News & Events

Prince Charles has left the building.

The Prince of Wales visited Ryerson yesterday during his tour of Canada marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The visit was part of a four-day tour of Canada by the prince and the Duchess of Cornwall (although Camilla wasn’t with the prince at Ryerson).

He spent about an hour at the Digital Media Zone (DMZ), accompanied by the Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty and led by President Sheldon Levy. His Royal Highness met with teams of students and alumni who are working in the Zone developing innovative, entrepreneurial ideas into businesses. Education and entrepreneurship opportunities for young people are two of the prince’s interests. The Prince’s Trust, a charitable organization, directly supports initiatives such as The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust.

During the visit, the DMZ and Prince Charles were trending on twitter.

Lindsey Goodchild, CEO and founder of Greengage, was nervous but mostly thrilled and excited to speak with the prince. She complimented His Royal Highness on his sustainability interests and initiatives and even quoted from a speech he made at the Accounting for Sustainability Forum.

“At the end of the day, you can’t really prepare for meeting royalty,” Goodchild said. “As much as it can be intimidating to meet the future king, he makes you feel at ease. He looks you in the eye, is very kind and wants you to feel calm around him. I actually forgot who I was and just focused on our company and what we do.”

Prince Charles heard presentations from four DMZ companies:

·         Bionik Labs: a medical engineering research and development corporation with a focus on ground-breaking prosthetics and rehabilitation devices. Projects under development include brain-controlled prosthetics, a system for walking rehabilitation as well as a permanent solution for total lung replacement.

·         500px: the Prince of Wales scrolled through photos on its interface as the team described their website that enables users to browse photos, view photographer profiles, create favorites, and follow photographers.

·         Greengage:  promotes environmentally sustainability through employee engagement tools and interactive management systems.

·         Flybits:  a Canadian leader in context-aware computing that has developed Toronto’s GO Transit’s first official mobile application, GO Mobile, which was downloaded over 750,000 times in its first eight weeks.

After meeting with students, His Royal Highness posted a tweet with Ryerson University’s Twitter handle: “Engaging & impressive innovators @RyersonDMZ. Higher-ed is being taken to the next level #RoyalTour @ClarenceHouse.

-with files from Lisa Pires