Terrell, a 9-year-old ball of energy who is affectionately nicknamed “Meatball,” pauses suddenly in midconversation, stops smiling and stares thoughtfully at the floor.

“Why would Ray think I don’t have a Big Brother from a program?” the boy asks James Prospero. “Ray says you’re a guy who just pretends to be my big brother,” he continues, fixated on a conversation with one of his young friends.

“Well, if we hang out all the time and we talk all the time,” Prospero starts, “I don’t think that’s pretending.”

And just like that the smile is back. Terrell’s main concern, as he scans the account executive’s downtown office, returns to his lemonade and when he and his Big Brother will next go bowling.

Conversations like this have been taking place for 100 years in Canada, since the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Canada (BBBSC) program was founded. The centennial celebration is being marked by the release of a five-year study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) of almost 1,000 boys and girls registered with the organization, with surprising results.

Among the findings: Girls with mentors were four times less likely to be bullies or get in fights than girls without a mentor. Boys with mentors were three times less likely to suffer peer-pressure-related anxiety, and have fewer emotional problems than their non-mentored peers.

Described as their largest mentoring study in Canada ever, BBBSC says the results contradict the existing literature in that girls have traditionally been found to value emotional relationships more than boys, but in this study it is their male counterparts who seek out emotional support.

Bruce MacDonald, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, says the findings will help the organization tailor programming in the future for the roughly 33,000 children in the program and improve the organization’s ability to pair kids still seeking a mentor.

MacDonald says that over the years the BBBSC’s role has changed. With the introduction of in-school and group-mentoring activities, one-on-one mentor relationships make up only 27 per cent of the youngsters that BBBSC helps. “If we’re able to do that better — put the right kid in the right program at the right time with the right mentor — then the impact should be even greater for these young people.”

Prospero and Terrell have been matched only a year, but the Big Brother has noticed that the Little Brother’s confidence has grown. Terrell speaks openly about the absence of his father — even drawing it on a whiteboard describing his “life story” — and doesn’t miss a chance to say thanks to his big brother. Prospero recalls a visit to Canada’s Wonderland where the two waited 45 minutes for a kid-sized ride.

“Afterwards he kind of put his hand on my back and said, ‘I know that wasn’t worth it for you but it was worth it for me,’ ” Prospero says.

Dave Heden, 31, knows the benefits of the mentor program well. Outside his Annex home, a Porsche sits idle in the driveway, while inside the house a nanny holds his 9-day-old baby. Lucas, 14, stands tall and comfortable inside his Big Brother’s house.

“Lucas deals with the same things I dealt with,” Heden says, describing his own single-parent upbringing. Heden was matched with a Toronto trader as his own Big Brother when he was 7. It sparked Heden’s interest in finance which led to a successful career as a hedge-fund manager.

“I didn’t have a nice house, my family wasn’t very wealthy, but all the kids at school were very wealthy,” says Heden, who went to school in Forest Hill.

“I didn’t have a father, I used to lie — I would say my father did this or that. I think Lucas and I really clicked over that kind of common ground, because I catch Lucas doing the same things I was doing and I am able to coach him through something like that and help him be comfortable with who he is and understand what he should be proud of.”

“When I met Lucas he was a shy 7-year-old,” says Heden. The pair have sat in floor seats at Raptors games, ripped around in Heden’s Porsche and even taken a stab at camping together. The athletic teen is now in Grade 9 on an academic scholarship at Upper Canada College (UCC).

Lucas has aspirations for a career in business, real estate or finance. Though undecided, he is thankful for the opportunities he’s gained through the help of his Big Brother and his scholarship at UCC.

“It just made me want to be successful when I’m older,” Lucas says. “(Heden’s) Big Brother was really successful financial analyst and (Heden) showed me that you can do it.”

Their relationship falls in line with the findings of David DeWit, a senior researcher at CAMH who headed up the study with Ellen Lipman, a psychiatrist and professor at McMaster University.

“Mentored boys seem to do better (than non-mentored boys) in terms of the emotional functioning, depressibility, symptoms of anxiety,” DeWit says, “whereas mentored girls seem to do better in terms of reduced conduct problems and improved social skills.”

DeWit’s results will be accompanied with suggestions on how to better match mentors and tailor programming — but good matches are just the starting point.

After the pairs are matched, it’s up to the individuals to decide how the relationship moves forward, and for Big Sister Lynn Nguyen, 25, and her Little Sister Stephanie, 16, that starts at the mall.

“The first time we met was actually a little bit nervous for me,” Stephanie says of their first encounter, three years ago. “Once she said she liked window shopping, I’m like, ‘That’s my thing.’”

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The two usually browse Yorkdale and enjoy taking in horror movies. Nguyen has seen her little sister open up, even shift priorities. Their goal for the next year is to identify possible careers for Stephanie, and meet with professionals in those fields.

“Before, school wasn’t the biggest priority for Stephanie … but now I know that Stephanie wants to go to college, she wants to do something with her life that’s bigger than what’s she’s doing now and I think that’s amazing,” Nguyen says. “That growth that I’ve seen in her, I think that’s what Big Brother Big Sisters provides for Littles.”