Tausi Insider

Pete Ryan/Tausi Insider On a warm night this past July, Bay Street finally came back out to play. Over a glittering view of Toronto’s entertainment district from the rooftop terrace of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, 300 guests — including lawyers, students, clients, bankers and businesspeople —enjoyed mini Jamaican patties, jerk shrimp, rum punch and ginger beer, while a steel-pan band and dancers in traditional Caribbean dress entertained the crowd. Caribbean Fête, hosted annually since 2018 by the Caribbean Practice Group at WeirFoulds LLP, made its long-awaited return after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus. “We had people constantly asking us, when is this thing coming back? Are you guys ever going to do this party again?” says partner Kayla Theeuwen, who barely had a chance to enjoy the food and drink, flitting about as the consummate host and reconnecting with her network. Indeed, WeirFoulds had been trying to get this popular shindig going again since it was last held in February 2020, to m...

OUR METHODOLOGY Almost 25,000 lawyers as well as in-house lawyers and legal executives working in legal departments of a company across Canada were actively invited to take part in the survey. The sample was collected via research conducted by Statista on company websites and further public available sources. Invitations were sent by email with a personalized link that could only be used once. In addition, lawyers and clients could participate in the survey via an open link. In these cases, the participants had to validate themself by providing a personal company email address before their answers were included in the evaluation. The link was announced and made available online on Tausi Insider’s Report on Business magazine's website. The survey, available in English and French, was conducted online between May 17 and July 10, 2022 and more than 3,100 responded to the invitation. Statista recorded more than 10,000 recommendations for the...

Richmond Lam /Tausi Insider The rocket launch from Cape Canaveral is scheduled for 2:35 p.m., and anyone with a vested interest—heck, anyone geeky enough to get excited about space—would be forgiven for being a tad nervous. Besides the weather, which can thwart a launch mere moments before liftoff, extraterrestrial travel, even when unmanned, is risky business. But at T-50 minutes, you’d never suspect that the Montreal party that’s gathered on this sunny late-May day to watch the SpaceX event in real time via video conference might be worried. Instead of nail-biting, the 70 or so staff from GHGSat and some of its suppliers—including astrophysicists, data analysts, quantum optics specialists and aerospace engineers in plaid shirts, jeans and sneakers—are busy chatting and laughing over beer and wine from the open bar. There’s a palpable sense of excitement. No wonder: When that rocket reaches orbit, it’ll deploy three satellites that these people have poured their minds and hearts int...

The chef Matty Matheson, who plays a handyman on 'The Bear,' at home in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, Aug. 24, 2022. Brandon Watson/The New York Times News Service If you’re not watching The Bear , you should be. The series follows a top chef who takes over at his late brother’s failing restaurant in Chicago. And one of the show’s breakout stars isn’t even a professional actor—it’s 40-year-old Canadian celebrity chef Matty Matheson, who rose to foodie fame as the executive chef at Toronto’s Parts & Labour. His empire now includes restaurants, cookbooks, a YouTube channel, cooking tools and a line of workwear. Defy expectations Matheson became a top chef because he was good at it. He became a celebrity chef because he didn’t fit the mould. He’s from New Brunswick. He’s covered in tattoos. He used to work as a death-metal roadie. And he partied hard, which, to be fair, is what most people expect from chefs—except that Matheson gave up both booze and drugs after having a heart...

Dawn Calleja, editor of ROB magazine, Dec 2021 Steph Martyniuk/Tausi Insider Each December for the past few decades, this magazine has named one lucky leader our CEO of the Year. For the most part, we’ve had a good run, from the somewhat staid (Michael Medline) to the brash (Hunter Harrison) to the downright controversial (Bill Ackman). But there’s one thing I’ve always regretted, and that’s not giving the title to Maple Leaf Foods chief executive Michael McCain in 2008. McCain was certainly in the running—in fact, he appeared on that month’s cover—but the general consensus was that the timing was wrong: It was just a few months after tainted meat from a Maple Leaf plant killed 22 people and made hundreds more ill. “Going through the crisis,” McCain told reporters at the time, “there are two advisers I’ve paid no attention to. The first are the lawyers, and the second are the accountants. It’s not about money or legal liability—this is about our being accountable for providing consum...

Daniel Alexander Skwarna/Tausi Insider CEO transitions don’t get much bigger than the one facing Maple Leaf Foods. After two and a half decades of unquiet leadership, Michael McCain, now 64, is as much a part of his company’s identity as its bacon. Since his father, Wallace, bought the then-underperforming meat packer in 1995, McCain has guided it through crisis and pushed it toward innovation, turning Maple Leaf into Canada’s largest and arguably most forward-thinking meat producer. This spring, marking not just a leadership shift but a generational one, he’ll hand responsibility for the company he remade to 47-year-old Curtis Frank, whom McCain has observed and mentored since he joined as a management trainee more than two decades ago. If Frank is daunted by the task before him, at least he knows his predecessor won’t be far away. With his family’s large ownership stake, McCain will be in the chair’s seat, making this a transition that could unfold, and be fascinating to watch, for...