Canadian Technology Stocks
On October 21st, Arise Technologies (TSX:APV) reported that industry veteran Dan Shea was taking over as CEO of the Waterloo solar cell technology company. When some media reported that a former RIM exec was taking the helm, it may have sent some stock speculators looking for the name Balsillie, Lazaridis or even Fregin. As it [...]
OK, it’s probably not because of this past summer’s appearance by CEO David Demers on CNBC’s Mad Money, with bombastic host Jim Cramer. Nonetheless, recent filings revealed that legendary investor George Soros, through his hedge fund group Soros Fund Management, became the largest shareholder of Westport Innovations in the first quarter of 2010. Soros now [...]
In Alberta’s oil sands, it’s hard to trust a number. Oil sands fuel creates 82 percent more greenhouse gases than regular fuel, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Not so, says IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, who say that number is more in the range of five to fifteen per cent higher than the average [...]
On the morning of April 28th, 2008, Robert Colson, a heavy equipment operator with Syncrude, was working near the company’s Aurora tailings pond, a body of water used to process oil sands waste products that is located about 75 km north of Fort McMurray. Between 8:45 and 9 a.m, according to transcripts, Colson saw some [...]
The debate over whether carbon offsets work in the real world is a long, complicated and, ultimately, incomplete one. Some argue that the concept of ‘additionality”, the idea that the consumer is unaware whether an offset solution would have happened regardless of the additional funds, renders the market ripe for scandal. Others say carbon offsets [...]
Harold Kinasewich’s business life has been all about water. Kinasewich, now the President and CEO of Edmonton based Seair, founded O’Canada Spring Water and 02 Canada Beverages, companies that made oxygenated spring water. Understanding that technology led him to Seair, which develops technologies that diffuse gases into liquids. Seair’s diffusion system creates bubbles of ozone, [...]
Calgary’s Jim Letourneau is a geologist and investor with an eye for technology. As publisher and editor of Jim Letourneau’s Big Picture Speculator, Jim is as likely to comment on his favorite new iPad app as he is on the price of copper. Letourneau’s unique vantage point led him to Edmonton’s Wavefront Technologies (TSXV:WEE), a [...]
Vancouver’s Bioteq Environmental (TSXV:BQE), which has been working with water treatment technologies since 1998, has a pitch that is hard for many of the world’s larger mining companies and utility operators to refuse. In an increasingly regulated environment, Bioteq has developed a sulphide based process that recovers metals and leaves behind clean water. Old sulphate [...]
Read the words fish-farming, or aquaculture in the media and it’s never long before you are reading the word controversial. As little as five years ago there were just two sides debating the topic and neither was retreating. On one side were groups like GreenPeace, which has opposed open net cage fish farms for more [...]
Has Canada seen a more compact and dramatic rags-to riches-to rags story than that of Timminco? The spectacular rise and fall of the Toronto based solar-silcon and silcion metal producer seems to be torn from the pages of a Hollywood script or Broadway musical. In late 2006, Timminco shares were worth pennies, closing that year [...]
