George Takach, a veteran technology partner at McCarthy Tétrault, one of Canada’s largest firms, recalls cringing one day when he landed in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport after a trip to Sweden. Stockholm’s airport had been lined with displays touting Swedish industrial achievements, he says. The Pearson airport emphasized Canada as a tourist getaway: “blank gray walls, and a video showing a bush plane landing on a lake, with a backdrop of trees and rocks,” he says.
Takach is among the most senior of a circle of lawyers who are advising, facilitating and cheering on Canada’s resurgent—if sometimes overlooked—tech industry. (He feels so strongly about Canadian tech that in 2012 he made a bid to lead the country’s Liberal Party on a promise to push Canadian innovation to the fore, although he ultimately withdrew and endorsed candidate Justin Trudeau.)
