Three elements have conspired in the life of thirty-three year old Ryan Taylor to create the Fair Trade Jewellery Company. The first is that he hails from generations of miners, the most noteworthy of which is his great-aunt Viola MacMillan, the only woman in Canadian Mining hall of Fame.  The second is his discomfort with corporate life, which led him back to school to pursue the art of jewellery-making at George Brown College. The third is his Anglican upbringing and what he calls "Sunday School morals," which he credits for the code of ethics upon which Cabbagetown's Fair Trade Jewellery Company (FTJCO) is built.

Together with his wife Asaka Yamashita, (who will open a workshop in the back of FTJCO studio for the design and production of 'Sustainable Bridal' gowns) and business partner Robin Gambhir, Taylor has created a custom gold and diamond business that strives for fairness in all activities, including seeking out the most ethical ways to mine gold.

Through research on NGOs Taylor discovered a program called Ore Verde, which works in the Choc� Rain Forrest in Colombia, to ensure that mining is safely performed, mitigates any environmental damage done to the region with efforts to return the region to its original condition, and also protects miners' lives and livelihoods. A new documentary of his recent visit to the Choc� can be seen on the FTJCO website.

Taylor's plan for 2010, the first full fiscal year of his business, is to return 15% of his profits to the Choc�, an arrangement with a two-fold purpose: to support infrastructure for the projects, and to build trust with the families of miners.   FTJCO uses Canadian diamonds, third party certified and conflict-free, and will soon feature an online diamond search application. This means, unlike other diamond retailers, clients have an opportunity to sit with a designer, choose a diamond and become educated about the origins of their jewellery.

Taylor's pledge to integrity and fairness extends to his charitable activities. He doesn't intend to spend advertising dollars on FTJCO, instead he spends his money and energy supporting organizations like War Child, with whom he is currently working on a toy project. "I'd rather support members of the community who are working to change things," he says.

From his "atelier" on Parliament Street he talks about FTJCO, and a path in life that is landing him squarely where he feels he's meant to be.

Carla Lucchetta: How did FTJCO come into being?

Ryan Taylor: When I left school, I started up my own company, a service bureau designing master models and doing custom work for various jewellery houses and manufacturers. Jewellery design is really an old world business, not many people were using CAD (computer-aided design), and so I had an advantage. At the time, I found a lot of the custom work was like pulling a page out of Tiffany's, so we started refusing the work. Unlike other trades, there's not a lot of policing of knockoffs. So, I decided to close the service bureau and begin my own custom design business. During this time I was sourcing gold, and found some of the clients I would bring with me were willing to pay a premium to have jewellery made locally using ethical gold and diamonds. I knew I had enough to build a business model.

So how did the idea of an ethical business enter in?

The ethics thing has always been there. I'm an outsider to the industry, so having the arms length distance I don't have biases. I'm looking at it more from a designer and a problem-solving standpoint. Gold is a material that's been commoditized, diamonds have been commoditized, the metals been commoditized. Right now the materials are cheaper than the labour that goes into making a ring. That's an entire trade dying. To find someone now who's actually a goldsmith is quite rare. Prices have come way down just in the last ten years. That means that the quality has come down.

We've done a lot of due diligence to make sure that the product we're sourcing is both socially and environmentally sound, rather than being environmentally good and ignoring the people. The two are completely interconnected.

You've said faith is an important component that drives you. Can you say how?

I was raised Anglican, but if you strip away the bravado of most religions it comes down to a very simple "do unto others." I think if you go into creating a business model with a simple code of ethics, like a faith base, the business will grow around that.

How has Viola MacMillan influenced you?

I had only met my great-aunt once or twice when I was a kid, but I watched a CBC documentary on her, and she's also written an autobiography entitled From the Ground Up. I fell in love with this gallant, classy woman who spent her life changing an industry. Recently, I did an entrepreneur's talk on green business. At the podium I noticed this older woman in the front row who kept looking at me funny. I was all grubby because I'd just come from my studio renovation and just leaned on the podium, put my beer down and said, "Hi everybody my name's Ryan how's everyone doing? I'm just going to show you some photos and chat with you." And you could feel this collective relax because my session wasn't going to be so formal. As I began to talk, the woman in the front row started welling up and, of course, I couldn't stop looking at her. Afterward, she came up and said, "I'm the person who inducted your great-aunt into the mining hall of fame." She went on to tell me that Viola's acceptance speech was exactly like mine;  she put her drink on the podium, made everyone feel at ease and said, "I don't deserve this award. I have nothing prepared," and she just talked to people casually. "The resemblance is uncanny." I think it's really cool that I have a woman to look up to who took on a man's industry. And it's come around to her nephew, a white male, who's trying not to be stereotypical in my business practices in the same industry. It was a phenomenal personal moment that made me know I was on the right track.

Carla Lucchetta is a Toronto based writer and TV producer.