Allan Guinan

What I love most about my work is the challenge of really refining the task at hand and working collaboratively with our clients and internal teams towards a truly awesome solution.

I hail from the Manitoba prairies and spent a good portion of my childhood on family farms, surrounded by animals and nature. After graduating from the University of Manitoba, the pull to the big smoke was too strong to resist and I moved east to Ontario.

I am at my happiest in front of a chef’s oven cooking food for friends and family, I believe in the happy alchemy of creating and sharing food with loved ones. When not cooking, I find serenity by being in nature; having my hands in the soil brings me peace. Despite that, I’m often torn between my yearning to be in the great outdoors and to be downtown in the thick of it. I’m lucky enough to be able to divide my time between a Toronto condo with spectacular views and an Ontario lakeside cottage home where I’m surrounded by pine and Canadian Shield. The former energizes me; the latter grounds me.

Every year at the office Christmas cookie exchange, I make burnt toffee and chocolate bark studded with nuts. I didn’t realize quite how popular it was until the year I said I wasn’t making it because I was leaving early for the holidays. Near mutiny ensued and I quickly relented. The recipe is a secret; I still haven’t decided if I’ll ever share it!