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THE MAGAZINE OF THE
CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH
MAGAZINE
SPRING 2011
Next Big Question:
WHO ARE
YOU?

Spring, 2011
Volume 11, Issue 1
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research enables
Canadian researchers to work on international research
teams that are custom built to transform their fields of study.
Founded in 1982 with a groundbreaking collaborative research
model, CIFAR has been extraordinarily successful at creating
knowledge breakthroughs, advancing Canada’s research
community and fuelling innovation.
Today, the Institute mobilizes 385 researchers from 107
institutions in 16 countries to conduct research of scientific,
economic, social and cultural importance.
CIFAR is a not-for-profit institution supported by donations
from individuals, foundations and corporations, and funding
from the Government of Canada and the governments of
Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta.
PUBLISHER:
Chaviva M. Hošek
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:
Patchen Barss
EDITORIAL ADVISORS:
Rebecca Finlay, Elizabeth Gerrits, Jessica Kamphorst,
Kara Palleschi, Sue Schenk, Mel Silverman, Pekka Sinervo,
Kara M. Spence
CONTRIBUTORS:
Veronika Bryskiewicz, Sony Dhillon, Raissa Espiritu,
John Lorinc, Tatyana Narchayeva, Tracy Ollivierre,
Sofia Ramirez
DESIGN:
ID8 Design Group
TRANSLATION:
Geneviève Beaulnes
PRINTING:
Sunville Printco
1 The Big Question of Identity
2 Briefs
5 Who Are You?
7 You Are Your Citizenship
9 You Are What Your Genes Experience
11 You Are The Groups You Belong To
12 You Are Your Guide To Italian Philosophy
13 CIFAR Timeline
14 CIFAR Donors
16 Making Big Things Happen
Reach is a magazine for researchers, volunteers, friends and
supporters of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research,
and anyone else with curiosity and imagination. Reach celebrates
advanced research and explores the issues, opinions and ideas
emerging from this work. We invite all comments or inquiries
concerning the content of Reach and/or the work of CIFAR.
Reach, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
180 Dundas Street West, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1Z8
Phone: 416-971-4251 Fax: 416-971-6169
Email: letterstoreach@cifar.ca
Web: cifar.ca

Parsing these
complexities and
searching for ways to
understand how and
why an individual
feels, thinks, and
believes certain things
have been consistent
areas of inquiry
for everyone from
marketing executives
to philosophers.
THE BIG QUESTION
OF IDENTITY
I am a Canadian. I was not born here.
I am the product of about 23,000 genes,
passed on to me by my parents, and
sculpted by my childhood experiences.
I am a result of the many groups of people
with whom I have been connected over
the years – my family and friends, my
students and professorial colleagues, my
associates in the women’s movement and
in public service, and my fellow members
of the CIFAR community. I am the grey
matter that nestles in my cranium.
There are many more ways I could answer
the question, “Who are you?” Still more
answers emerge when one poses the same
question to those working at the frontiers
of human knowledge.
Each of CIFAR’s 12 research programs
is centred around a big question such
as: “What is the nature of the universe?”
“Why are some countries rich and others
poor?” “How do genes interact to make us
healthy or sick?” The Institute’s identity
reveals itself in part by the kinds of
questions we choose to try to answer.
01
Sometimes, we find ourselves asking a
question that is so far-reaching, that the
answers span several CIFAR programs
at once. We have recently been asking
about the fundamental nature of human
identity. Parsing these complexities and
searching for ways to understand how and
why an individual feels, thinks, and believes
certain things have been consistent areas
of inquiry for everyone from marketing
executives to philosophers.
Advanced research offers particularly
interesting and useful answers to the
question “Who are you?” This is a
question that has no doubt been asked
thousands of times before, but I don’t
believe you have ever seen answers like
those provided by CIFAR. Genetics, social
psychology, artificial intelligence, and
even cosmology and astrobiology all have
something to say about who we are and
how we understand ourselves.
I hope that the answers you find in this
edition of Reach provide you with new and
interesting ways to think about how you
define your self.
Chaviva M. Hošek
President and CEO and
Lawson Family Foundation Fellow

CIFAR researchers honoured
for “Health Milestone”
CIFAR researchers have been honoured
for their seminal book, Why Are Some
People Healthy and Others Not?
This book examines the “social
determinants of health” and the
mechanisms by which environmental
factors such as socioeconomic status
can leave an imprint on human biology.
These factors create great disparities in
health, from person to person, and from
population to population.
CIFAR welcomes David
Dodge as new Chair
The Canadian Institutes of Health
Research-Institute of Population and
Public Health recently recognized this
1994 book as a “Health Milestone,” that
has changed the approach of policy makers
and health professionals around the world.
The Canadian Journal of Public Health
published an article that paid tribute to
the researchers' work.
“The book’s impact can be found today in
training and research programs, in research
funding priorities, in new data resources,
and in the organizational structures of
institutions responsible for public health
policy, in Canada and beyond,” the journal
authors wrote. The article goes on to say that
this book institutionalized the very concept
of “population health” and made it common
parlance in the world of health research.
Richard W. Ivey, exiting Chair of CIFAR’s
Board of Directors, was pleased recently
to announce the appointment of his
successor, David Dodge, the former
Governor of the Bank of Canada.
“My association with CIFAR began in
the mid-eighties,” said Dodge. “Since
then, my enthusiasm has only grown.
If you’re interested in bold ideas
from teams of researchers answering
challenging questions from the world
of advanced research, this is the right
place for you. On behalf of the CIFAR
community, I hope you will join me
in following the Institute’s fascinating
intellectual explorations.”
02
BRIEFS
Dodge and Ivey are also pleased to
welcome new board members Jacques
Lamarre and Frank O’Dea.
Ivey has generously agreed to continue
his involvement with CIFAR in the
role of Chair of the organization’s
Capital Campaign.

Geoffrey Hinton becomes fourth CIFAR
researcher in five years to win Canada’s
top science prize
CIFAR program director Geoffrey Hinton
has won the 2010 Gerhard Herzberg
medal, awarded annually in recognition
of both sustained excellence and global
influence of a Canada-based researcher in
the natural sciences or engineering.
Dr. Hinton’s work in the field of machine
learning has set the bar for artificial
intelligence researchers around the world.
His work has also had a major impact
on industry, leading to advances in voice
recognition software, Internet search
engines, airport security scanners, and
many other computing technologies that
rely on pattern and object recognition.
“When the Canadian Institute for
Advanced Research first attracted me to
Canada in the 1980s, there were not many
people doing this kind of work here. That
meant I could recruit very bright students
and post-doctoral fellows,” says Hinton.
“This award is for the research I did
with them and it creates an opportunity
to continue this research with a new
generation of young researchers.”
In addition to prestige, the Herzberg
comes with a one million dollar prize,
to be devoted to future research.
Not only is Geoff Hinton’s own research revolutionary
and brilliant, but he is also a great leader and
collaborator. In addition to his individual contributions
to the field, he has also spurred his colleagues and
students to be bold, and to keep pushing their research
forward into ambitious new areas.
“I can’t think of a more deserving
recipient for this year’s prize,” said
Mel Silverman, CIFAR’s Vice President
of Research. “Not only is Geoff Hinton’s
own research revolutionary and
brilliant, but he is also a great leader and
collaborator. In addition to his individual
contributions to the field, he has also
spurred his colleagues and students to be
bold, and to keep pushing their research
forward into ambitious new areas.”
Dr. Hinton is the Director of CIFAR’s
Neural Computation and Adaptive
Perception program. He holds a Canada
Research Chair in Machine Learning
at the University of Toronto and is
one of four CIFAR researchers to have
won the Herzberg in the past five years.
The others are:
2009: Computer Scientist Gilles
Brassard, Member of CIFAR’s Quantum
Information Processing program
03
2007: Chemist John Polanyi, Nobel
Laureate and Member of CIFAR’s
Nanoelectronics Program
2006: Astrophysicist J. Richard Bond,
Program Director of CIFAR’s Cosmology
and Gravity program.
“CIFAR seeks to identify and foster
excellence in Canadian research and
researchers,” said Dr. Silverman. “Our
track record with the Herzberg Medal tells
us that we’re doing something right.”

CIFAR makes major investment in
genetics, economics and social sciences
research with new five-year mandates
CIFAR has announced a major new
investment totalling approximately $6
million over five years to support two of the
Institute’s research programs in genetics,
and economics and social sciences.
The Genetic Networks program is creating
new ways of understanding how genes
interact with one another, research that
could identify the root causes of many
complex genetic diseases, and lead to new
treatments and preventive measures.
The Institute’s Social Interactions, Identity
and Well-Being program is focused on
developing richer economic models
by integrating social science concepts
such as the influence of social identity
and relationships on well-being and
economic motivation.
These programs have each been in
existence for nearly five years, the point
at which all CIFAR programs undergo
rigorous peer review. To conduct the review,
CIFAR convenes internationally renowned
scholars to participate on external review
panels. These panels evaluate whether
the program is meeting CIFAR’s high
standards of research excellence and
leadership. Both of these programs
received high praise from the panels.
“This team is changing the face of
science in the area of genetic interactions
and is bringing great distinction to
Canadian science and their international
collaborators,” stated the Genetic Networks
review panel.
This team is changing the face of science
in the area of genetic interactions and is
bringing great distinction to Canadian science
and their international collaborators.
The Social Interactions, Identity and
Well-Being panel noted that, “None
of us had ever seen an academic
collaboration involving as many
people of such high calibre working
so enthusiastically well together.”
At its February board meeting,
CIFAR’s Board of Directors approved
the new five-year investment in both
research programs.
“CIFAR is about identifying globally
important research questions and
creating teams of leading Canadian and
international researchers to study them
over time,” says Martha Piper, Vice-Chair
of CIFAR’s Board of Directors. “Both of
these programs exemplify the excellence,
collaboration and interdisciplinary
thinking that we have come to expect
from CIFAR’s research.”
04
CIFAR is also committed to helping
Canadian research institutions attract
leading talent to Canada. In particular,
the Genetic Networks panel remarked,
“This broadly integrated investigation
of genetic interactions is unique in
the world and has helped to recruit
eminent researchers from the United
Kingdom and the United States to
Canada to conduct their work.”
The Genetic Networks program is led
by Program Director Brenda Andrews
(University of Toronto). The Social
Interactions, Identity and Well-being
program is led by Program Co-Directors
George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate
(University of California, Berkeley)
and John F. Helliwell (University of
British Columbia).

WHO ARE
YOU?
BY JOHN LORINC
Of all the big questions out there, it
may be the toughest and most elusive: a
riddle that has pre-occupied philosophers
from the ancient Greeks to 20th-century
phenomenologists. But this most
elemental of human enigmas, “Who are
you?” continues to captivate our best
minds, including those scientists and
researchers who collaborate in CIFAR’s
12 program areas.
At one level, the answer may seem obvious enough:
that elusive sense of self flows from our genes, our
families, our communities, our professions, our
cultural and spiritual values. The story, of course,
doesn’t end there. Indeed, in a society as diverse
and fluid as Canada’s, the construction of individual
identity is subject to an ever-widening range of
influences and pressures.
As part of CIFAR’s work thinking about the Next
Big Question, we challenged some of our Fellows
to run the problem of the “you” through their
own analytic frames: citizenship, social group
membership, and the biochemical interplay
between genes and experience.
We invited Sociologist Irene Bloemraad, Social
Psychologist Alexander Haslam and Epidemiologist
Clyde Hertzman to present their arguments by
engaging with CIFAR’s community online at
www.cifarnbq.ca. We also invited them to a wideranging
debate at a May 2, 2011, event at Toronto’s
Four Seasons Hotel.
Herewith, some highlights of each
of their answers to the question,
“Who are you?”
05

For Bloemraad, the most
compelling definition is
citizenship as a vehicle
for participation in society
and its institutions, such
as the legal system.
06

YOU ARE
YOUR CITIZENSHIP
IN
diverse, urbanized societies
characterized by high levels of immigration,
individuals construct identities from many
elements: cultural, religious, demographic,
professional, sexual, etc. But for Irene
Bloemraad, an associate professor of
sociology at the University of California at
Berkeley and CIFAR researcher, citizenship
constitutes the paramount source of identity.
“It provides an opening into democratic
decision-making and civic engagement,”
she says.
In countries such as Canada and the United
States, these factors have great significance
for refugees, illegal immigrants and landed
immigrants. Bloemraad acknowledges
that it is certainly possible for noncitizens
to participate in the affairs of their
communities – volunteering at local schools,
taking part in tenants associations and so
on. But citizenship is “very consequential”
and not just because it allows individuals the
right to vote.
“It’s the ultimate protection against
deportation,” notes Bloemraad. “In the U.S.
context, if you are only a legal permanent
resident and commit certain crimes, you
will be removed.”
She argues that citizenship can be
understood in four ways. It is, of course, a
legal status but it also may be interpreted
in terms of rights, affective identity, and
participation. The meanings vary. Until the
early 20 th century, for example, American
women enjoyed citizenship, but they did
not have the right to cast votes. The identity
aspect of citizenship can find collective
expression as a sense of patriotism or
nationalism. For Bloemraad, the most
compelling definition is citizenship as a
vehicle for participation in society and its
institutions, such as the legal system.
“It gives you a sense of membership and
a sense of being able to make legitimate
claims against other members of your
society.”
The diminishing importance of national
borders in some regions, coupled with the
growing sense of cultural identity in others,
do provide a source of competition for
the core concept of citizenship. In places
such as Scotland or Quebec, citizenship
for some individuals may take a back seat
to their sense of national identity. In the
European Union, by contrast, supranational
citizenship in the EU allows for free
movement, but Bloemraad says it continues
to be a “weak” kind of identity because it
derives from the citizenship conferred by
individual, member governments.
07
It gives you a sense of
membership and a sense of
being able to make legitimate
claims against other members
of your society.
More important, in her view, are the
institutions that allow immigrants
to acquire and attain a full sense of
citizenship. In countries like Germany,
guest workers and their offspring
are unable to become full citizens,
reflecting the country’s ambivalence
about immigration. In countries like
Canada and the U.S., by contrast,
policies such as multiculturalism and
the 14 th amendment (which guarantees
American citizenship to anyone born
in the U.S.) are powerful signals that
newcomers can realistically aspire to
become full members of these societies.
There’s a “warmth of welcome,” she
observes. “Especially for the second
generation, you can’t question their
status as members of that society.”

YOU ARE WHAT YOUR
GENES EXPERIENCE
T
he nature/nurture dilemma has
long framed debates about the relative
importance of genes and environment on
human development. For CIFAR member
Clyde Hertzman, who is a professor of
population health at the University of
British Columbia, the question is far more
nuanced. Ongoing research illustrates how,
rather than genes being responsible for one
job and environmental factors for another,
the real story centres around how nature
and nurture interact with one another.
Events in the external world can leave
biochemical fingerprints on a child’s DNA,
changing the course of everything from
brain complexity to motor skills – some
of the fundamental characteristics of
individual identity.
“We’re coming to understand now that early
experience gets under the skin,” he says.
That thesis holds enormous implications
for early childhood education, parenting
techniques and health policy. The
phenomenon also suggests that
an individual’s genetic make-up is
programmed to adapt during the formative
early years to both positive and negative
external stimuli.
The mechanics of this process involve
subtle changes in brain chemistry.
When very young children experience
things – anything from the soothing
sound of a parent’s voice to the screams
emanating from a domestic assault – those
occurrences are carried into the brain
in the form of electrical signals. Stressinducing
experiences are associated with
heightened cortisol levels, Hertzman says.
These signals create a kind of biochemical
“cascade” that can trigger structural and
chemical changes to cytosine, one of the
four building-block components of DNA.
The cascade leaves behind distinctive
patterns of a methyl compound, which
in turn affects the way these genes will
express themselves.
This is “the outside world and DNA talking
to one another,” he says.
Animal and early human studies on blood
and saliva cells suggest that methylation
patterns differ noticeably with exposure to
positive and negative stimuli.
Events in the external world can leave biochemical fingerprints
on a child’s DNA, changing the course of everything from
brain complexity to motor skills – some of the fundamental
characteristics of individual identity.
09
“Right now, we’re at the statistical
association point,” Hertzman says,
noting that researchers thus far have
had to infer methylation patterns in
brain tissue.
How gene-environment interactions
affect children’s development and
help shape their identities may be
“way upstream,” affecting not only
the brain circuits that regulate stress
hormones, but also the evolution of
the organ systems that manufacture
these hormones.
“Preliminary evidence suggests that
the capacity of early experience to leave
epigenetic marks is greater than with
later experiences,” Hertzman says,
(although the phenomenon has also
been observed among people who
have endured profoundly traumatic
experiences later in life, including living
through the Holocaust).
It may also be the case that these
changes can become intergenerational,
explaining how the effects of trauma can
indeed be passed from parent to child.

YOU ARE THE GROUPS
YOU BELONG TO
M
ost people think of the “self” as a
package of specific personality traits and
capabilities that define how they deal with the
world each day. But for Alex Haslam, CIFAR
researcher and University of Exeter social
psychologist, the elusive “I” that has fascinated
thinkers through history is more of a process
than a fixed mental operating system.
“In most contexts,” he says during a phone
interview from Brisbane, Australia, “our sense
of who we are is based on group membership.
More important is the ‘we’ of the self.”
Human beings, according to Haslam’s
research, define themselves in terms of their
group memberships, and these vary constantly
– not just over the course of a lifetime, but
during an ordinary day. On the job, a person’s
sense of self reflects her participation in a
workforce, an office or a profession. Riding
home on the subway, a person may identify
herself as a commuter and likely conduct
herself by the prevailing norms established by
commuters as a group. Back home, that same
individual takes on another role defined by
their prevailing family structure.
Haslam says this fluidity explains why some
people may be aggressive or driven at work but
very mild and laid back at home.
“Who we are is negotiated as part of the social
context,” says Haslam. “All the time, the self
is constantly being updated and modified
to deal with the particular circumstances in
which we find ourselves. And most of those
circumstances are social.”
Without social interaction, our sense of self is
thoroughly compromised. If people are cut off
from a valued group, they experience something
akin to a sharp physical pain.
More than two millennia ago, the Greek
philosopher Aristotle proposed that
man is “a social animal.” But Haslam’s
explanation of the self goes well beyond
an affirmation of that philosophical
hypothesis. When individuals lose access
to valued group memberships – due
to illness, retirement, etc. – they find
themselves far more vulnerable to a
range of health problems. In the medical
literature, he observes, the gravest threat
to human health – more than bad genes
or even risky behaviours like smoking and
poor diet – is social isolation.
“Without social interaction, our sense of
self is thoroughly compromised,” he says.
“If people are cut off from a valued group,
they experience something akin to a sharp
physical pain.” Others, like frail seniors
who’ve had to move into nursing homes
full of strangers, can lose the will to live.
11
Conversely, Haslam’s recent research
has shown that among individuals who
have suffered strokes or head injuries,
those most likely to recover are those
who also maintain strong affiliations
with social groups and are generally
satisfied with their lives.
Haslam says individuals would be well
advised to maintain multiple group
memberships as a kind of psychological
hedging strategy against the risk of
being cut off from one such group due
to unforeseen events. Especially for
professionals who derive much of their
identity from their jobs, it’s crucial to
maintain a work-life balance, he adds.
“You really don’t want to have your eggs
in one basket.”

YOU ARE YOUR GUIDE TO
ITALIAN PHILOSOPHY
BY PATCHEN BARSS
M
any more CIFAR researchers have
answers to the question, “Who are you?”
Geoffrey Hinton, CIFAR Program Director
and recent Herzberg medal winner is
no exception.
“You are the result of powerful learning
procedures interacting with a highly
structured environment to set trillions of
connection strengths in a huge parallel
computer that has evolved to have
processing elements and connectivity
patterns that make this work,” he said.
The “huge parallel computer” he refers to
is the human brain. Dr. Hinton works in
artificial intelligence and machine learning,
trying to duplicate human cognitive powers
in an artificial neural network.
So how would an artificial brain answer
the question?
Hinton and a small team of researchers
recently designed a relatively simple
neural network that has massive capacity
to analyze patterns and make predictions
based on those patterns. The researchers
“taught” this recurrent neural network
on 100-million characters of text drawn
from Wikipedia. They can now give the
network just a few words to start, and it
will compose text based on the patterns
it has learned. Sometimes the results
are nonsense, but they do demonstrate
a surprisingly sophisticated ability to
create words and sentences.
Here are some unfiltered results of how
this software completed the sentence
“You are your ...”
You are your lives?
You are your finestone for a leather’s
paper, or is stocked with the noise
unmanned.
You are your last even science.
You are your career.
12
With a little human intervention (which
means having a graduate student pick out
some of the network’s more interesting
responses) the list becomes quite evocative.
All of these were generated by the network
in its first 70 attempts:
You are your name.
You are your descendant!
You are your guide to Italian philosophy.
You are your past.
You are your knowledge.
You are your real life.
You are your face.
You are your reasoning.
You are your government agent.
“Artificial neural networks are very far from
having their own personal identity,” said
Ilya Sutskever, who is a graduate student
in Hinton’s laboratory. (Sutskever was the
researcher who developed this particular
network.) But with neural networks rapidly
gaining more sophisticated understanding
of syntax, music, images and objects,
the gap between human and computer
understanding of the world is getting smaller.
Many non-researchers have started to become
familiar with computers that match or
exceed human capacity with specific tasks
of reasoning or strategy – playing chess,
poker, or Jeopardy! for example. But Hinton,
Sutskever and others are working on artificial
brains that are more universal in their ability
to learn. Inevitably, this leads to questions
related to identity.
“Since the brain’s function is to process
information in incredibly complex ways, if we
process the same information in essentially
the same way on a supercomputer, we should
get the same result: identity,” Sutskever said.

CIFAR TIMELINE
EXPLORATION
PROGRAM
CIFAR FOUNDED
1982
Artificial Intelligence
and Robotics
Evolutionary Biology
Cosmology
and Gravity
Population Health
Earth System Evolution
Laws and the Determinants
of Social Order
Superconductivity
Human Development
Economic Growth and Policy
Science of Soft Surfaces and Interfaces
Since its founding in 1982, CIFAR has launched 19
research programs, and conducted many additional
workshops and explorations. Often, when one program
wound down, it led to the launch of another. Here is a
timeline of the Institute’s evolving research portfolio
over its nearly three decades of operation.
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Integrated Microbial Biodiversity
Successful Societies
Experience-based Brain and
Biological Development
Institutions, Organizations and Growth
Nanoelectronics
Quantum Information Processing
Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception
Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being
13
Became Quantum Materials
Genetic Networks
Oceans
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Astrobiology
Cellular Decision-Making
Humanities Initiative
Human-Environment Interactions

VISIONARIES’ CIRCLE
($100,000 +)
$5 million
Government of Canada*
$3.4 million
Government of Ontario*
$2 million
Government of British Columbia*
$655,000
Government of Alberta*
$500,000
Government of Quebec
$200,000 - $499,999
The Lawson Foundation*
RBC Foundation*
(1 Anonymous Donor)
$100,000 - $199,999
Arthur J.E. Child Foundation*
Ivey Foundation*
The T.R. Meighen Foundation*
DISCOVERERS’ CIRCLE
($50,000 - $99,999)
Peter A. Allen
The Alva Foundation
Margaret and G.W.F. McCain*
John and Mary Barnett
Peter J. G. Bentley*
The George Cedric Metcalf
Charitable Foundation
The Harold Crabtree Foundation*
George A. Fierheller*
Flair Foundation
Great-West Life, London Life
and Canada Life
Jerry and Geraldine Heffernan*
Richard and Donna Ivey Fund at the
Toronto Community Foundation*
The Henry White Kinnear Foundation
The Michael and Sonja Koerner
Charitable Foundation
Bruce H. Mitchell*
Power Corporation of Canada*
George Weston Limited*
The Young Family Fund at the Hamilton
Community Foundation
CIFAR DONORS
CIFAR is truly thankful for the generous support of the following governments,
foundations, corporations and individuals.
EXPLORERS’ CIRCLE
($25,000 - $49,999)
Canada Colors and Chemicals Limited
The John Dobson Foundation*
John and Gay Evans*
Hydro One Inc.*
Scotiabank*
The W. Garfield Weston Foundation*
BUILDERS’ CIRCLE
($10,000 - $24,999)
James C. Baillie*
Bealight Foundation*
The Liz and Tony Comper Foundation*
H. Purdy Crawford*
David A. Dodge
Bruno Ducharme
Murray and Heather Edwards
Anthony S. Fell
Anthony R.M. Graham*
Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky
Gluskin Charitable Foundation*
Richard M. Ivey*
David and Sheryl Kerr*
The McLean Foundation*
Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP*
Gilles and Julia Ouellette*
Roger Phillips
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP*
Charles Sirois
Barbara Stymiest
The Wilson Foundation
Alfred G. Wirth*
BENEFACTORS’ CIRCLE
($5,000 - $9,999)
Bill Blundell*
Pierre Y. Ducros*
Derek and Adrienne Fisher*
Brian J. Gibson
Richard and Nancy Hamm
Charles H. Hantho and Eileen Mercier*
John and Millie Helliwell
Chaviva Hošek*
Syd Jackson*
Robin Korthals*
Richard E. Rooney and Laura Dinner*
William and Meredith Saunderson
Arthur R. Sawchuk*
Ronald and Janet Stern
Carole Taylor
Ilse Treurnicht*
Trottier Family Foundation
Peter Nicholson
(1 Anonymous Donor)
14
DEVELOPERS’ CIRCLE
($2,500 - $4,999)
Stuart Butts
Cenovus Energy
David W. Choi
Douglas and Ruth Grant
The Ralph and Roslyn Halbert Foundation
Richard and Lois Haskayne*
The Kololian Foundation
John C. Madden
Kara Palleschi*
Gerard and Gail Protti
Pat and Pekka Sinervo
Marion and Gerald Soloway
Sunville Printco Inc.
The Mauro Family Fund
VanCity Community Foundation
PATRONS’ CIRCLE
($1,000 - $2,499)
Michael Adams
Marsha and Aubrey Baillie Fund at the
Oakville Community Foundation
Mona H. Bandeen*
Beverley Brennan*
Bruce and Mary Ann Burton
Minu and Raj Chandaria
Larry D. Clarke*
Ronald Laird Cliff*
John A. Cook and Sarah Pendleton
Sydney and Florence Cooper Foundation*
C. William Daniel
Stephen J. Donovan*
William A. Downe*
John T. Ferguson
Robert C. Dowsett and Anne Folger*
James C. Duffield*
William F. Falk and Kate Fillion*
Galin Foundation
Elizabeth Gerrits and Gordon Evans*
Harold Giles
Heather Gordon*
H. Donald Guthrie*
Peter A. Hall
Suzanne Ivey Cook
Michèle Lamont and Frank Dobbin
Lorraine and Claude Lamoureux*
J. Spencer Lanthier*
David Laprise
Michael and June Mackenzie
Sandy Auld MacTaggart

PATRONS’ CIRCLE
CONTINUED
John and Maggie Mitchell
Jerry X. Mitrovica*
Nancy’s Very Own Foundation
Martha C. Piper
Gail Regan
Dr. Huntington Sheldon
Dorothy Shoichet
Mel Silverman*
Kara M. Spence*
Walter Stewart and Associates
Louis Taillefer
Carol Mitchell and Richard E. Venn*
Ed Waitzer and Smadar Peretz
Jane M. Wilson*
(3 Anonymous Donors)
SUPPORTERS’ CIRCLE
($500 - $999)
Patricia A. Baird*
George Bezaire
Gérard Bouchard
William J. L. Buyers
Paul G.S. Cantor
Connell Limited Partnership*
Marcel Côte
J. Stefan and Anne Dupré*
Dr. Reva Gerstein, C.C., O.Ont.*
Germaine Gibara
Nancy and Frank Iacobucci
David L. Johnston*
David H. Laidley, FCA
Ruixing Liang
Stephen D. Lister and Molly Rundle
The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation
W. John McDonald
David Sankoff
Marla and Allen Sokolowski
Hugo F. Sonnenschein
Marnie A. Spears*
The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
Doug Todgham*
The William and Nancy Turner Foundation
Susan Waterfield
Hugh R. Wilson and Frances Wilkinson
James A. Woods and Assoc. Inc.
(2 Anonymous Donors)
FRIENDS’ CIRCLE
($100 - $499)
Susan Abbott
David J.R. Angell
Jonathan Arac
O.K. Baek
Karen Baker-MacGrotty
Harry Baumann*
The Hon. Mauril Bélanger
Dennis Bennie
Alexandre Blais
Wendy M. Cecil
Samantha Charlesworth
Community Foundation of Ottawa
George and Sheila Connell*
Jean-Charles D’Amours
Natalie Zemon Davis *
Marie Day
Lesley B. Evans*
Rebecca Finlay
Thérèse Gaudry
Guillaume Gervais
Joseph Glaister*
David S. Goldbloom
Michael W. Gray
David and Annette Grier*
Dr. and Mrs. B. and A. Heinrich
Elhanan Helpman
Russell Hiscock
Nancy Howe
Sally-Anne and Rudolf Hrica*
Stephen R. Julian
George Kirczenow*
Carol Kirsh*
Jack Laidlaw
The Hon. Marc Lalonde
Scott and Sara Lamb*
Janet and Bill L’Heureux
May Maskow*
Jennifer Mauro
Sherry McPhail
Donald McQ Shaver
Simon Miles
Michele Mosca
Jatin Nathwani
Fiona Nelson
Mick O’Meara
Lana Paton
(Donations received between July 1, 2009 to February 28, 2011)
If you have any questions about this listing, or if your recognition wishes have changed,
please contact Raissa Espiritu at 416-971-4876 or respiritu@cifar.ca
15
FRIENDS’ CIRCLE
CONTINUED
Margaret Phillips*
Sylvia Pivko
E. Courtney Pratt
Donald S. Rickerd
William and Helen Robson
H. L. Sable
André Saumier
T. Ann Smiley*
Arlene and Bob Stamp
Brian Surgenor
Telemission Information Inc.
Laurent Taillefer
Michèle Thibodeau-Deguire*
Chris Voegeli
Allan Alexander Warrack
Lorraine Bell and Mark Weisdorf
Anne C. Wettlaufer
Diane Wilson
Hugh Wright
Adam H. Zimmerman
(7 Anonymous Donors)
CIFAR also thanks Maple Leaf Foods for
its support.
*indicates donors who have given
consecutively for five or more years.

Making big
thinking happen
For me, CIFAR is about collaboration. It’s about shaping
the future of knowledge in unparalleled ways.
My recent gift to CIFAR commemorated
the brilliant late scientist Lev Kofman
who was a member of CIFAR’s Cosmology
and Gravity program. Lev truly exemplified
CIFAR’s spirit of collegiality and big
thinking. I remember watching Lev
bounce ideas around with his good friend
Dick Bond, program director for CIFAR’s
Cosmology and Gravity program. It was
incredible to watch the two of them interact.
www.cifar.ca/donate
16
CIFAR truly is a great advantage for
Canadian research. The Institute’s Junior
Fellow Academy continues this important
work. By pairing early-career researchers
with leading scholars worldwide, CIFAR is
helping the next generation of thinkers to
advance research and enrich human life.
Not only am I thrilled to support this way
of thinking, I know Lev would be, too.
PETER ALLEN, CIFAR DONOR
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Reseach needs the support of people like you to help us keep asking Big Questions.
CIFAR program members never know where their research will take them. Their questions require explorations of
the smallest atoms and the farthest galaxies. The research they do is interdisciplinary, collaborative, risky, and aimed
at creating knowledge with the potential to change how we understand our world. You can join them on their journey
by making a tax-deductible donation at

David Dodge
(Chair)
Former Governor
Bank of Canada
Ottawa
Chaviva M. Hošek
President and CEO
CIFAR
Toronto
Bruce H. Mitchell
(Vice-Chair)
Chairman and CEO
Permian Industries Limited
Toronto
Martha C. Piper
(Vice-Chair)
Chair of Board of Trustees
National Institute for
Nanotechnology
Edmonton
Richard W. Ivey
(Immediate Past Chair)
Chairman and CEO
Ivest Corporation
Toronto
Peter J.G. Bentley
Director and Chair Emeritus
Canfor Corporation
Vancouver
David Choi
President and CEO
Royal Pacific Realty
Vancouver
CIFAR BOARD OF DIRECTORS
2010/2011
Anthony F. Comper
Immediate Past President and CEO
BMO Financial Group
Toronto
Bruno Ducharme
Chairman
TIW Capital Partners
London, U.K.
Pierre Ducros
President
P. Ducros and Associates
Montreal
George A. Fierheller
President
Four Halls Inc.
Toronto
Pierre Fortin
Department of Economics
Université du Québec à Montréal
Montreal
Anthony R. Graham
President
Wittington Investments, Ltd.
Toronto
Maxine Granovsky Gluskin
Trustee
Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky
Gluskin Charitable Foundation
Toronto
Jacques Lamarre
Strategic Advisor
HeenanBlaikie LLP
Montreal
Frank O’Dea
President
O’Dea Management Limited
Ottawa
Gilles G. Ouellette
President and CEO
Private Client Group and
Deputy Chairman
BMO Nesbitt Burns
Toronto
Gerard J. Protti
Chairman
Flint-Transfield Services
Calgary
Hugo F. Sonnenschein
President Emeritus and
Distinguished Professor
University of Chicago
Chicago
Barbara Stymiest
Group Head of Strategy, Treasury
and Corporate Services
RBC Financial Group
Toronto
Ilse Treurnicht
President and CEO
MaRS Discovery District
Toronto

cifar.ca
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
180 Dundas Street West, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1Z8
T 416.971.4251 F 416.971.6169