Best advice I can give you is to approach local individuals and organizations who are more likely to support your project (Google has offices in Kitchener, for example, some other local companies are very visible in the open source community; one notable company is Waterloo based PostRank, visible in the Ruby community). Talk to people, and be up front with what you're looking for.

What's the worst that can happen? Someone can say no. If that's your biggest problem, you're golden. There are a lot of people who would be willing to talk to you about this.