I have to say, at first glance this might feel like spec work, but it really isn't.

This isn't any different from what developers and all the other people put in to building and maintaining open-source projects such as this.

And especially being a developer myself, I believe that a lot of open-source projects can really use some love when it comes to visual design and UX, even big well known projects like Gimp can use some of that love.

Just my 0.0001571 BTC

It's not that Canada lacks a startup culture, it's just a smaller playground then SF or NYC.

But besides all this, there are popular and noteworthy startups based in Canada, like HootSuite, Shopify, 500px, UrtheCast and Freshbooks.

Jobber, is doing fairly well out of edmonton.

Agreed. Other very successful start-ups include: Wattpad, Frank & Oak, Indochino, Clio, Unbounce, Top Hat.

I wonder if that's proportional per capita.

I get the impression that it is not, though I have a small sample size.

I think the whole point of this experiment is to try out a new and cool piece of tech that might not be supported across the browser spectrum just yet but it doesn't mean that it won't be ever.

Just look at the many other CSS specs that were not supported across browsers only a few years ago but now are considered official standards by the W3C and all the major browser developers.