Lots of good things happening in Toronto: WattPad, ClearFit, Top Hat Monocle, CrowdCare, Interaxon. For more insight, check out this infographic: http://www.markevans.ca/hot-startups/
Although it's still a quasi-secret, Toronto's startup ecosystem is thriving. There is still room for improvement, particularly the need for more capital and more support from the city.
To be honest, LinkedIn doesn't offer a lot of creative flexibility but here's a couple of ideas:
1. You can make your profile less formal by giving it some personality.
2. Take the same approach to your company profile by injecting some fun and liveliness.
Twitter has thrived by letting developers use its API to create a wonderfully diverse application ecosystem. The problem now is the ecosystem is thriving while Twitter struggles to find its way. Twitter has done difficult decisions to make.
This is an interesting PR campaign by the Nova Scotia Tourism Bureau that has captured a lot of attention but doesn't quite work effectively. I give them points for trying, including the use Hacker News.
Actually, Flickr never raised money from U.S. VCs before they were purchased by Yahoo. If I've got my facts straight, they did some angel financing in Canada from investors such as Dick Hart.