As a kid growing up in North York, Nigel Lockyer earned his keep as a Toronto Star paperboy. He has moved up in the world a little since then. After spending six years as the director of TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle and nuclear physics lab, he was hired away last year to become director of Fermilab, the U.S.’s premier particle physics lab and accelerator. His first degree was a bachelor of science in physics from York University, and this week he returned to Toronto to accept the school’s most distinguished alumni award.

The Star sat down with its former employee to chat dark matter, balancing science and hockey, and whether the Canadian government supports basic research.

The discovery of the Higgs boson captivated the general public. What are some of the potential discoveries that could be made — in our lifetimes or in our grandchildren’s — that have the potential to be as big of a hit?

I think the world changes the day somebody announces we have observed dark matter. We have all these experiments out there looking for dark matter, trying to produce dark matter, they’re looking for it under the ground, they’re looking for it with satellites and so on. It’s just a question of: where is it?

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I think the astronomers know for sure it’s out there. And we certainly believe there’s nothing special about our galaxy, it’s one of those galaxies that has lots of dark matter and our earth is moving through it. So to me, you find this thing that’s been very mysterious and you’re able to detect it, and then our field, particle physics, would go nuts figuring out how to produce it, how to understand more about it.

And we don’t know if it’s a single particle or multiple particles or anything at this point. It’s just a complete unknown. All we know are its gravitational properties.

What is it about particle physics that manages to excite the public despite being such a tricky technical field?

Everybody understands that whatever you pick up is made out of something. You have a magnifying glass, you can see the structure of what it is you’re looking at. Particle physics is the extreme of that. You’re looking for the smallest building blocks of space, time, matter.

Fermilab costs what, upwards of $500 million a year to operate?

(Laughs). We don’t advertise those kinds of numbers. It’s $400 (million).

Iimagine you’re constantly being pressed to justify Fermilab on an economic basis: jobs created, that kind of thing. Let’s forget about that for a second. What is the worth of basic science?

Basic science generates the ideas of the future, which become applied science. Without basic science you have no input to applied science. The stream dries up.

Certain organizations understand this extremely well, and others think you can do one or the other, but it’s not true. If you just go back in time, (James Clerk) Maxwell’s understanding that there have to be electromagnetic waves (carries) all the way through to your cellphone today. Quantum mechanics led to the transistor, which led to electronic circuits and so on.

Everything can point back to basic research. The challenge for governments is how to speed that up and how to pick the winners. Because a lot of stuff that you do ends up not being the home run — or the hat trick, depending on which country you live in.

What can the Canadian government do to nurture the creation of top-level scientists?

I think they need to fund the science. That’s the bottom line. Take TRIUMF as an example. I spent several years attracting really top people to the laboratory to do research. The government should fund the science those people want to do.

And they’re always squeezing — they always want to give you less than you need, because that’s how governments function, but I think that’s a mistake. I think Canada can learn from some countries that are very proactive with funding their science. For example, Germany is out in the lead. If you look at Switzerland, great funding for science. If you look at any of the Asian countries now, great funding for science.

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The developing countries are just going nuts with their investment in science, and here we are — and I’ll put Canada and the United States in the same boat, we think alike — saying, “Oh, let’s see, what should we do.” Isn’t it obvious what you should do? Basic science is the future of everything.

We live in a technological world. Invest in basic science. Just put more money into it. It will work out. And you will keep the best people. Canada is a great country for many other reasons. You don’t have to fight any of those other reasons. You do have to fight the impression that scientific funding is not a high priority for government. And it should be.

Fermilab has lots of grade school students come through (on visits). How can teachers and parents do a better job of increasing scientific literacy in kids — just getting kids excited about science?

I think you have to make it interesting for them. The same way I got up at five o’clock in the morning to drive my son to hockey, you’ve got to make an effort to take them to events that stimulate them to be interested in science. Around here (in Batavia, Ill.), there seems to be an unusually large number of people interested in robots, and they have all these organizations of kids of different ages from very young all the way through high school where they compete at all these robotic events.

Going to public lectures with great speakers talking about dark matter — kids are trying to figure out what the world is all about. That’s how I got interested in science, just hearing these crazy ideas.

And everybody knows this, but teachers are so influential. Whether they’re your public school teachers or your high school or college teachers, having high-quality teachers makes a world of difference to who you produce. Having world-class institutes like York and University of Toronto and Queen’s is another factor in creating great thinkers, whether it’s science or anything else.

The problem with Canada is that it’s so rich in natural resources that it can always fall back on it rather than developing what I call a knowledge economy mentality. Now the government talks about it, but seems to me that they need to put their money where their mouth is.