Mad Pride supporters gather by the historic, patient-built walls outside CAMH in Parkdale.

The organizers of last week’s Mad Pride festival want you to know that the property on Queen and Shaw, currently home to the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), harbours an unsavory past. To glimpse this history, one need only look at the historic brick walls that line the premises. These century-old partitions were built almost entirely by patients of the former Provincial Lunatic Asylum—without pay—just one example of the exploitative labour practices that played a central role in the operation of that controversial institution.
In recognition of the past and present struggles of Toronto’s psychiatric consumer/survivor community, self-identified “mad” people and their allies gather each July by the CAMH grounds for their annual Bed Push. Armed with signs, drums, and more face paint than seems reasonable on a sweltering summer afternoon, the marchers literally break out of the historic asylum and parade through the streets of Parkdale.
“And we do it,” says organizer Elizabeth Carvalho, “escaping on gurney.”

The Bed Push is the centrepiece of Toronto’s Mad Pride festival, which has taken place annually in some form or another since the early ’90s.
“At its core, Mad Pride is about community celebration and development, rights education, and recognition of our community and its members,” notes Carvalho. It’s a global movement that draws heavily on disability and gay rights struggles.
Just as LGBTQ pride activists seek to reclaim terms like ‘queer’ and ‘fag’ from misuse, “Mad Pride activists,” says Carvalho, “seek to reclaim terms such as ‘mad,’ ‘nutter,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘lunatic,’ ‘maniac,’ and ‘psycho.’”
“You can cut through language like ‘consumer/survivor’ by saying ‘crazy,’” she goes on. “People kind of know what you mean when you say crazy, and it can be shocking because people have an expectation of what that means. Are you dangerous? Are you unreliable? And you end up seeing people who are just fun—who are just people.”

Parkdale-High Park MPP Cheri DiNovo leads the Bed Push west along Queen Street, towards the Parkdale Community Centre.

Mad Pride activists aim to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness by presenting “madness” in a positive context. In doing so, they hope to provide an alternative to the “you’re broken and you have to get fixed” message many see as inherent in psychiatric diagnosis. “It’s not about needing to overcome your disability. The disability becomes a part of your identity. It’s who you are.”
While Mad Pride Toronto does not align itself with the anti-psychiatry movement, or presuppose any common ideology among its members, it’s fair to say the attitude at Saturday’s parade wasn’t pro-psychiatry.
“The medical model doesn’t always provide a way out,” says Carvalho. “It provides some people an understanding of what’s happening—that my brain is damaged and it needs to be fixed—and that can be very comforting. But it’s a negative comment on who you are. Whereas different is not always negative.”
This is not a sentiment shared by the mainstream medical community. As psychiatrist Ken Nobel puts it, “If I had suicidal depression, I would damn well want to be fixed. If I had obsessive-compulsive disorder and couldn’t stop washing my hands or spinning in circles, I would damn well want to be fixed.”
Disagreements like this are what separate Mad Pride from other pride movements: the reactions that it generates don’t fit neatly into progressive/regressive stereotypes.
Even a seemingly innocent position, like the movement’s call for increased patient choice and self-determination in psychiatric care, can prove surprisingly controversial.
Most psychiatrists believe that it is ethical to force a patient to accept treatment, if they become a danger to themselves or others. According to Dr. Nobel, “There are psychiatric illnesses where people completely lose contact with reality one way or another, or get actively suicidal and would kill themselves if you didn’t intervene against their will.”
Now for some, the phrase “against their will” may conjure up images of Jack Nicholson being forced to endure soul-sucking, unmodified shock therapy. But Dr. Nobel wants you to know that psychiatry has changed dramatically since the days of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Titicut Follies. We know a great deal more, he argues, about the causes and effective treatments of mental illness.
Despite these changes, Mad Pride activists still see themselves as engaged in a struggle for basic human rights.

A Mad Pride activist states her case.

Take the recent act by Provincial Parliament to place Ontario’s independent Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office (PPAO) under control of the Canadian Mental Health Association. It’s a move that Cheri DiNovo claims “absolutely takes away the independent right to complain about services.”
A number of marchers sported signs supporting the newly formed Coalition for an Independent PPAO. For a population often wary of their treatment at the hands of the psychiatric establishment, losing an autonomous watchdog like this can feel like a low blow.
But while arguments over medical models and rights issues provide the underlying chatter, politics at the Bed Push take a backseat to the pageantry of the parade itself. This is after all a reclamation of madness and mad culture. Unlike anti-psychiatry, whose main icons were themselves therapists, albeit unconventional ones, Mad Pride has been conceived, organized, and promoted almost entirely by psychiatric consumer/survivors.
“What if Mad Pride challenges the very boundary between ‘madness’ and ‘reason’?” asks Professor Stuart Murray, a Ryerson Medical Humanities scholar not affiliated with the movement. “Who is vested with the moral, legal, and medical authority to police that boundary […] and why?” These are the questions that Mad Pride compels us to ask.
Carvalho pretty much sums it up. “There’s nothing inhuman about madness, it’s really a more extreme version of what people experience in their lives. We can be absolutely fine with that sort of diversity existing in our world, and those kinds of minds existing. We think those experiences have value, and add meaning to life, and they’re something to be proud of. They’re different—not bad, not broken, just crazy—and crazy ain’t bad.”
To learn more about Mad Pride in Toronto, visit madpridenetwork.com.
Photos by D.A. Cooper/Torontoist.

This map was created by the Toronto Community Health Profiles partnership with the help of data from Canada’s long-form census.

Okay everyone, this morning we’re going to talk about statistical survey methodology. Get excited people! It’s not everyday that an obscure piece of technical arcana finds its way into ordinary conversation.
It happened in America with “dangling chads” in 2000, and again with “subprime mortgage lending” in 2007—both terms with which most of us were unfamiliar, but on which major events ended up hinging.
Here in Canada, we got interested in previously obscure procedure last year, when the conservative government announced its landmark decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census and replace it with an optional National Household Survey (NHS). All of a sudden, serious technical concerns about “data validity” and “response bias” were thrust into the national media spotlight.
This June, as questionnaires start shipping out, the issue is again rearing its jargon-filled head.

But why is this such a big deal? Why are so many statisticians and policy-makers wringing their hands in nervous anticipation? Why did former Stats Canada head Munir Sheikh go as far as to resign from his post when he heard the news?
Torontoist caught up with former Stats Can statistician James Hiu to get a handle on the challenges posed by the optional NHS.
The major problem with an optional survey, Hiu says, is that it may over- or under-represent certain segments of the population. When you give a group of people an optional questionnaire, there is always a chance that those who don’t respond will differ in meaningful ways from those who do. In the case of the NHS, researchers argue that ethnic minorities, and individuals with very low or very high incomes, will be least likely to respond.
“If the possibility of fines or jail time is available and you don’t understand the language, you may talk to a friend to help you fill out the survey,” says Hiu. “Now that it’s optional, these small inconveniences or excuses make it possible for people to just relax and not fill it out.”
“Non-response bias,” as statisticians call this phenomenon, is not a contentious political issue, it’s a mathematical fact. Even opponents of the long-form census, like the conservative-minded Fraser Institute, agree that its successor will introduce more response bias. Niels Veldhuis, VP of Canadian Policy Research at the Fraser Institute, readily admits “there are going to be underrepresented groups if you move to voluntary surveying.” The question is, can we correct for this bias in any way?
One possible solution is to use data from previous censuses to fill gaps in NHS results. The so-called “imputation” of missing results through the aid of external data is a standard statistical technique. But it runs into problems if the data you are using to plug holes differ in meaningful ways from your obtained results.
As Hiu notes, much has changed since the last census in 2006. “We are at a unique point in history…the recession has not been this bad in recent memory.” Hiu worries that adjusting for bias in this manner will gloss over critical social trends that have only emerged in the past few years.
If census takers can’t shore up their weaknesses with the help of old surveys, some have suggested supplementing optional questionnaires with records maintained elsewhere. As British Cabinet minister Francis Maude tells the BBC in reference to England’s own data collection strategy: “There is a load of data out there in loads of different places.”
If the voluntary NHS is insufficient, Veldhuis believes that organizations can “rely on other surveys…the same way businesses plan where they’re going to open locations.”
“Better data is there,” Hiu admits, “but it’s much more fragmented…At the end of the day someone is still responsible to go out to all these data marks and collect them.”
To obtain an important public health statistic, like the ethnic makeup of neighborhoods in the GTA, one could conceivably go to all the hospitals in Toronto and request permission to sift through anonymized records. The problem, however, is that different hospitals might collect data in different ways. Since you don’t have control over the surveying, there’s a risk that important questions may have been phrased in a biased way, or simply omitted altogether.

Image courtesy of the Toronto Community Health Profiles partnership.

“People select data for different purposes,” Hiu stresses, “and the devil’s in the details.”
Such technical issues are of great concern to Toronto city planner Tom Ostler and health policy professional Paul Fleiszer, both of whom use the long-form frequently in their work.
Fleiszer, who works for Toronto Public Health, says that his department “uses data on language, immigration, ethnicity, income, and education, all previously available from the long-form, to guide our programs and policies.”
“For example, we offer tuberculosis prevention initiatives to people that have immigrated from countries where tuberculosis is endemic. The long-form identified areas where those populations live so we knew which neighborhoods to offer classes in.”
“One critical [item] that we use in city planning in particular,” Tom Ostler says, “is the question of where people work and linking that question to where they live. [This gives us] a picture of commuting flows across the city,” which can help in planning bus routes and transit initiatives.
“Even just a basic statistic like the number of people who are working inside the city of Toronto,” Ostler explains, helps the City set job targets for the future. These targets influence how much money will be invested in employment services and infrastructure.
“At the end of the day,” says Fleiszer, “if you don’t have good data, you can’t make good decisions. That irritates me as a public health professional.”
Veldhuis’ response to these concerns is more systemic: “If you look at most cities, we know that about 95 per cent of people commute to and from work in vehicles, and what city planners want to do is take people out of vehicles and put them into rapid transit. So I’m not entirely sure that what they’re getting from the census is information they’re actually using in the correct manner.”
The Fraser Institute does acknowledge that there are many critical government institutions that rely on accurate data, but for Veldhuis, the overarching concern is an ethical one. “If you look at the major funding organizations of university research,” he says, “they would never fund research by any academic in this country if there were forced participation in their survey. Somehow all these academics think it’s different when it comes to the census, and I just don’t see how it’s any different.”
Hiu explains that “other surveys piggyback on the census data.” If, like Ostler, you want to know why Torontonians choose to move downtown, you can go out and conduct voluntary surveys. But it helps to have census data on hand so you can tell if the response rates you’re getting are representative of the actual population. With the death of the long-form, Hiu argues, researchers are losing an important tool to benchmark their results.
Hot-button political issues aside, everyone we talked to agrees that it’s impossible to tell how biased the NHS will be until we start seeing results, which will start to roll in come 2012.
“If [Stats Canada] properly targets these underrepresented groups,” Veldhuis states hopefully, “I think we’ll have a fairly accurate assessment of the key data points that they’re trying to get at.”
Assuming a target response rate of 50 per cent, Stats Canada recently used their arcane statistical powers to estimate the response bias they expect to be associated with individual census questions in specific metropolitan areas. The estimation, available for free on their website, is perhaps the best indication thus far of how the NHS will differ from its predecessor.
It’s worth a look, if your eyes haven’t entirely glazed over by this point. You’ll see that in Toronto, questions about immigration status and college/CEGEP completion are expected to generate relatively unbiased responses, while the bias of questions about ethnicity may range as high as 17 per cent.
Prefacing their data, government number crunchers leave us with these candid words to chew on: “We have never previously conducted a survey on the scale of the voluntary National Household Survey, nor are we aware of any other country that has…We are confident that the National Household Survey will produce usable and useful data that will meet the needs of many users. It will not, however, provide a level of quality that would have been achieved through a mandatory long-form census.”

From left to right: a Nordic, a Reptilian, and a Grey engage in a high stakes game of interdimensional cards. Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.

When budget cutbacks forced the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) to shut down its Allen Telescope Array earlier this year, it marked the end of an era of publicly funded alien eavesdropping. But for many in the UFO community, ET already walks among us.
On a recent Saturday at the Richview Library, UFO specialist Chris Russak and psychic channeler Charlie Kundallini led a group of local paranormal enthusiasts on a whirlwind tour through the alien kingdom. Turns out our understanding of ET has come a long way since the dark days of Mork and Marvin the Martian. The burgeoning fringe science of alien taxonomy has grown so rapidly in recent years, you’d be forgiven for not keeping up. Here’s a little primer to get you up to speed.

Greys: Grey-skinned and glassy-eyed, these are the aliens you’ll most often see on the silver screen, which is surprising because by most accounts they’re hideous. According to Russak, Greys reproduce via cloning, which, like so many Michael Keatons à la Multiplicity, is causing them to fade. Their mission on Earth is to create a Grey-human hybrid that can reproduce sexually, and thus perpetuate the existence of their species.
Nordics: While they get their name from their resemblance to Scandinavians, these aliens actually hail from the Pleiades star cluster. Kind-hearted, spiritually advanced creatures, Russak claims that Nordic aliens literally exist on a higher metaphysical dimension than ours. Their mission on Earth is largely that of goodwill.
Tall Whites: Not that much is known about this group except that they’re tall, white, and crazy about Earth culture. While the elder entities can grow to up to 10 feet, the younger ones actually blend in quite well. “All of you have seen a Tall White at some point,” says Russak. “You usually see them,” Kundallini adds, “in casinos, theatres, and conferences.” Their favorite city? Vegas!
Reptilians: While they are initially lizard-like in appearance, these creatures employ molecular shapeshifting and laser holograms to take on any form. Add powers of telepathy and invisibility and you’ve got a force to be reckoned with. According to Russak, reptilians “see the Earth as their outpost. They want complete control over it because their planet is becoming unable to support life.” Conspiracy theorist David Icke fears that reptilian humanoids are secretly transforming the Earth into a global fascist state. But, Kundallini claims, these aliens are no match for our Chi Force.
Anunnaki: Who knew that the gods of ancient Mesopotamia were actually migrant alien laborers from the lost planet Nibiru? Originally sent to this Earth to mine for gold, the extraterrestrials quickly got sick of their work. Their solution, according to crypto-scholar Zecharia Sitchin, was to crossbreed their DNA with primitive humans and forge a race of slaves. In this manner, many in the UFO community believe, human civilization was born.
Andromedans: Energy beings from the Andromeda galaxy, these guys are so high up on the cosmic chain of being that they no longer require a physical body. Their food, according to Russak, is nothing less than truth itself. However they’re still not above meddling in our affairs. From their lofty perch aboard a giant invisible mothership somewhere in our stratosphere, the Andromedans stand guard over us Earthlings and do battle with unseen dark forces.
Insectoids: Bug people! Giant, super-intelligent bugs from outer space.
Now these descriptions may seem far-fetched, but according to Kundallini, who claims to have had many encounters with alien entities, spotting ETs is really just a matter of opening your mind. “If someone tells me they’ve never seen a UFO,” Kundallini says, “the question I ask is: do you want to see one?” Psychic intent is something he believes most aliens, being telepathic, can sense. So if you broadcast your willingness to be visited, they just might hear you.
Many in attendance seemed to agree. James, who brought his young son to the lecture, claims to have seen countless aliens and UFOs. Just the other week he and his family spotted a couple of Greys skulking around their home.
For others, technology holds the key to capturing that elusive sighting.
During the post-lecture BBQ and skywatch on Russak’s back patio, a filmmaker who goes by the name Skull Man trained his camera to the overcast sky. UFO videography is a painstaking task that involves poring over hours of monotonous footage, but Skull and others maintain that it’s worth the effort.
“We rarely stare up at the sky for more than a couple seconds,” says one guest, “there’s so much that we miss.”
Mark, an amateur ufologist, was taking snapshots of what appeared to be empty patches of cloud cover. He explained that on further analysis strange objects might reveal themselves. A small speck barely visible to the naked eye could, zoomed in, turn out to be something totally out of this world.
Mark’s photos are more likely to find their way into the National Enquirer than National Geographic, but alien believers are far from a fringe sect. A poll by Opinion Dynamics Corporation in 2008 revealed that 34 per cent of Americans believe in the existence of UFOs. Former Canadian defense minister Paul Hellyer is an outspoken advocate for alien awareness. Playing with his daughter and flipping burgers on his patio in suburban Etobicoke, Russak certainly doesn’t look like a man on society’s outer edge.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about UFO culture is how commonplace it’s become. That and the—um—shapeshifting reptilians.
Alien, UFOs in Outer & Inner Space is a meetup group that gathers every other Friday to discuss extraterrestrial phenomena and engage in a skywatch, weather permitting. Admission is free and open to the public.

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise and VMS Eve mother ship fly over Spaceport America (near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico). Photo by Mark Greenberg, courtesy of Spaceport America.

What ever happened to space tourism? Weren’t commercial spacecraft supposed to make it so regular celebrity multi-millionaires like Lance Bass could experience the wonders of low Earth orbit? Well it’s been seven years since Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne claimed the Ansari X Prize for the first privately funded, repeatable manned space flight, and the genial bass vocalist is still waiting for his chance to sail skyward.
Late last week, a diverse group of students, teachers, travel agents, and space industry professionals clustered around a conference table roughly the size of a small football stadium in Commerce Park, to discuss the future of civilian space flight.

According to Virgin Galactic VP of special projects Will Pomerantz, who joined the gathering via a tabletop speakerphone pod, viable commercial space tourism is not a distant dream. His company has already pre-sold tickets to 215 would-be astronauts (and processed bookings for 17 Canadians)—a number which sounds more impressive when you consider that only 517 people in history have ever been to space.
For the relatively low but also heart attack inducingly high price of $200,000 US, clients will soar to a maximum altitude of 110 km, 10 km beyond the Kármán line commonly used to define the boundary between Earth and space. They will experience roughly 4½ minutes of zero gravity, during which there will be ample opportunity to take in the God’s-eye view.
So far, the Virgin Galactic “fleet” only consists of one spacecraft, which is based heavily on Scaled Composite’s Ansari X Prize winning design. The VSS Enterprise, as it’s been dubbed, is still undergoing testing, but the company has plans to build an additional four models.
Virgin Galactic also hopes to bring the price point down to somewhere around the cost of an SUV. The timetable for this, like the target date for the company’s first commercial flight, is still pretty fuzzy.
So it’s safe to say you and I are not going to be visiting space for at least a few more years. But there are good reasons why Canadian space scientists and professionals are keeping a close watch on companies like Virgin Galactic.
According to planetary scientist Alan Stern, the international space station “has tremendous capability, but it will always be limited to just the few people there, and it takes years to prepare things to go up.” Commercial space flight, on the other hand, promises to do things faster and cheaper. Pomerantz spoke of running three flights a day out of the company’s spaceport near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It will also let scientists themselves accompany their experimental payloads.
When Pomerantz announced that Virgin Galactic had recently pre-sold tickets to its first group of researchers, the scientists in attendance pressed him for details. Will they pay the same price as tourist passengers? They will. Are there any Canadian funding mechanisms in place to support the hefty fare? None that he was aware of.

The unfinished interior of a Virgin Galactic spaceship. Photo by Mischa Varmuza, courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

NASA’s Space Shuttle fleet is scheduled to be decommissioned this year, which will leave the agency without endogenous means to send astronauts to space. President Obama is hoping that the private space sector will step in to fill this void, and NASA under his administration has recently doled out $269 million in commercial contracts to kick start this effort.
The Canadian Space Agency has no spaceport of its own, and relies heavily on the launch capabilities of NASA. So as NASA begins to scale back its operations, it doesn’t take a—um—rocket scientist to figure that Canada is going to have to come up with new ways to get stuff into space. Sending astronauts and payloads on commercial flights is one way for the country to maintain a space presence.
According to Chuck Black, treasurer of the Canadian Space Commerce Association (CSCA), which organized this event, Canada needs to do more to promote its own commercial space sector, which reportedly generates over $3 billion in business revenue a year.
“There are…corporations,” says Black, “doing useful things in space in Canada today, and we’re ignoring them.” The CSCA formed in part to combat a widely held assumption among investors and professionals that all the important work in the industry is taking place stateside. “We have options here in Canada,” Black asserts, “we don’t have to have people go to the States in order to work in this industry.” And the subtext of Thursday’s talk was that an open market for space flight will help Canada make better use of homegrown innovation.
So there you have it. The price of civilian space travel has dropped to the point that ordinary stinking-rich people can afford it, scientists are booking flights on space pleasure-craft, and Canada is figuring out how to lay claim to its own slice of the commercial space pie.
But what about billionaire playboys? How will they still get to feel special about themselves?
The Virginia based space tourism firm Space Adventures is already planning a lunar mission for 2015. Tickets start at $100 million.

One of two fully-articulated sperm whale skeletons featured at the Ontario Science Centre’s Whales / Tohorā exhibition.

The front part of a sperm whale’s head accounts for nearly a third of its length, and contains no eyes, no ears, no brain, and almost no bone. Which raises the question: what the heck is it for?
Ishmael in Moby Dick thinks the fibrous, blubbery wad could act as a battering ram. But the true nature of the sperm’s head, as Torontoist learned visiting the Ontario Science Centre’s Whales / Tohorā exhibition, is even weirder.

Essentially, as this video from the exhibit shows, it’s a massive biological sonar gun for tracking deepsea prey. A pair of muscles near the tip of the head contracts to produce a high frequency click. This sound amplifies as it passes through a reservoir of oily goo called spermaceti, then ricochets off the front of the skull into the surrounding water. Based on the nature and timing of the echo, sperm whales can tell what types of fish are in their vicinity. They can pursue and devour prey, all without the aid of eyesight, which is useless at the depths they feed.
This is just one of the many insights into whale science that can be be gained from a visit to Whales / Tohorā, a travelling showcase of cetacean curios hailing from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa‘s renowned marine mammals collection. The exhibit, which runs until March 20, is an eclectic look into the biology, history, and myths that make these ocean monsters so friggin’ cool.
It’s a refreshing change of pace for the museum, which has been targeting the fantasy fanboy demographic pretty heavily of late. Hot off the heels of attractions like Harry Potter: The Exhibition and Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids, it’s nice to see an exhibit that, well, actually has to do with science.

Life-size replica of a blue whale heart, rendered with anatomically accurate “No Climbing” sign.

To be sure, Whales / Tohorā is certainly geared towards kids—not the metaphorical, homunculus-child inside us all, but actual, potato chip bag-scrunching, yelling-loudly-for-no-apparent-reason kids. Touch-screen games, animations, and climbable displays are clearly designed to draw in the young ‘uns, and they appeared to be doing their job. We were definitely the only non-children-accompanying adults there, which can get a little silly at times.
Still, if you don’t mind tripping over the occasional stroller, there’s plenty of cool science to go around. In addition to boasting two giant sperm whale skeletons, the exhibit also has an impressive display of fossilized whale remains, which depict the beast’s gradual metamorphosis from shallow-shore fisher to deep-sea diver extraordinaire.
Contrary to what you’ll find written in Genesis, the great leviathan is not the ocean’s oldest creature. As it turns out, he’s a relative newcomer to the marine biome. The modern day whale traces its ancestry back to the pakicetus, a small, wolf-like critter that fished the shallow seas near modern day Pakistan some fifty million years ago. It seems that environmental shifts forced this animal to venture further offshore to locate its prey. Its front paws morphed into fins, and its tail into a pair of propulsive flukes. Gradually, the creature evolved to become more and more seaworthy, until it could afford to set off from land permanently.
Our guide, David Sugarman, explained that because whales are water dwelling, they are not bound by the same gravitational drag that keeps most land creatures relatively compact. “When you’re supported like that,” he says, “you can get big…or you can get gudgy like jellyfish.”
“The blue whale is the biggest animal that ever lived,” says Sugarman, bigger both in length and mass than such superlative beasts as the gigantosaurus and the supersaurus. A life-size replica of its heart, on display at the exhibition, is large enough for several children to climb inside.
In the interest of cool whale trivia, our guide also informs us that “the blue whale makes the loudest sounds in nature”—roughly thirty-two times louder than a jet engine. These low frequency blasts are detectable hundreds, and sometimes thousands of kilometers away.
Sugarman, it should be mentioned, is the Ontario Science Centre’s senior scientist. With tousled sandy hair and overstuffed binder full of journal abstracts and articles, he broadcasts a goofy excitement about science that’s easy to get caught up in. He is also, unfortunately, not a regular fixture of the exhibit, but was brought in by the museum’s PR team to personally guide us around—he isn’t a routine presence.

Very early whale ancestor. Note the hind legs, and characteristically evil appearance.

Although staff members, decked in white coats, did roam about answering questions, we were disappointed to discover there were no regularly scheduled guided tours. A skilled museum guide can weave a coherent story out of seemingly disparate artifacts and displays. Without one, it’s all too easy too get bogged down in detail and miss the big ideas entirely. This is especially true in a broadly conceived exhibition like Whales / Tohorā, which merges straight-up science with stories and cultural artifacts from New Zealand’s indigenous Maori peoples.
The ethnographic arm of the exhibit is centred around an impressive collection of aboriginal whalebone pendants and weaponry. Since the Maori don’t actually hunt whales, the majority of this ivory comes to them through stranded carcasses, making it an exceedingly rare commodity. A nearby section explores the importance of whales (and whale riders) in aboriginal mythology.
All told, there’s more than enough stuff here to keep you busy for at least a couple of hours. Other highlights include a section on the mystery of mass whale strandings, an odd collection of beaked whale skulls, ambergris, and some large specimens of baleen (the hairy teeth found in humpback and blue whales).
It doesn’t really warrant the $20 price of admission by itself, but if you’ve been looking for an excuse to spend a day at the Science Centre, this just may be it. So long as you don’t mind dodging toddlers and poking around on your own, there’s a wealth of great artifacts, and plenty of cool science on display here.
Whales / Tohorā runs at the Ontario Science Centre until March 20, 2011. The Science Centre is open seven days a week, from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Admission is $20 for adults and $16 for students.
Photos by Corbin Smith/Torontoist.

CORRECTION: February 2, 9:43 AM In this post we originally refered to a previous Science Centre exhibit as “Magical Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids.” The exhibit’s correct name is “Mythic Creatures.”

InteraXon’s downtown headquarters on John Street. Photo by D.A. Cooper/Torontoist.

Telekinesis—the ability to move matter through thought alone—has long served as fodder for comic books, late-night cable specials, and drug-fuelled fantasies. But aside from the occasional shiftless Star Wars nerd faced with a chicken wing just out of arm’s reach, it’s not something most of us take seriously.
Why then did executives from Boeing and Bombardier, attending a demo presented by Toronto-based tech start-up InteraXon, recently test out an in-flight entertainment system for passengers to control with their minds?

Believe it or not, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that allow minds to link directly to machines have been kicking around university and government laboratories for some time now. In the ’70s researchers from the National Institute of Health in Maryland showed that monkeys could be trained to control small mechanical-feedback devices with their brains. These days scientists have primates feeding themselves through robotic prostheses.

Snacking cyborg monkeys like this one may seem like science fiction, but InteraXon CEO and co-founder Ariel Garten feels assured that “thought-controlled computing is the future of human-computer interaction.” Her company is on a mission to prove it’s a viable business concept as well.
Since InteraXon was founded in 2007, they’ve engineered BCI applications to let people control everything from musical ensembles, to furniture, to the lights on the CN Tower, using only their brain waves. Here’s how they do it:
Every time a neuron fires, it makes a noise. It’s the sound of charged ions being repelled into intercellular space. At any given moment, there are over a billion neurons firing in your brain. Take the cumulative sound of all these neurons firing at once and you’ve got a brain wave—an electromagnetic signal loud enough to register outside your skull.
Brain waves can be used to diagnose neurological disorders like epilepsy and dementia. They can also reveal what you’re thinking—kind of.
The two most common types of brain waves, alpha and beta, are associated with distinct mental states. Alpha waves signal relaxation and reflection, while beta waves indicate concentration and alertness.
Brain wave recording technology has evolved considerably over the past decade. Applications that once required a dense mass of wires and electrodes can easily be accomplished with a simple, inexpensive, consumer-ready wireless headset.
InteraXon doesn’t develop brain-recording technology. Rather, Garten clarifies, “we make the things you do with the headsets.”
By calculating the relative magnitude of an individual’s alpha and beta waves, you get a pretty good indication of how relaxed or focused they are. This variable can then be used to control basically anything that can be hooked up to a computer. Like, for instance, a chair that levitates when you enter a very relaxed state. Or lighting that corresponds to your mood.
Garten explains that you can actually train people to control their alpha and beta waves fairly easily. Uncle Milton’s Star Wars Force Trainer, which teaches kids to focus better while indulging their taste for useless/expensive crap, works on the same principle. Concentration causes beta waves to increase, which in turn makes a small ball levitate.
With just one variable to control—a linear continuum between relaxation and concentration—you have to get creative. Map this continuum onto a musical scale, Garten suggests, so that musicians can jam just by concentrating or relaxing. Or plug it into something huge, like the lights on the CN Tower.
There are more complex brain-wave signals, but, Garten says, “most of the things that are off the shelf [work with] alpha and beta.” Of particular interest to the engineers at InteraXon are so-called p300 brain signals that actually register when you notice something. Pretty soon, Garten explains, we’ll be able to create computer menus that users can navigate just by thinking.

InteraXon’s founding members, left to right: Trevor Coleman, Ariel Garten, and Chris Aimone. Photo by D.A. Cooper/Torontoist.

Speaking with Garten, it doesn’t take long to sense the sheer scope of thought-controlled computing technology. It’s not just about cool toys. In fact, her company doesn’t market products directly to consumers. Most of their clients are other businesses who want to see what BCI can do for them. (Not long ago a welding company contacted InteraXon to see if they could develop a system that would allow welders to mentally control the power of their torches. This sort of thing isn’t feasible yet, Garten concedes, but we’ll get there.)
“This technology is really pan-domain,” she says. “In twenty or thirty years this is going to be a ubiquitous way to interact.” In five years, Garten claims, we’ll see a ton of health and brain-fitness applications.
In an office dotted with amorphous concept art and eggshell furniture, forecasting twenty years ahead seems as reasonable as predicting tomorrow’s weather. It’s easy to overlook the fact that thought-controlled computing still has a long way to go.
We’re not quite at the point where we can play Halo, or even Super Mario, with our minds. No matter how you dress it up, the “mind control” offered by consumer-ready BCIs is still pretty basic: relax, and your alpha/beta ratio goes up, concentrate and it goes back down. Just how many interesting games, or useful business applications, can you design for what is essentially a mental dimmer switch?
Gameplay has evolved considerably in the past four decades, yet thought-controlled computing, behind its gloss of futurism, recalls a much simpler era in our gaming past—when minimalist design was beautiful and story arcs non-existent. The Swedish game, Mindball, where players sit across from one another and compete to control the trajectory of ball that’s placed between them, not-so-subtly echoes the mechanics of Pong.
It’s unclear if consumers will be willing to shell out big bucks for BCI systems that can barely replicate Space Invaders. A number of tech reviewers have questioned whether this technology is really ready for the mass market. But if controlling a ball or a set of lights with your brain waves doesn’t sound like typical Saturday afternoon beer-and-bong fare, the folks at InteraXon would argue that it at least got you thinking.
Garten, who streamed her own brain waves last week during a lecture at Le Web in Paris, sees brain-computer interfacing as a transformative act. She likens brain waves to a muscle we never even knew we had. Not only will BCIs increasingly blur the line between man and machine, Garten suggests they will also fundamentally change how we view our own bodies.
The dark side of this exchange isn’t hard to imagine: it’s played out in thousands of dime-store comics. How might a fragile psyche react to such a drastically altered sense of self? What about the physical dangers posed by placing large industrial or even military machinery at the whim of someone’s imagination? What about people stealing our thoughts?!
Garten believes that it’s InteraXon’s job to guide us through the challenges we’ll face as we increasingly plug our minds into our MacBooks.
It might sound like a high-minded goal for a tech start-up, but thought-controlled computing is still in its formative stage. Companies like InteraXon have the power to shape the way we perceive and interact with this new technology. Might as well flex your alphas while you have the chance.

CORRECTION: January 6, 2011, 9:10 AM In this article we originally stated that Boeing was under contract with Interaxon, which is incorrect. Boeing attended a demonstration by the company, but has no signed agreements with them.

Illustration by Matthew Daley/Torontoist.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—Toronto’s very best and very worst people, places, and things over the past twelve months. From December 13–17: the Villains! From December 20–24, the Heroes! And, from December 27–30, you can vote for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

In the increasingly absurd quest to round out every conceivable aviation feat, one deceptively simple one has eluded us—a human-powered ornithopter. Mythologized in the myth of Icarus, and sketched by Leonardo da Vinci, the idea of a wing-flapping, human-propelled flying mechanism has captivated the minds of aerialists for millennia.
On the morning of August 2, 2010, on an airstrip in Tottenham, Ontario, a team of University of Toronto engineering students witnessed the flight of Snowbird, the world’s first successful human-powered ornithopter. The craft’s 19.3 seconds of sustained altitude and velocity—watch it here—were, for them, the culmination of nearly four years of hard work and training. It’s a flight that project leader and pilot Todd Reichert told Torontoist was “just right on the cusp of what’s physically possible.”
Snowbird weighs in at a mere 43.5 kilograms, an impressive feat considering its 32-metre wingspan. While the lightweight composite materials required have been around for decades, Reichert notes that it’s only in the past five years that computer models have advanced to the point where a project like this could even be attempted.
It may look low-tech, but according to Reichert, who’s pursuing a PhD in aerospace engineering at U of T, this aircraft is at the absolute vanguard of aerodynamic theory. He and his team of engineers laboured painstakingly over the past several summers, crafting to computational precision the carbon fiber, balsa, and foam components that swiveled and flapped their way into the skies last August. Reichert himself trained very specifically for the feat: he spent months exercising the exact muscle groups that he would be forced to call on during his pedaling frenzy.
And while the 145-metre trajectory pushed Reichert to the very limit of physical endurance, he estimates that “if we started from scratch again and redesigned, we could fly even further.” Not over the English Channel or anything—but Reichert is optimistic. “When the Wright Brothers flew,” he says, “people didn’t necessarily see it as what it would become today.”
For now, Snowbird is just the latest in a long line of Toronto-based ornithopteral breakthroughs. From U of T professor James DeLaurier’s pioneering research in the ’80s and ’90s, to 2006’s “The Great Flapper,” Toronto is fast becoming a center for man-powered wing-flappy doodads. And if that doesn’t make your civic pride swell like a weather balloon at high altitude, well, maybe you need to get your servo guidance mechanism checked.