Toronto Life – December 2018

photographs: hinton by

daniel ehrenworth;

basseches courtesy of the rom; james,

khabouth by

getty images;

enenajor by

erin leydon

84 toronto life December 2018

Geoffrey

Hinton

Chief scientific advisor,

Vector Institute

ToronTo is To Ai what the Klondike was to the gold rush. Every com-

pany that wants in on the machine-learning revolution is setting up an

artificial intelligence lab here—including, this year alone, Samsung,

Adobe, LG and Nvidia. Hinton is the guy to thank for that. The so-called

godfather of artificial intelligence—he trained the AI aces who now

work at Google, Facebook and Apple—is the raison d’être for the Vec-

tor Institute, a downtown research hub that requires its international

investors to open AI labs in Canada. SIdE GIGS: He’s professor emeritus

at U of T and scientific advisor at Google Brain.

35

while the debate rages on about whether

King West or Yorkville is the city’s true glamour

mecca, a certain nightlife swami prefers to

hedge his bets. Last year, Khabouth cut the rib-

bon on Bisha, his lavish hotel around the corner

from TIFF Bell Lightbox, the rooftop where Van-

ity Fair hosted their 2018 TIFF bash. This sum-

mer it was Sofia, a high-end Italian restaurant in

the same building as the new Christian Loubou-

tin flagship. The restaurant is earning raves,

but for Khabouth, it’s already in the rearview.

up next: Like everyone else who wants to make

their deep pockets deeper, Khabouth is getting

into cannabis with his W-INK brand.

when cannabis was legalized this fall, half

a million Canadians with simple possession

charges became eligible for a legal pardon.

It’s a step in the right direction, according to

Enenajor, director of the Cannabis Amnesty

campaign. The defence attorney, who became

a named partner at Clayton Ruby’s firm at age

34, says cannabis convictions disproportion-

ately affect racialized and Indigenous popula-

tions and can get in the way of job and rent

applications, cross-border travel and custody

hearings. She aims to do something about it.

friends in high places: Aurora Cannabis

CEO Terry Booth donated $50,000 to the

amnesty campaign.

38

Charles Khabouth

RestauRateuR

basseches threw open

the original doors to the ROM

when he took over in 2016,

with the refurbished eastern

entrance, and free admission

to the First Peoples exhibi-

tion. His hospitality has paid

off. Membership has gone up

31 per cent in the past three

years to 120,000. Now, he’s

creating an outdoor space

and performance terrace on

Bloor Street, as a way of making the ROM a part of everyday

public life. up next: Launching ZUUL: Life of an Armoured

Dinosaur, starring a 76-million-year-old ankylosaur that’s one

of the best-preserved specimens in existence.

36

JosH BassecH es

Director, Royal Ontario Museum

the coolest thing out

of Scarborough since the

Weeknd, James made his

mark in 2016 as famed

sprinter Jesse Owens in Race

(earning him a Canadian

Screen Award for Best Actor).

He followed it up with a daz-

zling turn in If Beale Street

Could Talk and is now wow-

ing audiences with the twisty

psychological thriller Home-

coming alongside Julia Roberts, who gushed about the profes-

sionalism of her young co-star on the red carpet in September.

up next: Starring alongside Chadwick Boseman in 17 Bridges,

a taut drama about the hunt for a cop killer.

37

s tepH an James

Actor

The f

If

T

y M

O

s

T

Influen

TIA

l 2018

39

Annamaria Enenajor

Defence lawyeR

INFLUENTIALS_SEND.indd 84 18-10-31 12:46 PM