A BAY ST. NUMBER-CRUNCHER WHO ACCIDENTALLY became a poster boy for solar energy. A musician turned seller of hemp-based T-shirts. A philanthropist turned entrepreneur who makes ‘giving back’ part of the corporate mission.

Meet the new world of companies that care.

Sure,more big businesses today are coming ’round to the view that business has social responsibilities that go beyond merely making a profit. But it remains to be seen whether most corporate CEOs—shackled by tradition, bureaucracy and a fairly short tenure at the top—have the clout or the time to make lasting changes in how their companies do business.

The good news, though, is that for creativity, commitment and ‘giving back,’ you won’t find better leaders than Canada’s small business entrepreneurs. What their companies lack in scale and influence they make up for in sheer numbers, innovation, and infectious enthusiasm—and the commitment to make social responsibility a permanent part of their business.

Consider the adventures of Alex Winch, a 39-year-old engineer and investment analyst.

Back in the mid-nineties as an analyst, Alex Winch got in tussle with Garth Drabinsky when he questioned the theatre baron’s accounting practices at Livent. Drabinsky was livid and sued Winch for libel and $10 million. After tiring of the Bay Street rat race and then running his own successful hedge fund in New York, he semi-retired to his home in Toronto’s trendy Beach community. Deciding to manage his own money for change, he started out buying a couple of commercial buildings, as many hands-on investors do. But what happened next was different.

In September 2002 Winch took control of a dowdy older building on Queen Street East consisting of one empty store, an apartment, and a laundromat with 18 washers and 10 dryers. He found a friend who agreed to run the laundromat and pay him a percentage of sales, but the deal fell through—and Winch became the accidental launderer.

Still, Winch approached this task with gusto. As you’d expect of a number-crunching engineer, he cleaned up the place and overhauled the heating system. An upgrade was definitely in order; water in the upstairs apartment was heated with electricity. An oil-fired boiler heated the radiators, and natural gas heated laundry water. “There was no integration, no attempt at energy conservancy,” says Winch. “You couldn’t hav run it worse.”