Hi, I'm Beaver

the newcomer's field guide to Canada

votre guide du Canada

Being a newcomer in Canada can be overwhelming. With two national languages to a rich legacy of , and , there's a lot to learn.

Tap arts, history, or cultural references to ask Beaver

Beaver is a friendly multilingual robot pet that can act as your guide to the context behind the things you see every day, transitioning fluidly between a speaker's native language, French & English.

Take Beaver out with you

Start the rover from the desktop app and scan its code. Your phone becomes Beaver's microphone, and Beaver answers out loud through the rover.

Around the city

Point the rover at what you see and ask in your language. Beaver looks through its camera and answers.

هل يمكنك أن تأخذني في جولة في أرجاء مبنى البرلمان؟

Can you give me a tour of the Parliament grounds?

Procedures, step by step

Ask how something works here, and Beaver walks you through it.

¿Cómo obtengo mi tarjeta de salud de Ontario?

How do I get an Ontario health card?

Notebooks

At home, the desktop app keeps what the rover heard. Every question, from the rover or typed at home, becomes a notebook of new words and big ideas in three languages.

Deadlines and duties

Beaver lists your upcoming tax, benefit, and immigration deadlines, each taken from the government page that states it.

Documents

Photograph a letter you can't read. Beaver summarizes it in your language, on your own computer.

Ask Beaver

Point Beaver at a painting and ask in Spanish. Beaver answers sentence by sentence in English, French, and Spanish, so every new word comes with its translation.

Beaver

the newcomer's field guide to Canada

votre guide du Canada

How Beaver works

Beaver meets a newcomer in two places. Out in the city, the rover answers a question about what they see, asked from their phone. At the laptop, the desktop app answers their longer questions and keeps every exchange from both places as notebooks.

Parts of Beaver: on the rover, local processing puts a guard proxy between the rover and the remote AI services; the proxy sends Gemini clean text and a photo and sends ElevenLabs the checked answer; the desktop app sends Gemini and ElevenLabs its own questions and copies each saved rover turn over SSH every 60 seconds
  • Rover takes the question from the newcomer's phone, looks through its camera, and answers aloud in their language.
  • Guard proxy runs on the rover and keeps their personal information from reaching the AI services.
  • Gemini writes the answer, and ElevenLabs speaks it.
  • Desktop app copies each rover turn every 60 seconds and files it into a notebook.

Guard proxy

A question about duties, documents, or deadlines can carry a phone number, an address, or a card number. The guard proxy keeps those on the rover.

Guard proxy: the recording stays on the rover; Whisper transcribes it and the guard proxy replaces personal information, so Gemini receives clean text and a photo; the proxy checks the answer before ElevenLabs converts it into speech
  1. The rover keeps the recording in its own run folder.
  2. Whisper turns the recording into text on the rover.
  3. The guard proxy replaces personal information: "613 555 0142" leaves as "a phone number".
  4. Gemini receives the clean text and a photo.
  5. The guard proxy checks the answer before ElevenLabs speaks it.