(
quality time
)
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ALEC JACOBSON DECEMBER/JANUARY 2020 BCBUSINESS 59
"I
've been doing elec-
trical engineering
my whole life," says
Michael Wrinch. "I was born
this way." When Wrinch was
a child, his mother noticed
that he enjoyed taking things
to pieces, so she asked the
local TV repairman to drop
off anything customers didn't
want fixed at the end of the
driveway. Wrinch would load
them in his wagon, take them
to the basement and dismantle
them. He estimates he took
apart 300 televisions, organiz-
ing the wires by colour and
collecting the tubes in a box.
The latest passion for the
CEO of engineering consulting
firm Hedgehog Technologies
is making bread and cheese.
Inspired by the food he and
his wife enjoyed on a trip to
France, he started off making
baguettes, using a stone mill to
grind wheat purchased from
local farms.
"As an engineer I make
things—that's what I like to
do," Wrinch explains. So then
he moved on to cheese. "Bread
has about four steps that
you can screw up," he says.
"Cheese has about 12."
The first he attempted, a
brie, took 14 tries to get right—
Hedgehog Technologies CEO Michael Wrinch
likes making dangerous things. One of them
is cheese
by Felicity Stone
W E E K E N D WA R R IOR
WARRIOR
SPOTLIGHT
Michael Wrinch graduated
from Memorial University
of Newfoundland in 2001,
after the dot-com crash
and 9/11, "when everyone
thought the world was going
to end," he says. Returning
to Vancouver to find no one
was hiring, he started an
engineering consulting firm,
Hedgehog Technologies.
The company, whose 20
staff recently moved into
a larger office in Burnaby,
does safety critical control;
builds things that are
dangerous, like submarines,
roller coasters and bumper
cars; and designs energy,
industrial, marine and rail
systems that require high
performance, safety and
exceptional reliability.
"Basically, what we are is
experts in is risk manage-
ment," Wrinch says. –F.S.
TASTE TEST
Wrinch has learned
how to produce brie
in his basement
"cheese factory"
Risky Business
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