On display are jars of the stuff in varying golden hues, including their popular Neighbourhood Honey harvested from across Winnipeg. But the sweet treat is a byproduct of their true raison d’etre: getting you to care about bees.

Owners Lindsay Nikkel [BN/06] and Chris Kirouac [BN/06] are trying to help the world out of a sticky situation: almost three quarters of crops depend on bees and other pollinators to produce our food, but those populations are sharply declining.

Last year, Canada reported the highest loss of bees in nearly a decade. If you’re eating right now, take note: one in every three bites Canadians take is made possible by pollinators like bees.

“There’s a big misconception that we’re just worried about honey,” Kirouac says. “People aren’t thinking about food production and food security.”

With concerns like these, you might be surprised that Kirouac and Nikkel are nurses. The husband-and-wife duo met as students at the U of M but changed day-jobs when Kirouac took the university’s “Beekeeping for the Hobbyist” course out of curiosity.

“Chris kept saying to me ‘we need to get a hive’,” Nikkel says. “I thought, ‘you know what, he just needs to stop talking about it and get one’. We started out with five, which turned into 10, then 20. All of a sudden, we had 140 hives in the country. This was no longer a hobby – we had to make a decision.”

The bees won.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

Early into their hobby, Kirouac and Nikkel unwittingly broke the law: they installed a hive on their deck in Wolseley before realizing it was illegal. But it gave them pause: wouldn’t it be easier to get people to care about bees if they saw the process happening around them?

After successfully lobbying the city to lift its ban on urban beekeeping in 2017, BeeProject Apiaries adopted an in-your-neighbourhood approach.

Chris Kirouac gives an inside look at Red River College’s rooftop hive to employees. // Photo from Lucas Smith

They have hives in 95 locations around Winnipeg – mainly on rooftops – including Manitoba Hydro, Red River College and CBC Manitoba. In what is essentially a turnkey operation, BeeProject installs and maintains the hives, then delivers the honey (up to 25 kg) at season’s end. They also host workshops for their partners’ employees.

“We get them holding frames of honeybees, pointing out the queen, and they get really excited about what’s happening on their rooftop and what that means in terms of the community around them,” says Nikkel.

“It reminds people that bees are living in and moving through their neighbourhoods, not just pollinating one backyard,” adds Kirouac.

Public health education is an essential part of BeeProject – something they attribute to their nursing background. They see urban beekeeping as a preventative medicine for a variety of issues facing bee populations such as monocultures in industrial agriculture and pesticides.

“We’ve noticed some big parallels [to health care] along the lines of drug resistance from improper or overuse use of pharmaceuticals, or the tendency to look for a quick response to a problem rather than a preventative approach,” explains Kirouac, noting they practice and advocate sustainable beekeeping methods like avoiding antibiotics.

“A lot of old-school beekeepers never went to university; being trained in the scientific process and using evidence-based strategy was a big thing for us.”

BEE EDUCATED

Besides combating the world’s pollination problem, BeeProject is also fighting fake news: bees aren’t aggressive. The number one concern they heard while lobbying city hall was the fear of increased human-bee interaction.

“People think bees are synonymous with wasps but there are pretty major differences,” says Kirouac. For example: “Bees are vegetarian, they’re not after your barbecue chicken.” They sting only as a last resort because they die afterwards, and male bees don’t have stingers, so they’re harmless.

School kids investigate an observation hive with Chris Kirouac. // Photo from Lindsay Nikkel

It’s one of the reasons BeeProject expanded their outreach to schools, visiting 40 classrooms in 2018.

“We often bring an observation hive, which is a live hive but it’s enclosed so kids can get up close without any risk of harm,” Nikkel explains. “It’s a really engaging way of getting them talking about how fun bees are.” But her favourite activities are field trips to their hive in Assiniboine Park. “It’s all smiles the whole time. It’s an empowering moment when you get them holding a frame of bees and they’re like ‘I can do this, and I’m not scared.’”

Nikkel and Kirouac live and breathe bees – even describe themselves in honeyed terms. “I would be a creamed honey because I don’t like things messy,” admits Nikkel, who manages BeeProject’s social media and photography. Kirouac, who is often in front of the camera, is buckwheat honey, “complex, dense, with a salty caramel taste. It’s kind of got an overblown personality.”

Their two young daughters are also big fans of bees and their mom’s favourite statistic: “about 98 per cent of bees in the hive are female and they do all the work.” (Come winter, they’re physically kicked out of the hive.)

The family hopes their education will inspire more “bee ambassadors”. Even if people don’t become beekeepers, they can have an impact as citizens, consumers and gardeners.

Grow a variety of plants, which bloom at different times so bees have a continuous food source. Write to politicians about widening bans on pesticides and choose organic treatments for your own yard. Buy local honey instead of the imported grocery store variety which can be laden with contaminants and corn syrup.

It’ll make life that much sweeter – for you, and the bees.

Trailblazer Talks is an introduction to U of M alumni who are tackling global issues, challenging the status quo, and discovering new ways we can live better. Read more from this series here.

Then his boss got the call that flipped everything on its head: Rick Rypien, former Manitoba Moose and recently signed Jet, had taken his life after years of battling depression.

Green [BEd/00] is the first to admit he “knew nothing” about mental health education, but mere hours into his first day on the job, that was his new mission.

Project 11 was borne out of a desire to pay tribute to Rypien (it’s named after his jersey number), and to fill a gap in youth mental health education, which was something the Jets knew he had hoped to be an ambassador for.

From his years as a middle school teacher in at-risk schools Green knew “what’s offered didn’t really do much. Groups would come in for a day, get everybody riled up, excited, and then they leave. The teacher would feel like they were left picking up the pieces.”

For Green, that meant some unconventional interventions at times. “I had two girls who were going down a pretty bad path and to keep them busy I told them they could paint my classroom. Because I had no clue [what to do],” he explains, adding, “There are so many kids looking for an outlet to get out of their pain.”

Integrated into the provincial K­-8 English Language Arts and Physical Education/Health Education curriculum, Project 11 is a 15-week teacher-led program with lessons designed to encourage mental health awareness and help kids develop positive coping skills.

Concepts like focusing the mind, increasing self-awareness and building positive relationships are explored, often by video. The episode “Fun with Food”, features radio personality Ace Burpee and a local dietician. While cooking in the Jets locker room, they chat candidly about healthy eating while discussing positive body image.

“We want students to learn, self-reflect and find what works for them,” says Suzi Friesen, director of programming. “Maybe you’re always anxious before every math test. What are we going to do to help with that anxiety and that angst? In our lessons it’s a lot of problem-solving. There’s always an answer, no reason to feel stuck. Kids need to learn to stand on their own two feet and find that confidence within.”

The results, after five years in schools, are more than encouraging. Teachers have reported a 54 per cent decrease in bullying among students in the program, as well as an increase in pro-social behaviour including their ability to problem solve and manage healthy relationships.

The changes go beyond the classroom as well. Friesen recalls a family whose kids asked that they all find time to eat dinner together and turn away from their phones and devices. Their home life, which the mom used to describe as “chaotic” is now calmed from the simple act of being together and having an opportunity to unpack the day, touch base and problem solve as a family.

Green, Friesen, and the Project 11 team are now looking at expanding into other provinces. They’re already translating curriculums for French immersion, and re-evaluating when certain topics are addressed. “Technology is the worst,” Green remarks as he notes that they are now teaching the importance of unplugging as early as grade two – at teachers’ requests.

At the end of the day, Green says “it really has nothing to do with hockey. It’s all about mental wellness and making it relevant for kids.”

For Winnipeg fans, it’s just another reason to cheer on the home team.

Trailblazer Talks is a new series featuring U of M alumni who are tackling global issues, challenging the status quo, and discovering new ways we can live better.

It’s frustrating; you might be late; and, if you’d known about the train, you’d probably have changed your route.

Now, imagine you aren’t a regular commuter but a paramedic transporting a patient to hospital. Or a firefighter on your way to a call. Suddenly, an inconvenient situation becomes life-threatening.

It’s a situation Garreth Rempel [BSc(CE)/06, PhD/11], is trying to prevent. While managing a transportation consulting company fresh out of grad school, he was approached by a firefighter.

“He said, ‘you know, I’m getting stuck at railway crossings all the time. Do you know of anything I can use to avoid them? Because there’s a big risk here for obvious reasons.’” Rempel recalls. “I just assumed there would be something I could find that existed. But I had to get back to him and say, ‘sorry, you’re out of luck.’”

That was 2014. Today, first-responders, bus operators, truck drivers and the average citizen can use TRAINFO to avoid delays at railway crossings. 

Co-founded by Rempel, Neil Ternowetsky [BEnvSc./03], with Jeannette Montufar [BSc(CE)/94, MSc/97, PhD/02] and U of M professor Jonathan Regehr [BSc(CE)/03, PhD/09] , TRAINFO collects data on train crossings and shares it through real-time travel apps, road signs, and fleet management software.

Winnipeggers who encounter the infamous Waverley train may already be familiar with TRAINFO. In 2017, the city installed an electronic sign on northbound Waverley near McGillivrary which informs drivers of anticipated trains and estimated travel times.

“People are generally OK with delays as long as they know what it’s going to be and that it’s fairly consistent and predictable. That’s some of the feedback we’ve received from our implementation on Waverley. People are saying, “I don’t re-route that often but now that I know when it’s going to be blocked and how much delay there is, [I do].”

Soon, drivers will be able to supplement this with a hands-free mobile app which will provide audible alerts of impending trains. Rempel and his team are also working with the City of Winnipeg to use the data they’re collecting to adjust traffic signal timing before, during and after train crossings to reduce congestion.

The diagnosis

A 15 minute drive from Rempel’s office, Craig Milligan [BSc(CE)/07, PhD/15] and some fellow engineering grads in the U of M’s Smartpark are harnessing the power of near-miss data to predict collisions at intersections.

His company, MicroTraffic, uses deep learning artificial intelligence to analyze traffic video for the position, speed, acceleration, and bearing of vehicles. From this, they track trajectories and detect the future risk of collisions.

“The idea is to be more proactive. To set up a lot of cameras at a lot of intersections and find where serious near-misses are happening before the fatal accidents happen. That lets the traffic engineers reconfigure an intersection before it’s too late.”

Working from a library of nearly 5,000 intersection improvement concepts, Milligan and his team are like doctors selecting the right treatment for a diagnosis.

If an intersection is shown to have a risk for drivers making left turns, for example, they might suggest prohibiting those turns at specific times of the day, adding a turning lane, or reducing the speed on the road.

Reconfiguring intersections can be costly and controversial; data is often what’s needed to win over the toughest crowds.

“We had one government in Canada who was able to get political support to reconfigure 28 intersections after our study. So in area where they were having a hard time making positive change, analytics kind of cleared the way. Those changes are predicted to save multiple lives in the next 10 years.”

MicroTraffic is not limiting its focus to Canada. The U.S. is also a big market (32,000 Americans die on roads every year, mostly at intersections), as is the Middle East (the UAE has banned the dangerous left turn), and developing countries who are seeing road fatalities increase as income levels and motorization rise.

The company is currently undertaking the world’s largest video-based surrogate studies, to compile a global database of near-miss data.

“The more baseline information we collect on near misses and the way people drive, the more we correlate that to accident counts, the better ability [traffic engineers] will have to say “I know this near-miss means we have a 50/50 chance of a fatality in the next three years.” Because it’s been correlated to a huge database, they can justify spending some money to stop that.”

Computers are the new concrete

In transportation – an industry where physical infrastructure reigns – data is fast becoming an invaluable resource. Entrepreneurs like Rempel and Milligan are finding new ways to harness it to improve road safety now, and into the future, where humans may not even be the ones driving.

Both TRAINFO and MicroTraffic are examining how the data they’re collecting can be used to improve autonomous vehicles. “It’s our hope that the behavioural patterns we observe can feed the risk anticipation models in self-driving cars,” says Milligan. “If a self-driving car going 80km/h is approaching a side street, they don’t know if that car there is going to jump out in front of them. Maybe nine out of 10 days it doesn’t, but that tenth day it does. What are the factors that will make it more likely to jump out? How can that car predict that kind of erratic behaviour and manage that risk?”

Rempel agrees. “The future of transportation is connected, automated and shared. Connected meaning vehicles talk to each other and to the infrastructure; automated in terms of not needing a driver to operate the vehicle; and shared like the Uber and Lyft models where you don’t own a vehicle anymore, you share a ride. None of that can happen without data.”

Trailblazer Talks is a new series featuring U of M alumni who are tackling global issues, challenging the status quo, and discovering new ways we can live better.