The Walrus Foundation

The Walrus Foundation is a charitable non-profit organization with an educational mandate to promote public debate on matters vital to our country. The foundation is dedicated to supporting Canadian writers, artists, readers, and ideas.

We achieve these goals, first and foremost, by publishing The Walrus, the most awarded magazine in Canada, named Magazine of the Year at the National Magazine Awards in June 2007. The Walrus is a monthly publication of ideas, sophistication, and wit, and a place where readers, writers, and artists meet. It is supported by walrusmagazine.com, which offers both archives and original content, and walrustv.ca, which features exclusive documentaries inspired by stories from the magazine.

In addition, The Walrus Foundation runs an intensive editorial, art, and publishing internship program for aspiring editors, writers, designers, and digital media and publishing professionals selected from across Canada.

Through national events, The Walrus Foundation is committed to the public square, to celebrating Canadian talent, and to increasing participation in our democracy through spirited and intelligent debate, by lifting the magazine off the page and onto the stage in public forums.

The Walrus Foundation is supported by individuals, foundations, partnerships, corporate donors, and public sector grants. The Walrus magazine is supported by advertisers, corporate sponsors, subscribers, and newsstand sales. The Walrus’s charitable status depends on its editorial content, which must make up seventy percent of the magazine’s pages; and is required to be eighty percent educational and eighty percent Canadian.

A volunteer Educational Review Committee composed of academics from universities across Canada assists the foundation in fulfilling its mandate.

The Walrus Foundation and The Walrus magazine are grateful to both the Board of Directors and the Advisory Council for their support, expertise, and dedication.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to the Chawkers Foundation for its generous ongoing support. The Walrus also acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Trillium Foundation, and the Ontario Arts Council.

Board of Directors

Chair	Michael Decter
Members	Bruce Bennett Helen Burstyn Paul Cohen Heather Conway Patrick Gossage Francesca Grosso Lucille Joseph Mark Kingwell Chethan Lakshman Gerald Lazare Richard (Dick) O’Hagan Karen Prentice Andrew Pringle Gretchen Ross

Honourary Legal Counsel

David Stevens

Advisory Council

Earl Berger Jean Cumming William Fox Marina Glogovac Allan Gregg David Harrison Sandy Houston D’Arcy Levesque James Little Louise MacCallum Hugh MacKinnon Scott McIntyre James O’Reilly Jeff Rayman Perry Rosemond Bernard Schiff Jack Shapiro Helga Stephenson Daren Trousdell Aritha van Herk Bisi Williams

Board Member Biographies

Michael Decter is a leading health care authority. A Harvard-trained economist, he is also the former deputy health minister for the Ontario government. As chair of the Health Council of Canada, former chair of the board of the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and consultant to leading teaching hospitals, Michael has more than twenty-five years of experience in the public and private health sectors. He is president of ldic Inc., an investment management firm that advises high net-worth individuals, trusts, estates, pension funds, corporations, and institutions.

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Bruce Bennett started at Bennecon Ltd., a treasure management consulting firm, in 1991 and was appointed president in 1995. He has since worked with over 150 of Canada’s largest private and public organizations. He is a former treasurer of the Treasury Management Association of Canada (tmac), a national organization of treasury professionals. He is also a former director of the Toronto and national chapters of tmac. Bruce is active in his community as Chairman of the Board of the Grace Church Child Care Centre and a director of the Dunloe Children’s Centre. He has a business degree from the Business School at the University of Western Ontario.

Helen Burstyn has enjoyed a thirty-year career in public service, public relations, marketing, and volunteer service. She is in her second term as chair of the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Before joining the foundation, she was the senior advisor, stakeholder relations to the Premier of Ontario. Previously, she was a partner at Advance Planning/MS&L, a global communications and investor relations firm. Helen spent her earlier career in the Ontario public service, where she served as deputy secretary to the Premier’s Council and held various senior roles in economic development, trade, and international relations. She is vice-chair of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (camh) Board of Trustees, a director of the Ontario Youth Challenge Fund, the City of Toronto’s War of 1812 Commemorative Committee, Equal Voice, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Canadian Journalism Foundation and Luminato. She is immediate past president of the Canadian Club of Toronto and a founder, past president, and chair of the honourary board of Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto. Helen is also the president of Public Projects, which provides consulting services to governments, corporations and not-for-profit enterprises on their social investments and strategic positioning.

Paul Cohen is vice-president of marketing and sales for Cantech/Ralston. The privately held company employs over 400 people in six North American manufacturing facilities, producing a range of industrial and consumer plastic and packaging products. As a recent chair of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, Paul worked with industry members to sponsor the construction of a massive living sculpture, The Elevated Wetlands, by well-known Canadian artist Noel Harding.

Heather Conway is chief business officer of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Heather most recently led the Canadian operations of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, comprising a team of 130 across three offices in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Prior to Edelman, she worked for Alliance Atlantis Communications, where she managed a team of ninety and led all the marketing, publicity, and on-air creative for thirteen Canadian cable and special channels, while negotiating and administering carrier agreements, and spearheading marketing for international sales of the CSI television franchise. Her time at Alliance is most notable as Heather was instrumental in shifting the culture and business of the company from a production house to a broadcast giant. In the mid-1990s Heather was the executive vice president, corporate and public affairs, TD Bank Financial Group. Heather serves on the AGO’s leadership team and has four functional reporting areas: marketing and communications, visitor experience, business enterprises (food and beverage and retail), and staff and volunteer resources.

Patrick Gossage is one of Canada’s most highly respected public relations practitioners and commentators. As the founder and chair of Media Profile, he draws on more than forty years of experience in broadcasting, politics, and communications. He served as press secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and as the Minister of Public Affairs at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. Patrick provides strategic communications advice and media and presentation coaching to many of Canada’s top political and business leaders. He is a regular political panelist on television and radio, is the author of two books and countless articles, and he blogs, tweets, and Flickrs. He serves as vice chair of the McMichael Canadian Collection and is on the board of Multimedia Nova, Canada’s premier multicultural publisher. In his spare time, Patrick loves landscape painting and canoeing.

Francesca Grosso specializes in health policy and health care communications. As a principal at Grosso McCarthy, she provides counsel to public and private sector clients. Her work in policy includes numerous studies of key health issues. A leader in the field, Francesca helped establish the Health Council of Canada, later serving as the lead of the Council’s transition team. She recently co-authored Navigating Canada’s Health Care, a user guide to the Canadian health care system, which offers advice to average Canadians on how to navigate their healthcare system. A member of Sun Media’s Osprey Writers’ Group, Francesca is also a speaker for the National Speakers Bureau.

Lucille Joseph joined The Boston Consulting Group in Toronto after graduating with an MBA from York University. For ten years she worked in the strategy consulting and organizational change practices of BCG, with clients in Canada, the United States, and Australia. She then joined The Bank of Montreal as vice president of strategy. In 2002, Lucille became CEO of Career Edge, Canada’s national internship organization. She was instrumental in the establishment of the program in the mid-1990s and was a founding member of the Board of Directors. While CEO, she launched the Career Bridge internship program for recent immigrants to Canada. She was the founding executive director of Luminato, Toronto’s festival of arts and creativity, working with co-founders David Pecaut and Tony Gagliano to develop the concept and bring it to life. She currently serves as vice chair on Luminato’s board of directors. Lucille is the past chair of the board of directors of The National Ballet of Canada, having served on the board from 2003–2011. She is currently a member of the National Ballet of Canada Foundation board.

Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and the author of many acclaimed books, including Dreams of Millennium (1996), Better Living (1998), The World We Want (2000), Practical Judgments (2002), and Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams (2006). Educated at Yale and the universities of Toronto and Edinburgh, he is also a contributing editor for Harper’s magazine and Descant, and is an active member of the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning in New York. He is a past columnist for Saturday Night, Adbusters, and the National Post, and a winner of National Magazine Awards for both essays (2002) and columns (2004). He lectures extensively to academic and popular audiences throughout the world. In 2000, he was awarded an honourary dfa by the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design for contributions to theory and criticism.

Chethan Lakshman provides independent communications and reputation management strategy and counsel to corporations, organizations, charitable enterprises, and individuals. From 1999-2010, Mr. Lakshman was a senior member of the corporate communications team at RBC (Canada’s largest financial institution and company), where he held a variety of senior roles. Most recently, he provided senior communications advice, counsel, and speechwriting to the company’s president and chief executive officer, was responsible for overseeing RBC’’s communications strategy and activities related to financial disclosure, and enterprise brand and communications, including the company’s highly successful sponsorship activities. Throughout his career, Mr. Lakshman has used his expertise to develop strategies that communicate complex issues, ideas, and policies in an environment of competing interests to a variety of audiences. A former journalist with the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Lakshman moved into corporate communications in 1994. He is currently chair of the Toronto Business Development Centre (a not-for-profit organization committed to nurturing the growth of new and emerging businesses in Toronto), a director of The Walrus Foundation, and serves on the programming committee of The Canadian Journalism Foundation.

Gerald Lazare holds a Ph.D. in human development and applied psychology with a special focus in cognition and emotion from the University of Toronto. Currently, he teaches psychology at the Ontario Institute in Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and instructs aboriginal teenagers at the Native Learning Centre, a satellite program of Jarvis Collegiate Institute. Gerry also sits on the board of the Chawkers Foundation, an organization which has generously supported The Walrus since the magazine’s inception.

Richard (Dick) O’Hagan, a strategy and communications consultant, has been an executive and adviser in business and government, serving two Canadian prime ministers — Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau — and, inter alia, two successive chairmen/ceos at the Bank of Montreal. He also served at the Canadian embassy in Washington, where he helped develop and headed a broadened information and public affairs programme. He has been a director of corporations, public and private, and associated with various non-profit institutions and initiatives. A native of New Brunswick, his career began in Toronto as a daily newspaper reporter. He is writing his memoirs.

Karen Prentice graduated from the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law in 1982. Afterward, Q.C., she spent over 27 years in various legal and executive management roles. She has been a commission member of the Alberta Securities Commission since 2006. Prior to that, she was executive vice-president of legal and corporate affairs at Enmax Corporation. In 2010, she became a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Governance and Nominating Committee of Homburg Canada Real Estate Investment Trust. Ms. Prentice has been an active contributor to the Calgary community over the years, having served on a number of boards including the Elizabeth Fry Society, Calgary Legal Guidance, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, the YWCA, and the Calgary Opera. Currently, her volunteer efforts are focused on the arts and science at both a local and a national level. In the realm of science, she serves as Chair of the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery. She also is a member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Governance and Nominating Committee of the Telus World of Science. She has supported the arts as a director of the Ottawa Art Gallery, and a member of the committee in support of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. Most recently, she has become a Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Foundation.

Andrew Pringle is chairman of RP Investment Advisors, president of the Canadian Foundation for aids Research, chair of the PC Ontario Fund, and a director of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews and the Schmeelk Foundation. In 2002, he retired from positions at rbc Capital Markets as a managing director, head of global fixed income, and executive committee member, following three decades in the financial sector. He is also a member of the independent review committee of Fidelity Investments Canada and an adviser to the Evergreen Foundation. Andrew attended Upper Canada College, where he has served as chair of the board, and the University of Western Ontario.

Gretchen Ross was born in London, Ontario and studied English and History at the University of Western Ontario. She has devoted over forty years to the volunteer sector, and currently sits on the boards of the Canadian Women’s Foundation, the National Ballet of Canada, and Lakefield College. With her husband, Donald M. Ross, Gretchen is a member of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Curator’s Circle, of which she is a past chair, and is a SuperNova supporter of Luminato: Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity. She is the proud grandmother of eight grandchildren.

Educational Review Committee

Chair	Mark Kingwell
Members	Benjamin Berger Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
	Marta Braun Image Arts, Ryerson University
	Lea Caragata Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University
	Barb Hunt Fine Arts, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland
	Mark Migotti Philosophy, University of Calgary
	Pamela Moss Studies in Policy and Practice, University of Victoria
	Karena Shaw Environmental Studies, University of Victoria
	Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair Native Studies and English, University of Manitoba
	Lee Smolin Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
	Mira Sucharov Political Science, Carleton University
	Darren Wershler Media and Contemporary Literature, Concordia University

The Educational Review Committee analyzes The Walrus’s art and editorial content to ensure that it meets The Walrus Foundation’s educational mandate. The committee believes that:

Articles must engage and inform the reader and provide him/her with a learning experience. They should evoke thoughtful consideration... The content of each article, essay, review, etc., must be meaningful, relevant, and useful from a social, political, cultural, and/or scientific perspective. All articles must also strive for excellence in written communication.