY 9, 2018, HEATHER ROVET HEARD A KNOCK AT HER DOOR. She’d been expecting a handyman to fix the kitchen cabinets in her midtown condo, and she assumed it would be the same chubby older gentleman that the renovation company had sent last time. But when she opened the door, she found a striking man in his 40s with salt-and-pepper hair and an adorable smile split by a tiny gap between his front teeth. The repairman introduced himself as Jace Peretti. Heather invited him in, and they chatted as Jace fixed the cabinets. When he was done, she asked if he wouldn’t mind helping install towel bars in her bathrooms, and he agreed. As he was working, they got so lost in conversation—talking about his son,…

1. Emmer’s pistachio croissant Everything Philip Haddad makes at his Harbord Street bakery tastes like magic, but there’s a reason for the two-per-party limit on the pistachio croissants. The glittering green, double-baked beauties are bedazzled with Sicilian pistachios—vibrant and creamy frangipane inside, a coat of crunchy nut nubbins outside—making them textural marvels worthy of their hefty price tag. But line up before 9 a.m. if you want one, or risk having this croissant dream dashed. $9. 161 Harbord St., emmertoronto.ca 2. Tasso’s Natural Croissant The pleasing aromas of butter and baking sugar are unmistakable (even through an N-95) at this tiny Cabbagetown croissant specialist. Everything sells out online, days in advance. But it’s worth the early planning for Mike and Olyana Tasso’s signature “natural” croissants, the result of a three-day…

A nightmarish survival drama YELLOWJACKETS (Crave) Recommended by Kirsten Rasmussen, actor “It’s teen drama meets horror meets Now and Then, and I love it so much. Christina Ricci is the woman of my dreams as Misty—a desperate rat-drowning weirdo. This show is as fun as it is disturbing. I was often watching through my own fingers and describing to my girlfriend what I could see because she had her eyes fully closed. I can’t wait for Season 2 and will be having nightmares about Season 1 until it comes out, thank you very much!” A behind-the-music look at the Beatles’ final album THE BEATLES: GET BACK (Disney Plus) “Magical Mystery Tour was the first record I ever owned; my mom bought a copy for me at Fairview Mall when I…