brad meikle

SeaFort Capital, a Halifax-based private equity firm, announced this week that it is acquiring its first company, A.W. Leil Cranes, a Nova Scotia-based company providing crane rental and lift services, for an undisclosed sum. The company operates a fleet of over 50 cranes under the trade names A.W. Leil, Sagadore Cranes and Cape Breton Cranes, and has five offices and over 60 employees.

Identity verification startup Trulioo has raised $2 million in seed funding from Blumberg Capital. The compnay has also recruited Google’s director of identity Andrew Nash as chief technology officer.

Chango Inc. said Wednesday it has raised $12 million in funding from existing investors including iNovia Capital, Rho Canada Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Mantella Venture Partners and Extreme Venture Partners. Chango is an ad technology company, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

Jintronix, a company that designs medical software for physical and cognitive rehabilitation, has secured seed capital and is relocating the company’s headquarters from Montreal, Quebec to Seattle, Washington. The financing round was led by Madrona Venture Group.

Vancouver-based venture capital investor Espresso Capital Partners has led a $1.1 million financing of Vancouver-based venture capital investor Espresso Capital Partners has led a $1.1 million financing of Sidense Corp. of Ottawa, a developer of silicon-proven embedded non-volatile memory IP. Existing backer Trellis Capital Corp. was among the co-investors in the deal. Sidense has been venture-backed since 2006.

Mitre Media, which is backed by iNovia Capital, has acquired MunicipalBonds.com and BondFunds.com. Financial terms were not announced. MunicipalBonds.com provides municipal bond market data and pricing information for individual investors and financial advisors.

InboundWriter, maker of an online content optimization system for writers, has raised $2.5 million in new funding and named Skip Besthoff as its chief executive officer. The company is backed by Castile Ventures, Rho Canada Ventures, Formative Ventures, The Entrepreneurs' Fund III, and Crosslink Capital. Besthoff takes the top post after being a long-time board member and investor in the company through Castile Ventures.

A new angel co-investment fund, Accelerate Fund LP, has received a $10 million commitment from Alberta Enterprise Corp., a government-capitalized LP. The fund, which will invest in startups and other early-stage companies, will be managed by the Calgary-based venture capital firm AVAC.

British Columbia Discovery Fund has invested $2.0 million in Vancouver-based D-Wave Systems, completing a $30 million round of equity funding for the company. Bezos Expeditions and In-Q-Tel also joined the investment round.

Deloitte today announced the 50 fastest growing technology firms in Canada in 2012. Thomson Reuters' data show 64% of the Deloitte Fast 50 are currently financed by venture capital, or have been financed by venture capital in the past. These include the top three firms - Avigilon Corp., Ecosynthetix Inc. and Real Matters Inc., which showed revenue growth of 29,917%, 25,327% and 8,961%, respectively.