Keywords Biography, General

But she was also enrolled in the schools free lunch program. Often it was her only meal. When Judith collapsed in tears one morning, saying she was hungry, her English teacher, Lesley Peterson, invited her for dinner. Having fed her, she sent Judith back home with some oranges and a frozen chicken for her family. But life at the Anderson household had unravelled to intolerable chaos. Within days, Judith dialled Winnipeg Child and Family Services from school. "Put me somewhere," she told them. "I'm not going back." Peterson and her sister Kristy, also a teacher at Sisler, had previously applied to be foster parents, and offered Judith a temporary home. On March 9, 1993, the same day that Judith moved in with the Petersons, both her siblings were taken into the care of Winnipeg Child and Family Services. "A counsellor took a look around," recounts Judith, "and said, 'Oh my goodness, I cant believe that children have been living here.' "

Arriving in the Peterson household - a generational crazy quilt of the two sisters, a 90-year-old grandmother, Kristy's 10-year-old son, Devon, and two cats - Judith was overwhelmed by her liberty. "The hardest thing to get used to? Not being allowed to do chores," she says. "I was told to do homework and to relax. Gradually, I began to grapple with my passion for ideas." Peterson remembers staying up until 2:00 in the morning, "brainstorming with Judith on all the reasons why Hamlets Gertrude would have married Claudius." That summer, Judith began a series of creative writing courses, first with novelist Margaret Sweatman and later with poet Dennis Cooley. "She was remarkably poised," remembers Cooley. "Her writing was sophisticated, and she had almost a professional attitude, which is rare in a young woman."

During the following two years, Judith sped through three years of high-school courses, graduating at 16 with an average of 91 per cent. Even before completing Grade 12, she had already earned an A in a third-year creative writing course at the University of Manitoba. "At 16, she was in with 30- and 40-year-olds," recalls Peterson, "too young to join them in the bar after class. She was looking for a place to challenge her, to call her own."

In fact, Judith had set her sights on Oxford. Having won an interview, she paid her way to England with earnings as a gas station cashier. Her letter of acceptance, inviting her to read English at St. Johns College in the fall of 1996, launched a citywide scramble to raise the necessary $33,000 for tuition, living expenses and airfare. Winnipeg Child and Family Services established a charitable fund and canvassed the community for support. A professional auctioneer, reading Judith's story in a Winnipeg paper, hosted a fund-raiser, selling off goods provided at cost by local businesses. As well, she won a Ken Dryden Scholarship - established to help students who have been in foster care - awarding her $4,000 for each year of her studies. By October, she was off to Oxford.

This week, Judith Anderson - the newly named captain of Oxfords women's ice hockey team - will fly home to Winnipeg. Packed in her bags will be her summer reading: Spenser's Faerie Queen plus the entire works of Chaucer - a daunting task that her tutor has estimated will take her nine weeks to complete. Add to this her teaching job at the Manitoba Institute for Gifted Students, where she will lead a course of her own design, Theatre in the Fringe Environment. And as in previous summers, she has agreed to direct a play at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. Last, but not least, there will be the job of raising yet another $33,000 for her second year at Oxford - plus the $5,000 shortfall from the year just completed. Peterson is prepared to help. "Being broke is relative," she says. "If I have to re-mortgage my house, I will."

But for the short term, the rambling house on leafy Harvard Avenue will be a scene of celebration as 18-year-old Judith returns. "Its been hard," she admits, "to be away from a home that took me so long to find." English professor, writer, theatre director, hockey coach: all these futures entice her, none is certain. "I've learned not to be too specific in my hopes," she says confidently. "I honestly believe that everything is falling into place." Falling into place, perhaps - but not without her own fierce determination to conquer any obstacles in her path. As Peterson says: "Don't forget, she's a goalie. She likes to stand up to life and say, 'Throw hard things at me.' " Rebel and artist, thinker and competitor, activist and innovator, and certainly a risk-taker: Judith Anderson is all these things and more - a Canadian to be watched.

Breaking The Mould - The RebelsThey blaze their own trails, leaving behind convention, deference - the old ways of thinking. Forget peace, order and good government: there are some who value a richer experience, who have the courage to change the way people think, to shake up a tired art form, or to realize a dream that everyone else said was impossible. Leaders or visionaries, they walk the road less travelled.

Polley, Sarah
Polley grew up in the CBC's Road to Avonlea and has made the transition to adult roles with the poise of a young Jodie Foster (courtesy Maclean's).

Evan Solomon and Andrew Heintzman
MAGAZINE CO-FOUNDERS

Solomon, Evan and Andrew Heintzman
Co-founders of Shift magazine (courtesy Maclean's).

Sarah Polley
ACTOR

Polley, Sarah
Previously a child star, notably in the series the Road to Avonlea, Polley has made the rare change from successful child actor to successful adult actor.

Capt. Lee-Anne Quinn
ARMY NURSE

She practises her profession, usually armed to the teeth. "I carry a C-8 rifle, an 8-mm sidearm and 150 rounds of ammunition," says the 36-year-old Canadian army officer, "because you're no use to your patients if you're dead." Quinn, originally from Peterborough, Ont., is what is known in military parlance as a nursing air evacuation officer, a specialist in the difficult art of extricating injured soldiers - and sometimes civilians - from active battlefields. She performed that function with distinction in Somalia, where she commanded an all-male unit that co-ordinated emergency evacuations for 29,000 UN troops from 29 separate nations. "I spent 60 per cent of my time up in the air in helicopters," she recalls. "Treating the wounded inside the narrow confines of a bucking Bell 212 chopper is a whole different kind of nursing." Since returning from Somalia, her second UN tour, Quinn has led a more placid life, earning a bachelor of science degree at the University of Ottawa and finishing a year-long French language course in Valcartier, Que. But she yearns for more duty abroad. "Its why I joined up," she says. "You never get a chance to get bored."

Sharlene Azam
PUBLISHER/EDITOR

Azam, Sharlene
Founding editor of Reluctant Hero, a quarterly for girls (courtesy Maclean's).

Rachel Giese
JOURNALIST

Giese, Rachael
Journalist (courtesy Maclean's).

Tanya Allen
ACTOR

She has the strange distinction of being the only actress to appear in all 13 episodes of CBCs satirical comedy series The Newsroom. The shows capricious creator and star, Ken Finkleman, kept writing women out of the script, and replacing them. But Allen survived. As Audrey, The Newsrooms hip young intern, she was the one sympathetic soul in a shark pool of opportunists, the naïve yet discerning observer who saw through everyone else. Even when she was acting compliant, the rebellion was visible in her eyes. Allen has trouble keeping secrets from a lens. But the camera likes what it sees - a mix of vulnerability and insouciance. With her very first professional audition at 18, Allen landed a lead role, as a teenage prostitute in ABCs Spencer: Ceremony. The Toronto native went on to star in two more TV movies, Lives of Girls and Women and Lyddie. And she recently completed her first big-screen feature: adopting a Scottish accent, Allen co-stars with Jonathan Pryce and Trainspotting's Jonny Lee Miller in Regeneration, a First World War drama shot in Glasgow. Now 22, while waiting to see if The Newsroom will be renewed, she is shooting Platinum, a CBC pilot about the record industry. Playing a punk-rock singer, she gets to amplify her own irrepressible sense of mischief. By becoming an actor, "I originally thought I could get away from the horrible person I am and play other people," says Allen. "Now, I'm finally finding out that its about exposing yourself."

Jordan Cook
GUITARIST

When hard-core fans of the blues gather on Saturday afternoons for the regular jam session at Buds on Broadway in Saskatoon, chances are they are watching a 13-year-old. Cook, who has been playing blues bars across the Prairies since he was 8, has already earned the reputation of being one of Canada's most promising blues guitarists. The Grade 7 student, who has played with the likes of Colin James, Sass Jordan and the Toronto blues group Big Sugar, plans to open for British blues patriarch Long John Baldry in Edmonton in July and, with his three-member band The Blues Boys, tape the Super Dave Osborne Show in Vancouver. "My dream is to make playing the blues a career," says Cook. Given his age, he seems well on his way to living that dream.

Elspeth Lynn and Lorraine Tao
CREATIVE TEAM

Lynn, Elspeth and Lorraine Tao
Advertisers (courtesy Maclean's).

Terrie O'Leary
POLITICAL AIDE

Her job title is simple: chief of staff to Finance Minister Paul Martin. But her unofficial job description is far more complex: it includes acting as the political eyes and ears, consensus builder, information clearinghouse, social conscience, and, quite often, verbal sparring partner for the famously combative Martin. O'Leary, 37, does all that so well that many senior bureaucrats describe her as the most effective political aide they have ever seen. And, says one civil servant who has witnessed some of the duos respectful but raucous policy debates, "the Terrie and Paul show may be Ottawa's best theatre."

Martin credits O'Leary, a Toronto native with a long history of volunteering with the mentally disabled, with being the driving force behind measures in recent budgets that provided tax credits for families with disabled members, and new incentives for education. The relationship with her boss, says O'Leary, is "like brother and sister: he understands that the reason I give him such a hard time is because I'm so fond of him." In turn, says a smiling Martin, "when the department saw that my own assistant was willing to tell me to go to hell, they came to understand that I was prepared to entertain opinions other than my own."

Jin-me Yoon
ARTIST

She is blithely untroubled by viewers who fail to connect with her avant-garde art. "Some people look at the work and say, 'So what?' " says Korean-born Yoon, 36. "But that's OK, I'm not interested in hockey." In fact, Yoon's edgy, ironic art is beginning to attract a lot of attention - and critical acclaim. "I am driven by ideas," says the artist, who uses photographic and video imagery to explore complex political and social issues. In A Group of Sixty-Seven, an ambitious work in the permanent collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Yoon, an assistant professor of art at Burnabys Simon Fraser University, tackles the question of national identity. The work is deceptively simple: photographs of 67 Korean-Canadians standing in front of paintings by Lawren Harris and Emily Carr. The title clearly refers to Canada's formation in 1867, but it also hints at suggestions of racism. Notes Yoon: "1867 is the year when certain immigration restrictions against Asian nationals were lifted." A Group of Sixty-Seven also plays on the Group of Seven, the first artists to assert a distinct Canadian identity. The landscape has changed, but as an artist, Yoon remains "interested in how we as citizens forge common ground while we respect our differences."

Stephen Marshall
VIDEO PRODUCER

"News has got to change drastically or you're not going to have our generation watching," Marshall warned a convention of rapt television executives last fall in Berlin. Ever since, network honchos have been beating a path to the Toronto door of his Channel Zero, a quarterly video magazine that is attempting to revolutionize TV news with a handful of twentysomething staffers and a distinctly personal take on global events, unfettered by corporate ownership or commercials.

Marshall, 29, was on the mend from a bad experiment with cocaine in Belize two years ago when he conceived the notion of an independent alternative for the MTV generation. With $100,000 from three investors, he produced Planet Street, a collage of gritty back-alley tales from a 1995 world tour that was hailed by The Village Voice and Wired magazine. This March, a third VHS edition called The Electronic Eye: Canada as a Surveillance Society became what he calls "a Trojan horse" - invading the ultra-traditional airwaves of the CBCs National Magazine.

Now, the Montreal-raised Marshall finds himself courted by worried network planners anxious to win back a generation that has been deserting the tube in statistically significant droves. With $1.5 million from an anonymous angel, he is attempting to set up an international network of amateurs armed with video cameras to tell the stories that he says the mainstream media is missing. "TV is at the end of an epoch," Marshall argues. "The news right now is unapologetic in its agenda: its corporate - it wants to sell you cars. Our whole covert agenda is to create media that inspires sociopolitical action instead of consumption."

Shari Hollett, Chris Earle
ACTORS/WRITERS

In mining the intimacies of their lives, they have found comedic gold. Two plays on personal themes - pregnancy in the 1993 fringe hit Expectation, and parenthood in their current success, Big Head Goes to Bed, now playing in Toronto - have charmed parents and non-parents alike. "Were drawn to how well theatre can communicate the universality of human experience," says Earle, 33. Married since 1995, they caught the acting bug early on - Hollett, now 36, in a primary-school production of Nicholas Nickleby in Toronto, and Earle in high-school productions in his native Montreal. They met in 1990 at Toronto's Second City, which Hollett calls "an incredible training ground for performers and for writers." Now on their own, the couple are immersing themselves in all aspects of production - and may be signalling a new direction for Canadian theatre. "What with cutbacks and theatre closings," says Hollett, "I feel that self-producing is an important step into the future face of theatre. Its part of how were going to keep going."

Callum Keith Rennie
ACTOR

He has the rugged cool of a bad boy who has been to hell and back, looks better for it, and now humor's the camera with good behavior. Hollywood stars tend to tumble through addiction and recovery after they get famous. But Vancouver native Rennie got it out of his system before he started. While working as a stage actor, he says he spent his 20s drinking. Then, at 33, he quit. "I got a piece of glass in my eye in a bar fight," he recalls, then adds, with laconic understatement: "I thought, 'This has gone far enough.' " Now 36, he has been acting in film and TV for just four years, but is racing to catch up. While living in Vancouver, he paid his dues playing criminals in TV series such as The Commish, Lonesome Dove, The Highlander and The X-Files. In 1993, he turned heads with a feature role opposite Sandra Oh in Double Happiness. He dismisses the character as "a vacuous middle-class male," but his talent in the role was obvious. As a recovering junkie in Curtiss Charm, Rennie finally got to show some edge. Then, playing a laconic guitarist in Bruce McDonald's punk rockumentary, Hard Core Logo, he displayed something rare in Canadian cinema: the quietly smouldering charisma of a movie star. This fall, replacing David Marciano, Rennie will co-star with Paul Gross as the new cop sidekick in CTV's Due South. But in case anyone thinks this actor is going straight, Rennie is quick to point out: "I play a cop like I play a bad guy."

Lynne Stopkewich
WRITER/DIRECTOR

With her first movie, she made what is arguably the most provocative debut in the annals of Canadian cinema. Certainly to those who did not see the film, it could not have sounded more outrageous. Kissed, based on a story by Canadian author Barbara Gowdy, is the sympathetic tale of a young female necrophile working in a funeral home who takes sexual liberties with dead white males. But what shocked many of those who actually saw Kissed was that it was so sensitive, so poetic and so strangely inoffensive. And although Vancouver writer-director Stopkewich, 33, achieved notoriety by breaking a taboo, she proved her talent by doing it with taste and feminist intelligence - by lifting up a rock and finding a perfectly good metaphor. Her grace with the camera has earned her a Hollywood agent. Meanwhile, Kissed has been sold around the world, reinforcing Canada's growing reputation for cinematic kink. The image is not as un-Canadian as it seems, says Stopkewich. "Being Canadian is about trying to figure out who you are. And sexuality is where you're most vulnerable - the closest to who you truly are. Its ripe for exploration." Picking up where she left off, Stopkewich is already planning her next movie - based on Gowdy's first novel, Falling Angels.

Molly Parker
ACTOR

Parker, Molly
Actress (courtesy Maclean's).

Out With The Old - The InnovatorsTaking their dreams and making them real, they are at the forefront of change

It begins with a spark, a flash of imagination. Whether they are taking cutting-edge technology and applying it to the modern world, changing the way people think about the personal space called home, reinventing cuisine to create tastes for the current age, or bringing a fresh take to the world of politics, the innovators are distinguished by their courage - the courage to try something new.

Katherine Newman
INTERIOR DESIGNER

Newman, Katherine
Designer (courtesy Maclean's).

A law school dropout who employs three draftspeople and three assistant designers in her small Toronto firm, Newman strongly believes in her own "innate" talent. So, apparently, do the wealthy, high-profile clients who have hired her. Earlier this year, Newman beat out several of Toronto's major designers, as well as a few from New York City, for one of the citys most prestigious decorating jobs: an elaborate new house designed by American Robert Stern, one of North Americas most sought-after architects.

Her style is classic, with a twist of the contemporary. "I have an appreciation for fine, beautiful things," says Newman, who remembers, every day after school, visiting showrooms with her mother, also a decorator. "But my mother didnt do it with the same vengeance," she says. "My commitment is all-consuming. I love it. It is a passion. I cant wait to go to work in the morning." That drive recently led Newman to start a construction company. "The goal is to design and build," she explains. "I love construction - love it, love it, love it. When you walk into a space and its exactly what youve seen in your minds eye, its a rush."

Patrick Huard
COMEDIAN/ACTOR

After rising from obscurity with a one-man adult comedy show that played to more than 340,000 people across Quebec over the past three years, the 28-year-old Montreal native has swapped his microphone for the starring role in Talk Radio, a psychological drama by American playwright Eric Bogosian. The play, which runs in Montreal until the end of August, coupled with lead roles in two recent Quebec films, represents a major transition. Married to Quebec singer Lynda Lemay, Huard has been taking acting lessons in New York City for the past year and is determined to see how far his talent can take him. "Id like to be known as an all-around performer," he says, "except for singing - I couldnt do that to people."

Francis Leclerc
FILM-MAKER

The 25-year-old son of the late Quebec poet and singer Félix Leclerc grows indignant at the suggestion that his name rather than his talent is the main reason for his growing success. "On the contrary," he argues, "I've had to work twice as hard to prove myself." In the past five years, the younger Leclerc has written, produced and directed more than a dozen short films and video clips. Last year, his moody Bientôt Novembre won the best Canadian entry award in the Montreal International Short Film Festival. Weeks later, he was hired by Quebec playwright Robert Lepage to do a television adaptation of Lepage's eight-hour marathon play, The Seven Branches of the River Ota. "It was an amazing experience," recalls Leclerc, who spent nine months on the $700,000 project. While he was shooting Lepage's play, Leclerc also won a Félix - the Quebec music industry award named in honor of his father - for his video of Kevin Parents Seigneur. Now writing his first feature film, Leclerc says he is "mainly inspired by European film-makers like François Truffaut. Hollywood doesn't do anything that interests me."

Jennifer Corson
SALVAGE CONTRACTOR

She has built a business out of trash. For the native of Revelstoke, Alta., it all began after she graduated with a masters degree in architecture from the Technical University of Nova Scotia: a client asked her to design a home with an older, lived-in look. "I went out and found old planks and doors," recalls Corson, 30. "But I discovered that there wasn't a concentrated source for these types of things. There was a lot of waste - and a potential market." In 1994, she and her associate Susan Helliwell launched Renovators Resource Inc., a company that bids on demolitions, removing flooring and other fixtures for resale. Now, the firm has grown into a small architectural practice, a building materials company - and the mainstay of a weekly TV show The Resourceful Renovator, which Corson hosts. "People are getting more enjoyment out of old stuff," says Corson, "turning a spool into a rocking chair or hockey sticks into hangers. For me, its a hobby. I'm just lucky enough to have found work in it."

Julian Bond
CHEF

As co-owner and head chef of Vancouver's Star Anise restaurant, 26-year-old Bond has become something of a star himself on the international cuisine scene. Last February, the U.S. magazine Gourmet touted his restaurant as one of the best in North America in 1996. Renowned for his imaginative combinations of tastes and textures, Bond changes the dishes on the menu - which currently range from sumptuous salmon roasted with beurre blanc sauce to an exotic fillet of ostrich - every few months. And Bond, who moved to Canada from London five years ago, is certainly attuned to his customers - frequently shedding his head-chef clothes and spending a few hours clearing tables. "As head chef, I think that people don't want to hurt my feelings," Bond explains. "But people seem to find it easier to tell things to a person clearing the table, so I get honest opinions." Just one way to ensure that good cooking and good business go hand in hand.

Peter Donolo
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

In 1992, Jean Chrétien looked old, tired and too rooted in the past. A concerned senior adviser phoned Donolo, a then-32-year-old communications whiz-kid and longtime Liberal whom Chrétien did not know. Donolo signed on as Chrétien's communications director, and portrayed the leaders age and extensive experience as advantages rather than liabilities. In office, his strategy again turned a potential problem into a public relations success by depicting the Liberals massive spending cuts as a triumph of fiscal management. Five years and two election majority victories later, the Montreal native still flourishes in what Marketing Magazine has described as "the toughest public relations job in Canada." His fondness for awful puns, old jazz and even older movies belies a fierce dedication to his job: when his third child, Michael, was born less than two weeks after the June 2 election, he immediately nicknamed him "Majority." Like any PR pro, Donolo credits his client. "If I have done anything," he says, "it is to help Canadians see the Prime Ministers real personality." Sometimes, even when his boss disagrees, Donolo is right: he unsuccessfully urged Chrétien to apologize for his broken promise to scrap the Goods and Services Tax. "Peter has an uncanny ability to cut through bureaucratic gobbledygook and turn it into plain English," says David Smith, the Liberals campaign chairman. "Couple that with his infectious enthusiasm, and he has been a perfect match for the Prime Minister."

Martin Bigonesse
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

Bigonesse, Martin
Founder of Adrenaline Software (courtesy Maclean's).

Daniel Brooks
PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR

By creating dramas that stretch the bounds of audience expectations, he has made small theatre in Canada big. And since 1985, Brooks's plays have won him and his collaborators awards and respect. His much-lauded Noam Chomsky Lectures, co-written with Guillermo Verdecchia, won Brooks a Floyd S. Chalmers Award in 1992, while The Lorca Play, based on the life of the Spanish poet-playwright, garnered a Dora Mavor Moore Award a year later. This fall, his acclaimed production of John Mighton's Possible Worlds will be remounted at Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille. Brooks, 38, who grew up in Toronto and is currently writer-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre, doesnt like to delineate precisely what he does. "I've spent a lot of time," he says, "rubbing out the lines between writing and directing." That means mining a variety of influences - from Brazil, where he studied puppetry, and New York, where he studied acting, to the University of Toronto's drama department. "There's no single place that's been more useful than another," he says. "It all comes from different experiences, and that happens everywhere all the time."

Brian Scudamore
ENTREPRENEUR

The name sounds like the latest grunge band. But the Rubbish Boys is, in fact, a growing Vancouver-based company focused on exactly what the name implies: garbage. Eight years ago, Scudamore's idea of charging moderate fees to collect oversize garbage loads that municipal collectors reject proved so successful that he dropped out of university. "I didn't want to sit at a desk all day," he says, now 27. "I wanted to challenge myself." His one-truck operation has since grown to a dozen vehicles and 40 employees in Vancouver and Victoria. With revenues of $1.2 million a year, the company now plans to franchise its concept. And Scudamore's sense of fun has remained intact: for Canada Day, he is throwing a beach party for employees, featuring the strangest items collected in the previous couple of weeks, plus "lots of beer. And well drink Molson Canadian."

Peter van Stolk
ENTREPRENEUR

He has tossed out the term Generation X, preferring to call his peers Generation 2000. "We were born in a different era," says van Stolk. "Were moving downtown, not to the suburbs." At 34, van Stolk makes it his business to understand the next generation, as well - those aged 14 to 35. And his creation, Jones Soda, the alternative soft drink distributed by his Vancouver-based firm Urban Juice & Soda, is becoming a cult classic from British Columbia to Boston. Jones is as much attitude as drink, a brightly colored pop sold in a plain bottle with a variety of retro-styled labels. But neither Jones nor van Stolks Wazu spring water can be found on supermarket shelves. Instead, van Stolk distributes to repertory cinemas, tattoo parlors and coffee houses - and sells the soda personally to snowboarder's at the top of a mountain or to techno-music freaks at all-night raves.

Van Stolk is shaking up the beverage industry by suggesting that the youth market can be lured not only by million-dollar marketers but by a counterculture maverick on a shoestring budget. Without the funds to take on Coke or Pepsi, he relies on word of mouth - and so far, the buzz is catching. The window dresser at Macy's in New York discovered Jones Soda and placed it in the latest display window. "Three million people see that each day, and it didn't cost a dime," says the Edmonton-born van Stolk, who became an entrepreneur at age 12, buying cases of Bubble Yum in the United States and reselling them to his classmates. But he sees his future less as a profit-maker than a political trailblazer, bridging the corporate and New Age worlds. A supporter of Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and the SPCA, he is also an active member of the Social Venture Network, a group of North American businesspeople who believe 1990s firms must be socially responsible. "If Coke and Pepsi took even 10 per cent of what they spend on marketing, they could give needy kids hot lunches," says van Stolk. "That's how you create change."

Chris Caldwell
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

He is not your average CEO. For starters, at 24 he is younger than all but one of his 80 employees at Coral Technologies, a London, Ont., company involved in software development and networking. And his road to success has been anything but conventional. At 14, Caldwell started a business in his parents basement, fixing and assembling computers. He dropped out of school in Grade 11, and after a failed investment in a software company, Caldwell bought out Coral Technologies with a promissory note and $30,000 in cash. Since 1991, the company has skyrocketed from five employees and $400,000 in sales to 80 employees and an estimated $19.5 million in revenue this year. Caldwell hopes to double the size of the company, which also has an Africa operation, within the next two years.

Bonnie Schmidt
EDUCATOR

Her objective was twofold: "I wanted people to understand why science is important, and I wanted scientists to be able to explain it to them." To that end, Schmidt, now 31, founded Lets Talk Science in 1991, while completing her PhD in physiology at the University of Western Ontario in London. In its first year, the program linked 10 Western students with public-school science classes, where they conducted hands-on projects aimed at injecting fun into the lesson plans. Now in five provinces, the program has brought undergrads from nine universities into the classrooms of more than 300,000 students. And its Science Delivered conferences advise elementary schoolteachers across Canada on how to make the subject more relevant. "One of my frustrations lies in people thinking science is black and white - that there is not a creative and dynamic process involved," says Schmidt, whose organization recently received a $1-million donation from Du Pont Canada Inc. "Our central goal is to shatter that idea."

David Weiser
ENTREPRENEUR

A single semester at Laval University was enough to convince Weiser that "school was just not for me." So in 1992, the Quebec City native dropped out and co-founded Megatoon Entertainment Group, an animation studio intent on making interactive cartoons and comic books. Three years later, the company was generating more than $1 million in annual sales, largely as a result of the success of such Megatoon software products as Goferwinkel's Adventures and Wallobee Jack. In 1995, he sold Megatoon Entertainment and launched Megatoon Station, which quickly became the largest Internet provider in the Quebec City area. In 1995, Weiser sold that operation to Malofilm Communications for "multimillions," stayed on for a year as president, then resigned. "I needed to get out so that I could reassess what I want to do in life," he explains. During the past year, Weiser, now 25, has founded CH!WAWA Communications Inc., an entertainment development company, which partly financed Burnt Eden, an award-winning film, and opened a bar on Quebec City's trendy Grande Allée. "I'm willing to try anything that comes along if I feel good about it," he says. "That's what being an entrepreneur is all about."

Jonathan Strauss
EDITOR-PUBLISHER/MARKETER

He looks like a typical Winnipeg 18-year-old: hangs out with friends, goes to movies, and mountain-bikes. But how many teenagers run their own marketing company and serve as editor and publisher of a burgeoning magazine, which they also own? "Yeah, its kind of weird," acknowledges Strauss. "Most teenagers don't call Michael Cowpland 'Mike' and talk to him about tennis and his favorite cars." Two years ago, the bespectacled boy wonder, with some financial help from his parents, bought The Computer Post, a small-scale high-tech monthly magazine. Strauss took the then-foundering publication and turned it around, increasing circulation by about 100 per cent, to 21,000. For the past two years, he has organized the Winnipeg Computer Expo - the years largest technology trade show in Western Canada. And next year, he hopes to launch another technology magazine and organize more trade shows - while also studying political science at the University of Winnipeg. What drives him? "I'm having fun," says Strauss matter-of-factly. "I wouldn't be doing it if I wasn't ."

From The Heart - The ArtistsCapturing the spirit of a country and its cultures

Their media are as rich and varied as their personalities: dance and classical music, film and the visual arts, the worlds of pop songs, novels and short stories. But whatever the field of endeavor, they strive to bring a quality beyond the workaday to their lives - and to their audiences. Although they are a diverse lot, they share the drive to create something uniquely Canadian.

Jaimie Tapper
BALLET DANCER

Tapper, Jaimie
Edmonton-born dancer and winner of the Erik Bruhn Prize for young dancers (courtesy Maclean's).

Mimi Bizjak
FASHION DESIGNER

Bizak, Mimi
Fashion designer with her own label (courtesy Maclean's).

James Westman
BARITONE

As a 13-year-old boy treble with the celebrated Vienna Boys Choir, he learned a valuable lesson. "One day, my voice changed," Westman recalls. "The next day, I was shipped home. It taught me that the world of music can sometimes be a brutal place." Undeterred, at 18 he left his familys farm near Stratford, Ont., to study voice and music at the University of Toronto's renowned Opera School. Last fall, at 25, he joined the Canadian Opera Company's ensemble studio, appearing as the Contadino in Luisa Miller and the Sergente in Manon Lescaut. In April, he won the George London Competition in New York City, which provides financial assistance for rising opera stars. At the same time, he was invited to spend the summer with the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera. Westman is now contemplating competing offers to audition for the SFO and the New York Metropolitan Opera. "Its starting to happen again," he observes wryly. "Pretty soon, I might have the career I had when I was 12."

Barbara Croall
COMPOSER

She has been writing music for almost as long as she can remember, right from the moment her parents gave her a keyboard when she was six years old. "Id sit down and compose little pieces, then hold recitals for Mom and Dad," recalls Croall, whose father is Scottish and whose mother is an Odawa, a member of the Ojibwa nation. By the time she was 10, Croall knew that she wanted to be a composer. And it is a path she has diligently pursued ever since. At the University of Toronto, she won a Glenn Gould scholarship in 1989 on her way to graduation two years later with a degree in music composition. In 1995, she was one of nine selected from around the world to attend the Scottish Chamber Orchestras course for young composers in the Orkney Islands. Last year, she became the first woman ever to be admitted for study at the 150-year-old Hochschüle für Musik in Munich. And commissions are starting to come her way: in 1996, she wrote Six Nations for the Mirror Image ensemble in Kitchener, Ont., and Echo for the International Art Festival in Pescocostanzo, Italy. But for Croall, 30, the high point came in June, when she listened to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra play her composition, The Four Directions, at Roy Thomson Hall. "It was an amazing, exhilarating experience," she happily sighs. "I still cant believe it actually happened."

Esta Spalding
POET

There is an intriguing note about Spalding on the jacket of Carrying Place, her first book of poems, published in 1995. The author, it states, "spent the last two summers articulating the skeleton of a minke whale." Not, on the surface, a literary pursuit. But then Spalding, 30, who pulls much of her striking, sensual imagery from "trunks and trunks" of personal journals, grounds all of her poetry in experience. While she helped marine biologist Douglas Fudge - whom she recently married - to reassemble whale bones off the coast of Maine, Spalding was also building the essential metaphor for her newly published book-length poem, Anchoress. "It's a putting-together," she explains. "It's about a scientist trying to 're-member' his story." Based on an actual event, Anchoress is a moving account of a young student who burns herself to death as a protest against the Gulf War, told a year later by her grieving Canadian lover. "Initially, I wrote it as a novel," she adds. "But I wanted it to be much more to the bone."

Life, for Spalding, is inextricably bound to literature. Now on leave from her job teaching English at the University of Guelph, the Boston-born poet is an assistant editor for Brick, helping her mother, novelist Linda Spalding, and stepfather, Michael Ondaatje, publish the respected literary journal. The House of Anansi - a small Toronto-based literary press - last year invited Spalding to join its editorial advisory board. "They took a bit of a risk with me, " she says. But Spalding takes risks of her own. "I am constantly putting myself on edge," says Spalding, currently writing a novel. "I'm trying to move people so their heart feels something."

Chantal Kreviazuk
SINGER/SONGWRITER

From the age of 3 - when she stepped up to her mothers piano and started to play - Kreviazuk knew she had the gift of music. But for much of her life, the Winnipegger, now 24, shied away from her talent. "I would sing for commercials or sing backup on independent records," she recalls, "but I was pretty complacent." In 1993, however, her future came into sharp focus. Travelling in Italy, Kreviazuk suffered a broken femur and fractured jaw in a road accident. She was immobilized for months. "That took me away from the 'crutch' places - school, working dead-end jobs that werent me," she says. "But I could write music." And a good thing: her 1996 debut album, Under These Rocks and Stones, is a rich tapestry of simple emotion and vocal dexterity, with a single, God Made Me, climbing the pop charts. But she is still wary of becoming an overnight success. "That frightens me, because with it comes a lot of responsibility," says Kreviazuk. "Mentally, I'm in a beautiful place right now, and I don't want to lose it overnight." Music fans can only hope she doesnt.

Gina Rorai
ARTIST

Rorai, Gina
Singer/songwriter (courtesy Maclean's).

Andrew Hunter
CURATOR

"There are a lot of musty, dusty types out there," says the brash young curator for the Kamloops Art Gallery in British Columbia. "A lot of museums have settled into a pat way of doing things." There is nothing pat or staid about the 33-year-old Hunter, an artist who switched to curating because he preferred "the whole shooting match" of putting on a show. And, oh, what a show. In his stints at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Hunters provocative choice of works has often stirred up debate. In his latest effort, now on display at the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery in Owen Sound, Ont., Hunter rounds out the artists work with "true artifacts" - among them, Thomson's fishing reel - as well as a canoe and other "imagined" belongings. And instead of the serious catalogue that accompanies most exhibits, Hamilton-born Hunter wrote Up North: A Northern Ontario Tragedy, a "pulp fiction novel" in which he creates a spiritual link between Thomson - who died in a mysterious canoe accident - and a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player who died in similar circumstances. Says Hunter: "I want to push this idea that curating and the museum process is a very subjective thing."

Leahy
MUSICIANS

Leahy
Family troupe of musicians from Lakefield, Ont, includes 4 brothers and 5 sisters (courtesy Maclean's).

Monica Tap
ARTIST

She calls it "rummaging around in art history." But that is a modest description for the complexly layered canvases the 35-year-old Halifax-based artist paints. Her exhibition Reprise, on display last year at Halifax's Dalhousie Art Gallery, was a series of 14 large oil paintings, mostly of flowers - but they contained subtle references to the works of 17th-century painter Rachel Ruysch, as well as to Claude Lorrain, Leonardo da Vinci and Frank Stella. Explains Tap: "I'm trying to find a conversation with the past, to find a place between abstraction and allusion." Originally from St. Albert, Alta., she gave up a civil service job to paint full time and later moved to Halifax to complete a master of fine arts degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. "I decided," says Tap, "it was either time to go for it or to quit painting."

Kevin Parent
SINGER/SONGWRITER

He had modest hopes for his debut album, a collection of 10 songs - eight in French and two in English - showcasing his style, a mix of rock and folk. "My goal was to break even," says Parent, a 24-year-old Gaspé native. Instead, Pigeon D'Argile (Clay Pigeon) sold 280,000 copies in Quebec, snared Parent five Quebec music industry awards last November - including male artist of the year - and made him a bona fide star in the province. Raised in the town of Nouvelle near the New Brunswick border, Parent dropped out of school in Grade 10 and began playing local bars; his break came a few years later when he won a Quebec-wide song contest. Now at work on a second album, Parent acknowledges feeling lucky: "Sometimes I ask myself, 'Is this too good to be true?' "

Peter Wellington
WRITER/DIRECTOR

English-Canadian film-makers, from David Cronenberg to Atom Egoyan, are famous for telling stories from a cool distance - and letting a conscious voyeurism become part of the picture. But Wellington, a Toronto writer-director, has tried a different approach. Last year, he made his directing debut with Joes So Mean to Josephine, an intimate drama about a flighty student (Sarah Polley) who becomes infatuated with a criminal practising electronic surveillance (Eric Thal). "I wanted to do something that addressed power in relationships and make it as realistic as possible," says the director, whose $1.3-million film won him the Claude Jutra prize for best feature-directing debut at the 1996 Genie awards. Wellington, 31, also wrote the screenplay for The Boys Club, a recent coming-of-age movie that marks another departure from the austere style of many Canadian films. And future projects include a movie about addictive gambling. Born in Kingston, Ont., and raised in Ottawa, Wellington has followed in the footsteps of his older brother, director David Wellington, whose films include I Love a Man in Uniform and Long Days Journey into Night. "But for some reason," says Peter, "there's no sibling rivalry. Were both really ardent supporters of each others work."

Andrew Pyper
WRITER

At 29, he has already adopted the emotions and alienation of a lost generation. After a law degree from the University of Toronto, Pyper rejected the affluent life promised by a legal career and turned full time to what he calls "the crazy speculative business" of writing. "It was increasingly difficult to ignore what was almost a happy obsession," he says. That obsession blossomed last year with the publication of Kiss Me, a critically acclaimed collection of 13 searing short stories - gothic tales of people living on the fringe. At the moment, the native of Stratford, Ont., is on the fringe himself - enjoying a subsidized two-month retreat far from familiar territory, in Pierre Berton's childhood home of Dawson City, Yukon, where he is working on his first novel. "Its good," he says, "for a creative person to throw himself out of his context for a while." His main ambition? To become successful enough at writing that he will never have to practise law.

The Philosopher Kings
MUSICIANS

Philospher Kings
Band with an eclectic mix of jazz, pop and rock music (courtesy Maclean's).

Eden Robinson
WRITER

For a "Generation X laureate," as The New York Times once called her, Robinson is remarkably traditional. "I may write about hip teens," she says, "but I'm not very hip myself." The 29-year-old author does, however, confess to a liking for literary "dark stuff" - Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe. Her own short stories in Traplines, the 1996 collection that brought her critical attention, revolves around the bleak lives of urban teenagers. Born and raised on the Kitamaat Haisla reserve in northern British Columbia, the Vancouver-based author may well be the first native writer to earn an international reputation - and a six-figure advance - for fiction that is not about native life. Her next book and first novel, Monkey Beach, due out next year, returns to her roots, with a typical twist: a contemporary Haisla woman sets off on a wilderness quest for the ghost of her drowned brother.

Juliette Kang
VIOLINIST

She has been a rising star on the classical music scene for almost two decades. Edmonton-raised Kang picked up her first violin at 4, performed her first concerto at 7 and won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions at 13. At 17, she graduated with a master of music degree from New York's renowned Juilliard School and two years later swept the field at the prestigious fourth quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, winning the gold medal, six special awards and prizes totalling $35,000. And during that same year, 1994, Kang was included on The New York Times Magazine list of the 30 artists most likely to "change the culture" over the next 30 years.

Despite the impressive credentials, Kang, 21, manages to retain a measure of awe in her approach to her art. "Classical music is so deep and so vast that it requires a lot of involvement from both performer and audience," she says. "Its not the kind of music that you can fully appreciate by just sitting back and letting it wash over you." Now living in Baltimore, Kang is busily fashioning an international career on the concert stage. Having performed at the Spoleto Festival early last month in Charleston, S.C., she is scheduled for appearances in Mexico City and Singapore this summer. "I'm no longer a child prodigy," she happily remarks, "but I'm still working."

To Light The Darkness - The ThinkersExplorers of uncharted territory, pushing at the edges

Some satisfy their curiosity in science, in the mysteries of the atom or the labyrinthine world of digital communication. Still others find their muse in medicine, stalking viral killers, or in the fields of pure research. And some - less scientific, but no less rigorous in their thought - trace the workings of history or dissect the foibles of modern mores to create biting satire. They dare to dream, and to explore.

Jennifer Gould
WRITER

Watching the collapse of the Soviet Union from the suburban beat of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gould longed to bear witness to that moment of history. As a cub reporter, fresh from the University of Toronto and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she would likely have waited years to earn a foreign correspondents post. "It didn't make sense to wait," says the Toronto-born Gould. "When you're older, you don't take as many risks." At 24, she left the Inquirer, and with $2,500 in savings, three weeks of Russian lessons and sheer chutzpah, landed in Moscow in 1992 at the peak of post-Communist euphoria. "It was a time when I was very young and more innocent," she laughs, "and so was the country."

Over the next four years, both for the English-language Moscow Times and as a freelancer, Gould charted Russia's swift descent into chaos. While most Western correspondents were waxing euphoric over the country's capitalist milestones, she carved out her own niche, and name, chronicling the plight of what she called "democracy's disenfranchised" - among them, the 100,000 angry youth living on Moscows streets. Cruising the shadowy club scene with mafiya millionaires or stumbling through Chechnyas bloody horrors, Gould saw the dark underbelly of the emerging nation up close. And when no other Western journalist could snag a Playboy interview with the bad boy of the Russian ultraright, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, she pulled off that coup, pestering him all the way onboard a Volga river yacht, where he mused on tape about the possibility of an orgy with her.

This spring, Gould wove those experiences into a compelling narrative, Vodka, Tears, and Lenin's Angel, which critics have hailed for vividly conveying the textures and Kafkaesque twists of Russian life. Now a staff writer for The Village Voice in New York City, she still tracks the mushrooming Russian mob presence on this continent, and, at 29, is toying with the notion of another foreign stint. "There's a real pompousness to this concept that you have to be older to understand politics," says Gould. "In Russia, the ministers were in their 30s. You don't have to be old to run a revolution, let alone a country."

Mark Kingwell
PHILOSOPHER

He is a social theoretician fascinated by everyday life, a provocateur who champions the importance of civility, and a thinker determined to make the case for reason in an era consumed by what he calls "millennial madness." An assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, Kingwell, 34, touched a popular nerve last year with Dreams of Millennium: Report from a Culture on the Brink. A wide-ranging look at the technological, political and cultural forces shaping modern society, it ends with a heartfelt plea to reject apocalyptic cynicism - and to search instead for ways "to make this world one in which we feel at home." In April, the New York City-based Conference for the Study of Political Thought presented Kingwell with the prestigious Spitz Prize for A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue and the Politics of Pluralism - an impassioned defence of the importance of open and honest dialogue in a democratic society. "We must remind ourselves that it is humans who create meaning," says Kingwell, "and that it is in our grasp to work together to make the world a meaningful place."

Thomas Edward Mason
PHYSICIST

Among his fellow physicists, Mason has earned an international reputation, a result of his groundbreaking research into one of natures great puzzles. The 32-year-old University of Toronto physicist employs neutron scattering to study the magnetic properties of lanthanum strontium copper oxides, a newly discovered family of high-temperature superconductors. While the existence of superconductors - materials that allow electricity to flow unimpeded by resistance - has been known for some time, little is known about precisely how and why the high-temperature variants function as they do. Mason has been looking for those answers in laboratories around the world. "Were trying to get at the underlying origins of superconductivity," says the native of Dartmouth, N.S., whose work recently won him a prestigious two-year Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. A pure scientist himself, Mason can nevertheless see "economic payoffs" down the road in cheaper energy transmission costs, expanded telecommunications and a whole new generation of magnetic resonance imaging scanners. "MRI scanners in hospitals that diagnose tumors and other injuries could soon become less expensive and more portable," says Mason. "In telecommunications, high-temperature superconductors could quadruple the capacity of existing cell-phone networks. We can expect more and more applications appearing over the next five to 25 years."

Alister Campbell
BUSINESSMAN/POLITICAL STRATEGIST

His salient quality, he says, is "contagious enthusiasm - I don't do it if it ain't fun and cool." That effervescence is precisely the quality that is helping Campbell, 36, shake up two institutions - the insurance industry and the Conservative party. His pedigree is certainly pin-striped: a graduate of the London School of Economics and the Wharton School of business, the Kingston, Ont., native joined Zurich Canada as vice-president, marketing and sales, two years ago. Under his stewardship, Zurich's group sales division has grown from six employees to 100 in 18 months. In politics, Campbell helped to write provincial Tory Leader Mike Harriss Common Sense Revolution, and then went on to co-engineer the successful Conservative campaign in 1995. "From a pure marketing perspective," says Campbell, "it was a great experience." This year, he branched into federal politics, co-writing Conservative Leader Jean Charests electoral platform - a less gratifying experience, he concedes, "but still a great process to be part of."

Ian Goldberg
COMPUTER WHIZ

Since graduating from the University of Waterloo in 1995, Goldberg, 24, has already made a name for himself south of the border. Just months after starting graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley, he drew international attention when, along with an office mate, he discovered a flaw in the Web browser Netscapes security system - one that let cyber-criminals track credit-card information or bank account numbers of anyone using the Internet for commerce. (The bug has since been fixed.) Naturally, Goldberg, a native of Thornhill, Ont., is now pursuing a PhD with an emphasis on computer security. "The weather is great," he says. "But the political climate is odd." The reason: until last December, a security-conscious U.S. government treated cryptography software as munitions - and it is still illegal to export the privacy-protecting programs, even via the Internet. "When I want to get actual work done," says Goldberg, "I have to go back home." Only in Canada.

Arthur Fuller
RESEARCHER

Growing up in Regina, he showed an early appreciation of music: having started piano at 7, Fuller performed in his high-school jazz band and played flute and oboe in the concert band. "I guess I wasn't your average teenage rock n roll fan," says Fuller, 26, who went on to get his electrical and computer engineering degree from the University of Regina. Now a doctoral student at the University of Alberta, Fuller has transformed his lifelong love of music into a passion for the sound of music. Working with supervisor Dr. Behrouz Nowrouzian, who calls his student "one of the most intelligent people I've ever met," Fuller is researching how digital audio signal frequencies can be manipulated so that tones can be enhanced or diminished. The research offers great promise for the hearing impaired. If sound can be processed through digital hearing aids to meet specific needs of individuals, they too will be able to share Fullers appreciation of music. Companies have already expressed interest in Fullers research, which could be commercially available by the end of 1998.

Russell Smith
WRITER

To his growing band of admirers, it will come as no surprise to learn that Smith is the first to admit he does not "lead a very settled life." Born in Johannesburg, raised in Halifax, nurtured in Paris, the 33-year-old budding novelist and accomplished journalist has now made Toronto both his home and the wellspring of his inspiration. The desperately hip denizens of downtown Toronto are Smiths people, a group he explored with devastating wit in his first, best-selling novel, How Insensitive, nominated in 1994 for a Governor Generals Award for fiction. Often compared with American "Brat Pack" authors, Smith himself claims: "My major literary influences have not been American but British - Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, Margaret Drabble - and French, especially [Emile] Zola and [Honoré de] Balzac." He is currently at work on his second novel, Noise, scheduled for publication next year. "Its another comedic look at people in Toronto leading dissipated, dissatisfied lives," he says. "But the tone is darker, more bleak, a lot more serious."

Jerry Pelletier
CANCER RESEARCHER

He loves science. "Its like playing," says the 38-year-old native of St-Jean, Que. "Its like trying to solve a puzzle." And Pelletier, an associate professor of biochemistry and oncology at Montreal's McGill University, is proving to be very adept at putting together the pieces of a puzzle called Wilms's tumor, a kidney cancer that affects one in 10,000 children under the age of 5. Last month, the National Cancer Institute of Canada gave Pelletier the prestigious William E. Rawls Prize, an annual award that recognizes outstanding achievement by a promising young investigator. Pelletier won the $1,000 prize - funded by Eli Lilly Canada Inc. - for his work on WT1, one of several genes linked to Wilms's tumor. He first helped identify the gene as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. In the past six years, Pelletier and his team found the mutations on the WT1 gene that cause the disease and developed a simple blood test to screen for the mutations. Because it provides a relatively simple model for the progression of cancer, Pelletier hopes that his research into Wilms's tumor will also shed new light on the development of breast, lung and other adult cancers. Says Pelletier: "The challenge in the future will be to identify some of the other tumor-suppressor genes associated with the disease."

Anne Lea Israeli
DOCTORAL STUDENT

Some might call her a typical overachiever, the only child of disabled parents who pulled herself out of reduced circumstances to stand on the threshold of a bright career. But Israeli, a 25-year-old award-winning PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Halifax's Dalhousie University, does not choose to view matters that way. "I see my background as a definite advantage," she says. "I matured a lot earlier than some of my friends and I learned a lot sooner the value of hard work." Born in Moncton, she was raised in the low-income housing districts of Newcastle in the Miramichi River valley. Both her parents were well-educated but unable to work. A neurological illness incapacitated Israelis mother, an artist and teacher, while her father, a Romanian-born quantum chemist, was disabled by spinal injuries, the result in part of his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. Still, says Israeli, "I was brought up in an enriched environment." And she has excelled from an early age: graduating from the University of New Brunswick, she took the faculty of arts prize for highest standing and won several scholarships to finance her doctoral studies at Dalhousie. Eventually, she plans to return to New Brunswick, setting up a practice to treat eating and anxiety disorders. "There are not many practising psychologists with PhD's back home," she says. "I should do well."

Steffanie Strathdee
EPIDEMIOLOGIST

Tacked onto a bulletin board above her computer are the photographs: a respected colleague, a PhD supervisor, a close friend. All are dead - all from AIDS. "They are what drive me to do what I do," says Strathdee, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. "This is not a job. It is a mission." As one of the project managers of the Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS Research, the 31-year-old Scarborough, Ont., native runs two major studies into how the disease is spreading among injection drug users and young gay men in Vancouver, which has Canada's highest known incidence of HIV infection. To reach those groups, Strathdee has combined her scientific expertise with a streetwise sensibility. Drug users and gay men sit on her teams two community advisory boards. And a recruitment campaign with the slogan "Take pride, take care, take part" has convinced 600 gay men under the age of 30 to chronicle their attitudes and sexual practices for Strathdee and her colleagues. Such efforts helped to earn her The Young Investigators Award in Epidemiology at last years International AIDS Conference in Vancouver. "My most important work," says Strathdee, "is convincing people at risk that their lives are worth saving."

Susannah Scott
CHEMIST

It all sounds mind-bogglingly complex. In her laboratory at the University of Ottawa, Scott creates high-density polyethylenes and studies chemical reactions that occur on the surfaces of inorganic oxides. But the work of Scott and other scientists in the field of chemical catalysts, she is proud to point out, "affects almost everything anyone touches or buys." Scotts own work has potential to be used by companies that produce the plastic used in a range of products from pop bottles to surgical catheters. It is research that earned her the prestigious Polanyi Prize in 1994, a $15,000 award given to outstanding young Canadian researchers. The 30-year-old chemist is also passionate about teaching: she has developed and teaches her own course in the emerging field of environmental chemistry. And in April, the Arizona-based Research Corporation gave her a $50,000 Cottrell Scholar Award, which recognizes young professors who have established a solid reputation in both research and teaching. "I think almost everyone is curious about science when they are children," says Scott. "My curiosity just stayed with me. It became my obsession."

Ahead Of The Field - The CompetitorsCall them feisty, dynamic - and certain to excel

Their spirit transcends athletics. True, some excel in the heated battle of the rink or ring, or seek perfection in the gentle rhythms of the links. But the same drive imbues the business women struggling to make their mark in male-dominated fields, actors finding stardom despite the odds, politicians combatting the forces of business as usual. Never mind whether they win or lose: for the true competitor, the reward is in the game itself.

Christina Thé
MODEL

She was a happy-go-lucky 11-year-old, quite literally a face in the crowd at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition when she was discovered. "I was approached by a teacher from a modelling school," the Toronto teen recalls. "She told me I might have a future in the business." Two years later, that prediction is looking secure. One of the "five hot new faces" on the June cover of Seventeen magazine, Thé recently won a coveted contract with Cover Girl cosmetics that put her on television and may well propel her into the top ranks of supermodels. "The whole thing is all very new and exciting for me right now," says the A-plus Grade 8 student, the only child of parents who immigrated to Canada from Indonesia 20 years ago. Still a month shy of her 14th birthday, Christina admits that, despite the glamor, she sometimes has doubts about her nascent career. "I've been thinking a bit about whether this is really what I want to do with my life," she muses. "After all, you cant do it forever."

John Curkan
OIL EXECUTIVE

In Albertas booming oil and gas sector, Curkan, 34, finds himself at the centre of the action. As a vice-president of Renaissance Energy of Calgary, Curkan heads up the marketing division for one of Canada's most dynamic energy companies. Since deregulation of the gas market in 1986, Renaissance has seized the opportunity to become a leader in the direct marketing of natural gas. "By controlling gas from the wellhead to the burner, we believe that were in control of our destiny," says Curkan. The business has been part of Curkans life for as long as he can remember: growing up in Olds, Alta., he watched his father, John Sr., toil in the "upstream" operations as a field engineer; as a teenager, his dad found him summer jobs. "My aptitude for the business comes from him," says Curkan. "He taught me a lot." So much, in fact, that Curkan is considered one of the bright lights in a hot industry.

David Cubitt
ACTOR

He will always remember what his teachers said more than a decade ago - just before they kicked him out of acting school. "They told me that I couldn't act," recalls Cubitt, "and wouldn't ever act." But what did they know? Recovering splendidly from those early bad reviews, the Vancouver-raised Cubitt has gone on to become one of the bright young lights of Canadian television. No overnight success story here: Cubitt has been doing mostly minor roles in Canadian film and TV for the past decade. But with his portrayal of brash, take-no-prisoners investment banker Jack Larkin on the critically acclaimed Traders - earning him last years Gemini for best performance by an actor in a dramatic TV series - Cubitt, 32, has come into his own. Next season, he will be even more visible: besides Traders, he will co-star in the CBC TV movie Major Crime, and appear in CBS's Michael Hayes - likely to be one of the falls most-watched shows, since it marks the return to TV of NYPD Blues David Caruso. And along the road to stardom, Cubitt has chalked up another notable achievement: he's known countrywide as a homegrown hunk. What does he think about his status as Canada's own male sex symbol? "I used to know what that term meant," he says, laughing. "But when applied to me, I no longer know what it means."

Alexandre Le Siège
CHESS PLAYER

Le Siège will argue that, apart from high intelligence, absolute concentration and nerves of steel, what a great chess player needs most is plenty of free time to practise. "Distractions - a girlfriend, a job - are out," the 21-year-old Montrealer firmly declares. "Chess must be your only passion." That single-minded devotion, applied since Le Siège was 9, has brought handsome rewards. At 15, he won the 1991 Quebec provincial championship; one year later, he was Canadian chess champion, the youngest ever. Now, he stands on the threshold of becoming only the fourth Canadian - and first francophone - to become an international grandmaster, an exclusive global club of approximately 300 active players. While he acknowledges that "as you get older it becomes more difficult to make the sacrifices," Le Siège still has time to make it into the top 20. "Ive been told 30 is the ideal age for chess," he says, "so I still have lots of time."

Lorie Kane
GOLFER

At 32, she is competing in her first full season on the high-profile Ladies Professional Golfers Association Tour, but she is already making her mark. In 14 tournaments, Kane had won $196,727 and was the leading Canadian (22nd overall) on the money list in mid-June. She took the True North route to the top ranks: after attending Acadia University, she competed for Canada as an amateur at international events, and when she first turned pro, she played the domestic du Maurier Series. Like the other 10 Canadians on tour, Kane most wants to win the national championship - the du Maurier Ltd. Classic - at Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ont., in August. She has already been tested under pressure, notably in April at the Susan G. Komen International, where she flirted with the lead but finished second. "I was in the drivers seat, and I let a couple of things get to me," Kane says. "But I learned from that and Ill remember the next time."

William Hubloo
HOCKEY PLAYER

By the standards of professional hockey, the 18-year-old Inuk from Kuujjuaq, Que., is small: five feet, seven inches tall and 170 lb. soaking wet. And he was 10 before he laced on his first pair of skates. But Hubloo, who aims to be the first Inuk to play in the National Hockey League, has become the first of his people to reach junior A-level hockey. Playing with the Charlottetown Abbies this past season, Hubloo racked up an impressive 39 goals and 41 assists. When he's not playing hockey, Hubloo is a police officer in Kuujjuaq, and he has become something of a role model. "I take that very seriously," he says. "I eventually want to be a positive force for good in my community." In the meantime, however, he is heading for training camp with the Chicoutimi Sagueneen's of the Quebec Major Junior A Hockey League in August. After that, who knows?

Michael de Jong
POLITICIAN

Already a veteran of the British Columbia legislature at 33, de Jong acknowledges that "there is a generational component" to his political involvement. Born and raised in the rural Fraser Valley, his first venture into politics came within a year of being called to the B.C. bar: in 1990, de Jong won a seat on the local school board. "I felt, hey, here's an opportunity to offer something back that people who are 50 or 60 cant." When a byelection was called in his provincial riding four years later, de Jong's conviction that Canadians want smaller governments with decisions made closer to the grassroots prompted him to seek the Liberal nomination. He won the seat and retained it in last years provincial general election. Since then, he has won respect for his effectiveness in the B.C. legislature as his party's critic on aboriginal affairs - a high-profile role in a province facing native claims to 106 per cent of its land mass. And despite the public's low esteem for politicians, de Jong described his job as the best one he can imagine: "It is just incredibly interesting. Each and every day, I think how lucky I am." With an attitude like that, de Jong may just help change the public's negative view.

Jonathon Power
SQUASH PLAYER

Despite being Canada's top-ranked competitor and No. 4 worldwide, 22-year-old Power is better known abroad than in Canada. He is not complaining: the native of Comox, B.C., who now lives in Toronto, earns a six-figure living without the intrusive trappings of fame. As a teenager, he would mimic the top pros, but he has developed a hybrid style all his own. "You would never coach someone to play like me," he says, laughing. "But it works." Last season, Power won four Professional Squash Association titles, including the Tournament of Champions in New York. This summer, he hopes to rehabilitate a nagging back injury and prepare for an assault on his ultimate goal - unseating Jansher Khan of Pakistan as No. 1 in the world. "It will take everything I've got, but I think its possible," he says. "Hopefully, I can do something to raise the profile of the sport in Canada. It's a great game."

Wei Chen
NEWSCASTER

In an immigrant family like Chen's, freshly arrived in Hamilton from Taiwan, children were taught that the only acceptable professions to aspire to were medicine, law or business. But when she and her Grade 8 class produced a public affairs special for the local cable channel, she recalls, "I was hooked." Still, it took dropping out of her studies at the University of Toronto to convince her parents that her weekend job as a writer-producer at Hamilton's CHCH TV was her real vocation. Now, at 32, after apprenticeships at CFPL TV in London, Ont., and Calgary's CBRT, Chen, the newscaster on Canada A.M., is being touted as CTV's rising star - pegged for the morning anchor slot on the private networks all-news channel due to debut on Sept. 8. She insists that high profile is not the chief lure of network news. "Anchoring is not the be-all and end-all for me," says Chen, who hopes for more reporting spots as well. "Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved telling stories."

Sonya Jeyaseelan
TENNIS PLAYER

She has yet to crack the top 100 on the Corel Women's Tennis Association Tour rankings, but Jeyaseelan may already be number 1 in nicknames. "In South America, they call me Senorita Electrica," says the native of New Westminster, B.C, sounding a little embarrassed. "I guess its because I'm pretty excitable on the court." The hard-hitting 21-year-old moved from Bradenton, Fla., to Toronto last winter to work with coach Wendy Pattenden, captain of Canada's Fed Cup team, and the change paid off immediately. Jeyaseelan has boosted her world singles ranking to 121 from 170 and, in May, qualified for her first French Open. Before the year is out, the young woman with the irrepressible smile hopes to challenge Patricia Hy-Boulais as Canada's number 1 player. "It took me a while to know what my own dreams were and what I was capable of," she says. "Now, I am enjoying myself more on the court, and my results keep getting better."

Kelli Fox
ACTOR

For nine years, she struggled along in Vancouver, getting bit parts in American cop shows and "miseries of the week," (as Fox calls movies of the week) and doing her best with a small theatre company. "I finally just decided I couldn't do it any more," recalls 33-year-old Fox, who was born in Chilliwack, B.C. "I needed to work for somebody who had a play, and a director, and a staff, so all I had to be was an actor." What she really wanted was a job at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., and three years ago, she moved. "I figured if they didnt have to buy me a plane ticket, I might stand a better chance of getting a job," Fox says. "And lo and behold, it worked." This summer, the eloquent young actor is in her third season at the acclaimed festival, bringing a versatility and sensitivity to her roles that have made her one of the bright young stars of Canadian theatre.

For Fox, making a name for herself has been doubly important: she is, after all, the younger sister of Hollywood star Michael J. Fox. "There was a time when I felt like I was struggling to establish myself on my own terms," she says. "I'm now beginning to feel like I've done that." In fact, observing Michaels career has helped Fox define her own ambitions. She wants to do more film and TV work (she appeared in the 1996 made-for-TV movie adaptation of Atlantic author David Adams Richards's For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down), but she is not interested in moving to the United States. "I'd just as soon tell Canadian stories," says Fox, who just bought a house in Niagara-on-the-Lake. "If I stay in Canada and do that, I'll never have to build a fortress around my home or worry about my kids leaving the house - things that Michael has to worry about all the time."

Jayson Dénommée
FIGURE SKATER

He is going into the most pressure-packed year of his athletic life, armed with raw talent and a self-deprecating sense of humor. Take, for example, his rationale for ruling out coaching as a future career choice. "I used to think I might coach," says the 20-year-old from Asbestos, Que. "But if I had many students like me, I wouldn't last long." Dénommée, who is studying human sciences in Montreal, is a late bloomer by skating standards, and he currently ranks below Elvis Stojko and Jeff Langdon in Canada. But insiders say Dénommée possesses a rare blend of athleticism and musicality, and he stands a good chance to qualify for Canada's Olympic team bound for Nagano, Japan, in February. To do so, he needs good results at domestic and international competitions next fall - and, to help cope with the pressure, he is studying karate and kung fu. "I have to learn to be comfortable," he says. "I do the jumps in practice, but sometimes in competition I get too stressed and over-rotate." That is not always a bad thing. "At one competition, I nearly did the first quadruple axel ever," he says. "But I was only trying for a triple."

David Sévigny
BOXER

Outside the ring, he is quiet and polite, even a little shy. But when the 18-year-old from Beauport, Que., slips between the ropes, his character undergoes a rapid transformation. The two-time Canadian juvenile champion, who won his third Golden Gloves title in May, has uncommon hand speed and punching power for a 156-lb. light middleweight. In fact, Sévigny has lost only "a handful" of amateur bouts since he began boxing at the age of 9. Now preparing to represent Quebec at the world francophone games in Madagascar in early fall, and possibly Canada at the next Olympics, he has set his sights on a professional career. "I'm an aggressive fighter who likes to take charge," says Sévigny. "I'm just taking it one step at a time, but I don't see why I couldn't be world champion one day."

Going For Broke - The Risk-TakersTo realize lifes potential, they are willing to bet it all on themselves

They put their talent, their skills, their intelligence - themselves - on the line. And why? To succeed where others have failed, to beat the odds - and never mind the critics. In business or diplomacy, music or sport, they are afraid only of failing to give it their best. And anyway, they probably don't like to ask why. They prefer a more optimistic question: "Why not?"

Damhnait Doyle
SINGER/SONGWRITER

Her discovery has already become a minor Canadian music legend. Back in 1995, Doyle, an arts student at Memorial University in St. Johns, Nfld., landed a summer job at a local record distributor. As was her wont, she sang to herself at the office. "I think I was singing Cape St. Marys," recalls Doyle, 21, "just to bug one of the guys." But music producer Graham Stairs, visiting from Toronto, liked what he heard. And the rest is history.

Critics hailed Doyles 1996 debut album, Shadows Wake Me, which showcased the vocal range she honed singing for the renowned Holy Heart of Mary Chamber Choir in St. Johns. With its mix of pop, rock, and subtle Celtic influences, the album produced two hit singles in A List of Things and Whatever You Need - and garnered for Doyle a Juno nomination this year for best new solo artist. And if it was luck that propelled her into the spotlight, Doyle is now working - hard - to stay there. "Maybe Ill take a day off and do nothing," says Doyle, laughing. "But then Catholic guilt just takes over and I start working again."

Mark Boswell
HIGH JUMPER

In May, before thousands of cheering fans in Philadelphia, Boswell did more than just win the high-school section of the prestigious Penn Relays. After his nearest competitor failed to jump higher than 2.15 m, the 19-year-old from Brampton, Ont., first cleared 2.18 m, then 2.2 and finally broke the meet record with his second attempt at 2.25. The 1996 world junior champion, who emigrated from Jamaica in 1988, has been offered dozens of U.S. college scholarships for next fall. After he chooses, Boswell aims to clear the 2.28-m standard he needs to qualify for the world track and field championships in August. Unfazed by the chaos of a big meet, Boswell has his sights set on the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and Milt Otteys Canadian high-jump record (2.33 m) - not necessarily in that order. "I love the competition, being one of the last two guys with the crowd clapping," he says. "If anything, I'm more focused." For an aspiring Olympian, that is a good thing.

Eric Dupont
BIOTECHNOLOGIST

He is one of those rare creatures, a scientist with a head for business. While completing postdoctoral studies in neuro-endocrinology at Laval University, Dupont decided that profits were the key to success in the highly competitive world of applied biological research. "The problem with many biotech companies is that they burn their start-up capital and close before achieving any interesting results," explains Dupont, who was born in La Baie in Quebecs Lac St-Jean region. He determined to avoid that pitfall when, in 1991, he and his brother founded AEterna Laboratories in Quebec City. He first established two company divisions to provide an instant cash flow, manufacturing nutritional supplements and cosmetic ingredients. The profits were then channelled back into a third company division devoted to discovering therapies for a host of human ailments, cancerous tumors in particular. AEterna is now a publicly traded company, worth an estimated $225 million on the stock market, turning out a line of products that includes a promising treatment for lung, prostate and breast cancers. "Trying to improve the quality and expectancy of peoples lives is what drives me," says Dupont, now 32. "If you do good science, business success will follow."

Alnoor Sheriff
ENTREPRENEUR

Sheriffs Shikatronics Inc., a La Prairie, Que., company that manufactures and distributes computer memory products, was recently rated the second-fastest growing company in Canada by Profit magazine. In 1996, the firm boasted revenue of almost $42 million, up from $538,000 in 1991. Sheriff, who emigrated as a teenager from Zaïre, launched the business in 1990, selling computer memory products out of his apartment. The company, which he now runs with American partner Kurt Tierney, added a manufacturing facility last year and plans to open up a research and development division by years end. Says Sheriff, 35, of his progress so far: "I'm happy, but I'm not satisfied."

Michael Melski
PLAYWRIGHT/SCRIPTWRITER

He might well be called a bard for the '90s. Melski, 28, made a name for himself last summer when he adapted Hamlet for the innovative young company Shakespeare by the Sea - winning over audiences with a two-hour version of the classic play set amid the wooded terrain of Halifax's Point Pleasant Park. This year, theatregoers are anxiously awaiting the company's update of Macbeth, which Melski promises to be a "potent witch's brew." But revamping Shakespeare is only one of the Sydney, N.S., natives many projects. Melski, who studied scriptwriting at Toronto's Canadian Film Centre, wrote this seasons final episode of the popular CBC teen TV series Straight Up. And he is currently writing a pilot for a dramatic series with Alliance and the BBC called Finder. As well, he is writing and producing another play, entitled Caribou - about "two guys on a trip in Cape Breton in a domestic crisis," he says - which will tour Nova Scotia next year. "I am very, very lucky," Melski adds. "A few years ago, I was working out of basements."

Kyle Shaw and Christine Oreskovich
EDITORS

They want it to be The Village Voice of Halifax. And the way things are going, it just might happen. Four years ago, Halifax native Shaw and Oreskovich, raised in Toronto, started a lively Halifax magazine as a summer project. Since then, The Coast has gained a reputation as the city's best alternative news and culture magazine - even though editors Shaw, 28, and Oreskovich, 25, earned nothing for the first three years. But that all changed in February when they entered a partnership with Catherine Salisbury, publisher of the alternative Montreal Mirror. As of March, The Coast has been operating out of a snazzy new office, and the now-weekly paper has 10 people on staff - mostly those who previously worked for free. "Its exciting to have a staff who gets paid and is happy to get work," says Oreskovich. "And no one has to worry about getting their phone cut off."

Keith Kocho
NEW MEDIA BUSINESSMAN

In the fast-changing world of digital technology, he is already something of a grand old man. As president and CEO of Toronto-based Digital Renaissance Inc., Kocho specializes in what he calls "new media engineering." That means designing and producing multimedia programs for a client list that reads like a who's who of corporate Canada: NB Tel, Telus Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Microsoft Corp., the Royal Bank and IBM, among others. Kocho's company also develops software, and TAG - its new multimedia technology that enables the creation of network links in audio and video files - is destined to be a hot release in 1997.

Not bad for a onetime TV cameraman who has no formal computer training. "I get called a lot of things around the office - 'engineer wanna-be,' 'sponge,' " says Kocho, who grew up in Oshawa, Ont. "That's OK. I like to work with people who are a lot smarter than me." Digital Renaissance now employs about 100 people in offices in Toronto, Boston, Ottawa and Saint John, N.B., but Kocho started it up in Toronto in 1991 with an investment of a few hundred (borrowed) dollars and himself as the only employee. "When I was 21," he says, "I figured, 'I got a credit card and I'll go and conquer the world.' " Who knows? At the ripe old age of 28, he still has plenty of time.

Talib Rajwani
DEBATER

His debating coach calls him the "Wayne Gretzky of speech." Instead of scoring goals with pucks, 17-year-old Rajwani of Edmonton scores points with words. Enough points, in fact, for the Grade 12 student to win the high-school section of the world public speaking and debate championship at Taunton, England, earlier this year. Does that mean a career in politics? Apparently not. "Actually, my best subjects are math and the sciences, so I hope to go into medicine," says Rajwani. "I see public speaking as something that will open doors in the future."

Martin Philibert
JURIST

While completing his studies for a master of laws degree at the University of Montreal, Philibert discovered something about himself. "It suddenly dawned on me that I did not really want a career as much as I wanted to do a whole lot of different things that really interested me," he recalls. Since graduating, that is precisely what the native of Trois-Rivières, Que., now 28, has done. Politics drew him first, in particular Jean Charest's Conservatives. "I got into it because of national unity," he says, "and I happen to think Charest leads the party of reconciliation." With his blue-ribbon academic background in constitutional law, Philibert soon caught the attention of the PC brass. He helped draft the partys conciliatory constitutional platform, then entered Charest's inner circle of advisers, where his long hours led the Tory leader to refer to him as "my night manager." Shortly before the last election campaign commenced, however, Philibert decided it was time for a change. At the moment, he is in Bosnia, helping to organize municipal elections. "It can get pretty hairy around here," he says from his makeshift office on the front lines in the war-torn Balkan state. Later this summer, he is scheduled to move on again, this time to Burundi, where he will take up a UN assignment investigating human rights abuses in the central African nation. "Like I said," Philibert remarks, "I don't really want a conventional career."

Susie Moloney
WRITER

She lives on Manitoulin Island, a tranquil haven that the 35-year-old transplanted Winipegger describes as "magic." Not only has the move cured her once-chronic headaches; it may have helped to make her wealthy. The island is where she found the time to write her second novel, A Dry Spell, the mystical tale of a rainmaker in a drought-stricken midwestern town, due out this September. Industry sources claim the novel earned a combined advance of more than $1 million for American publication and film rights. When asked to confirm the figure, Moloney coyly answers: "Lots." But she acknowledges that the deal is the "best news I've had since 1995, when my second son was born, my first novel (Bastion Falls) published and my column won an award from the Ontario Community Newspaper Association." "Funny Girl" is the name of the column she has penned weekly for four Northern Ontario newspapers for the past three years. "It's supposed to be humorous," says Moloney. "My books, on the other hand, are deadly serious."

Richard Van Camp
WRITER

He lives alone in a 20-metre-long, four-metre-wide trailer in Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, writing tales about what he knows best. "Northerners are my subject matter," says Van Camp, "romantic, rowdy, raunchy people; people who have chosen the North as a home; people, in fact, much like me." The 25-year-old Dene, a member of the Dogrib nation, has been documenting the trials and tribulations of the northlands inhabitants since he was 19 - in newspaper columns, songs, poems, short stories, novels and on CBC televisions North of 60, where he works as a script consultant. He first caught national attention three years ago with Lovesong, a short story, then cemented his reputation this spring when his first published novel, The Lesser Blessed, won the Canadian Authors Associations Air Canada Award, presented annually to young writers of "outstanding promise." A children's book, A Man Called Raven, came out this year, and two other completed works are due next spring. Van Camp says it was his mother who inspired his career by telling him "books are good friends who tell you great secrets."

Keith Martin
POLITICIAN

He was 19 when he visited his first penitentiary - in search of a summer job as a prison guard. Although he confesses that he initially found working alongside convicted murderers to be a jarring experience, he needed to finance his medical studies at the University of Toronto. Now, the 37-year-old Martin, who was born in England and grew up in Toronto, occasionally visits prisons in two different capacities: as a doctor, and to study penal conditions in his role as the Reform party member of Parliament for British Columbia's Esquimalt/Juan de Fuca riding. Since first elected in 1993, Martin has won a reputation as one of the most socially concerned MP's, focusing on such issues as human rights, health, environment and foreign aid. His goal in the new Parliament, he says, "is to see if we can re-democratize the place, and get all parties and backbenchers working together more often." When Parliament is not in session, Martin spends part of each summer working on native reserves in northern British Columbia. In the past, Martin has also served as a field worker in Africa and organized clothing programs for refugees. Despite his enthusiasm for politics, he already plans for something else. "Canada," he says, "is uniquely placed to bring countries together on the international stage." Ten years from now, Martin says, "I'd love to help make that happen."

Ron Sexsmith
SINGER/SONGWRITER

He has shared the stage with Irish icons The Chieftains and British pop star Elvis Costello - who called the St. Catharines, Ont., natives self-titled 1995 album "a modest and elegant gem." And yet most Canadians probably do not know who Sexsmith is. "I think it's the same story for a lot of Canadian artists," says the quiet songsmith, 33. "Often you have to get outside and have a bit of success before it comes back on you here." Now, his recently released second album, Other Songs, could change all that for Sexsmith - who opened for Costello last year during the latter's U.S. and Japan tours. With a fragile yet soulful voice and lyrical guitar work, Sexsmith has a pop style all his own, but is clearly inspired by such other balladeer's as Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot. "It is important to me to raise my profile here," acknowledges the father of two. "My favorite songwriters are all Canadian, and everywhere I go I'm proud of that troubadour tradition."

Chris Delaney
ATHLETE

Delaney, an aspiring young athlete from Burlington, Ont., had his sights set on a career in professional football when his vision began to fail four years ago. "I was no longer able to see the blackboard," says Delaney, then a 22-year-old student at Ohios Bowling Green University. "I found myself moving up in the lecture halls, my glasses were getting thicker, and then one day I couldn't see myself in the mirror." In 1994, doctors declared him legally blind. The diagnosis: a form of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited eye disease that causes the optic nerve to degenerate, for which there is no known cure. In fact, 600,000 Canadians are currently losing their sight to the disease. "It hit me like a ton of bricks," he recalls. "It took away everything I was passionate about - I was devastated."

But Delaney emerged with an ambitious new goal: to help find a cure for the disease. Inspired by Terry Fox and Rick Hansen, Delaney - who still has limited peripheral vision - decided that he would raise money by riding across the country on a tandem bicycle, guided by alternating cycling partners in the drivers position. On Canada Day, Delaney will begin his Vision Tour, a challenging 7,000-km trek designed to take him from Victoria to Charlottetown by mid-October. "I was never a cyclist but I was a very good athlete and I know I have the ability to do it," he declares. The hard part, he adds, is dealing with skeptics. "I heard so many can'ts," says Delaney. "You're disabled - you can't do this, you cant do that." Delaney hopes that, after the Vision Tour, doubters will start to focus "on peoples abilities - not disabilities."

Franèois Girard
FILM-MAKER

As a child growing up in the Lac St-Jean region of Quebec, he learned about the power of dreams from his grandfather, a retired lumberjack who realized his artistic ambitions late in life by sculpting massive horses out of concrete. But the film-maker started young: he began directing art videos in Montreal and, by the age of 21, had his own production company. And he has collaborated with such visionaries as Robert Lepage and Peter Gabriel. In 1993, Girard made the dazzling Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould - a contrapuntal dance between drama and documentary that has the haunting quality of a posthumous self-portrait. "When you're really young, you have these pure dreams about devoting your life to art," says Girard, now 34. "To me, Glenn Gould is the purest example of that radical devotion." Although Girards film makes no commercial compromises, "it opened up a lot of Hollywood offers," adds Girard, "but I never managed to say yes."

Instead, he is directing Oedipus Rex for the Canadian Opera Company. And he is now in Shanghai shooting The Red Violin, a $13-million co-production that he scripted with Gould co-writer Don McKellar. The story, tracking a violin through four centuries, is being filmed in five countries and five languages. "Again were not conforming to a commercial model," Girard shrugs. "But you don't define a film based on that. You get passionate about an idea, then you work for years to give it life. And you just follow it."

Kaja Blackley
CARTOONIST

"I knew from the time I was 4 that I'd be an artist," he declares. "I knew when I was 14 that I would have my own company and write and draw." Two years ago, Vancouver-born Blackley did just that, starting up his own comic-book studio, Mad Monkey Press, in Toronto - and then producing some of the most innovative and high-quality strips in North America. Blackley, 32, tries to create comics that appeal to all ages. "Our philosophy is to evolve comics," he says. "Were trying to get the word out that there is an alternative, something you can pick up and enjoy as you would a normal book or a movie." In March, Henry Selick, director of the Hollywood animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, bought the film and TV rights to Blackleys Darktown, a disturbing tale of imagination and death. In May, Toronto-based Little Big Wig Entertainment bought the rights to two other Mad Monkey productions: Magicians Village, a surreal homage to New York City (where Blackley grew up) and C. S. Lewis's Narnia, and Singapore Sam, his tribute to the comics of the 1930s. All that rights-buying has left Blackley, well, gratified - although he isn't saying exactly how gratified. "I usually just say," he grins, "that I have lunch money."

Faces of Change - The ActivistsFighting on the front lines for future generations

The unifying passion is a simple one: they are determined to right the worlds wrongs. What drives them along the paths they have chosen is not always clear. It can be as dramatic as gunshots in a crowded classroom, as poignant as a crippled grandfather, as simple as a child's wish. But driven they are. And they often make the world a better place.

Heidi Rathjen
LOBBYIST

Her life changed on Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lépine walked into L'Ecole Polytechnique at the Université de Montréal and shot 27 people, killing 14 young women. "I was not in the line of the fire and it took some time for the real impact to hit me," says the 30-year-old Montrealer, "but that was the moment it began." A civil engineering student at the time of the shooting, Rathjen co-ordinated a student-led petition calling for new gun control laws but did not find the experience entirely satisfying. "I saw that all people could do was present petitions and then sit back and wait for the politicians to do something," she explains. After graduating in 1990, Rathjen decided to do something herself. Joining forces with Toronto business professor Wendy Cukier, she co-founded the Coalition for Gun Control, eventually quitting her engineering job at Bell Canada to serve as the groups executive director. Six years later, after the coalition mobilized a nationwide network of 400 organizations, the federal government finally enacted gun control legislation. For her efforts, Rathjen has received dozens of awards, including a pair of honorary doctorates; as well, she received an offer to run for the Liberals in the last federal election. But she turned down that proposal and recently shifted her target, taking up a position as campaign director of the Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control. Still, she finds the pressures of single-issue activism so "emotionally tough" that she is unsure about her future. "I have no idea what's next," she says, "I just know there is something I will never become - and that's a politician."

Rahim Jaffer
POLITICIAN

If a political strategist were to name the ideal candidate, he'd probably come up with Jaffer. The 25-year-old rookie Reform MP for Edmonton Strathcona is articulate, owns a successful small restaurant business, is fluently bilingual and comes from an immigrant family that fled ethnic persecution in Uganda in 1972. While studying political science and economics in French at the University of Ottawa, Jaffer worked as a legislative assistant to Liberal MP Dennis Mills. But Jaffer became disillusioned with the Liberals. One of 10 founding members of the university's Reform club, he recalls when Preston Manning came to speak and was forced to leave as the situation "turned dangerous" when other students protested his visit. "I was shocked," he says. "A university is a place where ideas should be heard, not suppressed." It was all the motivation he needed to confirm that he belonged in the Reform party. As an MP, Jaffer says he will fight to give young people a voice, and for a government that treats all Canadians equally.

Fiona Grant
STUDENT

She takes nature seriously. As a high-school student, the Victoria native researched heredity among the huge western hemlocks that tower over Vancouver Islands rain forests - and determined that inbreeding threatened to create stunted and deformed trees. Her report, presented as a member of Team Canada at the 1995 International Science and Engineering Fair in Hamilton - attended by delegates from 30 countries - won her not only a first prize in botany but also a national Environment Canada Award for Youth and a full scholarship offer from an Ontario university. Instead, Grant began her undergraduate biology studies last fall at the University of Victoria. On the West Coast, the 18-year-old Grant is able to indulge her passions for sea kayaking, hiking and mountain climbing. In her spare time, she volunteers as a swimming teacher for hospitalized children. The activity reflects her primary goal of becoming a pediatric surgeon. "I want to be able to help families, not just children," Grant says. As she learned from the trees, families matter.

Rob Cunningham
ACTIVIST

As a crusader for Canada's anti-smoking movement, Cunningham, 32, has gained a rock-solid reputation. After studying the tobacco industry as part of a law school assignment in 1988, he applied his legal training as a senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society. "The more I learned about this industry," says the Ottawa-born Cunningham, "the angrier I got." His book Smoke & Mirrors, published last year, is a fierce indictment of the tobacco industry. Cunningham says he has become well versed in the multinational industry's "disgusting" attempts to find a new crop of vulnerable people in the Third World. Despite the deadly seriousness of the issues, he delights in his work, telling friends: "Hey, they pay me to do this. I'm happy to have the chance to fight these guys. " And according to others of his calling, it is a job well done.

Blaine Favel
ABORIGINAL LEADER

As aboriginal issues grow ever more important in Canada, Favel, 32-year-old chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, is a key figure in the emerging generation of leaders. Raised on the Poundmaker reserve, Favel articled at the prestigious Calgary firm of Bennett Jones Verchere before working as legal counsel for the Assembly of First Nations. He then became chief of the Poundmaker First Nation in Saskatchewan, and took over as chief of the FSIN in 1994. "Were facing a huge population explosion," says Favel, "and if there is going to be any meaningful change we need the help of the corporate sector in creating opportunities and jobs." But the urgency of the message may not be getting through to the political and corporate leadership, he says - and his goal is to make sure it does. "We all have to redouble our efforts," says Favel, "or else young people will have little hope for their futures."

Jesse Moore
STUDENT

Incensed by the damage politicians were doing to his country, Moore, a student leader, decided to act. With a month to go before the 1995 Quebec referendum on separation, the Grade 12 pupil from Toronto circulated a petition to 400 high schools across the country. Making the case for a unified Canada, it was signed by students in every province, and presented to the House of Commons just days before the historic vote. "We are a dynamic generation that has come of age in a bilingual, multicultural country," says Moore, now 18. "It is up to us to find a way to heal past wounds." Since the referendum, Moore has delivered that message to dozens of student rallies across Canada, and spearheaded the annual Youth Canada Day, at which high schools organize events focusing on local concerns. Moore is now preparing to explore the world outside his country's borders: last month he was awarded a $100,000 scholarship, in recognition of his leadership efforts, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I fully intend to come back," says Moore. "But I think that to really understand your country, you need to see it as outsiders do."

Nadine Caron
SURGICAL RESIDENT

This spring, not only did she finish at the top of her class, she also became the first aboriginal woman to graduate from the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia. "If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else," Caron says modestly. "But I think it is amazing that it hasn't happened before 1997." Carons father emigrated from Italy and her mother is an Ojibwa. On July 1, their 27-year-old daughter, born in Kamloops, B.C., will begin a six-year residency with UBC's general surgery program, toiling long hours in Vancouver hospitals. But despite the hard work - both before and after graduation - Caron has volunteered her time, travelling to remote communities throughout British Columbia, giving kids a chance to take part in science experiments. Above all, she encourages other First Nations children to continue with their education. "Sometimes if kids have a negative experience, it takes a thousand positive experiences to overcome that," says Caron. "You need to believe in yourself."

Barry Senft
COMMISSIONER

As chief of the Canadian Grain Commission in Winnipeg, he has the perfect vantage point to witness - and influence - the massive changes occurring in the industry. The commissions task is to ensure that grain production, handling and marketing systems work well for farmers and customers alike. "We need to make sure that high standards and Canada's reputation internationally are maintained," says Senft, 40, who oversees a nationwide staff of 750. Few are better equipped than Senft to deal with the transition. He grew up on the family farm near Lipton, Sask., followed his father into farming and eventually became a vice-president of the influential Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Canada's largest grain handling company. "Farming is always a challenge," says Senft, "but never more than today."

Stephen Drake
UNION LEADER

His grandfather lost both of his legs in a mining accident in New Waterford, N.S. - a tragedy that forced Drakes father to head underground in the same mine at age 15. In 1977, Drake - against his fathers wishes - followed the family tradition, taking a job as an industrial electrician with the Cape Breton Development Corp. (commonly known as Devco). Over the past three years, as president of the union representing Devco miners, Drake has gained a national profile for fighting against massive layoffs at the Crown corporation. Among other things, he helped organize a 7,000-strong rally in Sydney, N.S., in 1996 and won the sympathetic ear of a Senate committee that examined the Cape Breton mining industry. Drakes efforts have prompted some Cape Bretoner's to urge him to run for office. But the 41-year-old says his immediate priorities are to keep fighting on the miners behalf - and to speak out on the value of unions. "Were often viewed as an obstacle to progress," he says. "But were just working, taxpaying Canadians who get together because we don't have a voice individually."

Jeff Gibbs
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPER

As a Vancouver high-school student in 1984, Gibbs joined the fight to transform the South Moresby region of British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands from logging site to national park reserve. Five years later, he travelled to Borneo, where he escorted tribesmen to United Nations headquarters in New York City for top-level meetings on their endangered rain forest. That same year, Gibbs founded the Environmental Youth Alliance, a national network of 5,000 young Canadian activists. A three-time keynote speaker at the UN General Assembly's Global Youth Forum, he was named to the UN Global 500 Honor Role for environmental achievement in 1993, a distinction he shares with the likes of Canadian scientist David Suzuki and French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

Still, Gibbs, 29, does not see himself as a traditional environmentalist. Rather than focusing on specific causes, he says that he wants to promote a broader awareness of society's relationship with the natural world. Three years ago, Gibbs founded the Vancouver-based Leadership Initiative for Earth, whose programs include the UN-endorsed LIFEboat Flotilla, an annual "voyage of discovery" for more than 200 Canadian teens. Participants, who must raise a portion of their travel costs and commit to at least 25 hours of community service, travel for a week on sailboats through the Gulf Islands, where they learn about ecology and sustainability from experts ranging from marine biologists to loggers. By 1999, Gibbs hopes to establish an educational forest reserve on Vancouver Island, where trees will be selectively harvested to build a permanent LIFEboat fleet. "It is possible to have a society that lives in partnership with the natural world," says Gibbs. "To me, it is about preserving what is important to us as a species."

Maclean's July 1, 1997

Author ANN DOWSETT JOHNSTON