My name is Ben Coleman, and I’m an endlessly curious person who lives in Toronto.

Picture of Ben

What are you currently up to?

I’m currently working at the Scarborough Health Network Foundation supporting their Love, Scarborough campaign. Before that I spent five years in the arts working in government relations (i.e. grant writing and advocacy) for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto International Film Festival.

I’m also a board member at FLAP Canada. FLAP Canada works to stop birds from flying into windows because they very often become injured or die. Window collisions are a leading cause of bird species mortality, so it’s an important problem to solve if we want to prevent population depletion and over the long term—extinction.

What’s the best way to contact you?

The best way to contact me is to message me on LinkedIn or to contact me at my work email, which can be found on the SHN Foundation staff listing.

Where did you go to school?

I am a graduate of the University of Toronto (HBSc, 2017). I majored in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and minored in Statistics and Biomaterials.

What things did you get up to while studying at UofT?

I did some student politics type-things, including serving as President of the University of Toronto Students’ Union in 2015-2016 and being a student member of the UofT Governing Council.

I also had some interesting jobs — in my last year of studies, I worked for George Brown College transcribing classes for Deaf and hard of hearing students and had the opportunity to learn about a whole array of subjects ranging from food service in healthcare to computer security. My fondest memories are probably earlier in my studies when I worked at Environment Canada for two summers doing research in Saskatchewan and then before that as a camp counsellor/instructor at the High Park Children’s Eco Garden.

Have you ever worn a novelty plush moustache?

Yes.

Ben and Eli wearing moustaches

Left: me, Right: Eli, one of my younger brothers.

Does This Website Have a Privacy Policy?

No, but…

I do try to make sure that there are no trackers etc. The only exception is that I use basic Google Analytics. If you want to block that, it’s pretty easy with Privacy Badger.

I tried to remove all the embedded content from when this site was hosted on Wordpress to make sure there aren’t any third-party trackers. If I missed any, let me know!

Other than that, I get some other basic information from the fact that the site is served through Cloudflare, but to the best of my knowledge, that information is aggregated and anonymous (on my end, anyway…).

Content Notes

  • I wrote my old meeting notes (“I Went To This Meeting”) using the style of a Vancouver Sun column about the Canucks.  You can see an example here.

  • The footer image is from a picture I took at Douglas Provincial Park in Saskatchewan. You can view the whole image below:

Picture of Douglas Provincial Park