100-PLUS: In 2014, former Mehfil magazine publisher Rana Vig reworked some articles about South Asian pioneers and notables into a book titled 100 Year Journey. It marked the centenary of steamship Komagata Maru’s 340 Sikh, 24 Muslim and 12 Hindu passengers, all British subjects, being denied entry to Canada. Coincidentally, the book was launched in the Pacific Rim hotel that occupies the site of Vancouver’s old Immigration Building. Subsequent galas there have acknowledged “men and women who didn’t come to this country to be heroes, they simply came to make a better life for themselves and their families.” One guest this year, Jagmeet Singh was feted for having undertaken the 139-day journey from entering the federal NDP’s leadership to winning it on the first ballot on Oct. 1.

A 100 Year Journey publisher Rana Vig, right, greeted new NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to celebrate the book’s South Asian pioneers in B.C.

Preparing for Covenant House’s Sleep Out fundraiser, Todd Talbot and Kim Wing checked an Electra Meccanica vehicle with Joe Average artwork.

WIDE AWAKE: Folk who don’t usually sleep on the streets will do so Nov. 16 to help youngsters sleep indoors.  They’ll benefit Covenant House’s sixth Sleep Out: Executive Edition project that should contribute $750,000 to that youth-care organization’s $13-million annual budget (covenanthousebc.org). Actor-TV host Todd Talbot put 100 grown men on nighttime streets recently. Not to sleep, though, but to test-drive battery-powered vehicles made by Vancouver’s Electra Meccanica firm. Their cash contributions went toward third-time participant Talbot’s  $15,000 commitment to Covenant House’s 59-bed Residential Crisis Program.

IN HIS SHU:Z: Forty-five years after ultra-eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes checked out, the Bayshore hotel will open the cutely named HJU:Z Lounge Nov. 16 A launch-party invitation promises “culinary adventure (and) creative cocktails.” That mightn’t excite industrialist-flyer-movie producer Hughes who died in 1976 from complications of malnutrition and, as a teetotaller, never touched BU:Z.

Former North Vancouver MP and Conservative Party leadership seeker Andrew Saxton will wed Atelier Grandi fashion designer Grandy Chu.

THEY WILL: Former North Vancouver MP Andrew Saxton’s bid for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership fizzled with Andrew Scheer’s 13-ballot squeaker-win over Maxime Bernier. Odds improved when he popped the question to fashion designer-manufacturer Grandy Chu. No wedding date yet, but the size-zero Ms. Chu’s gown may be as conservative with material as the sequinned “Python” dress she made for the Polygon Gallery opening.

TALKING TURKEY: Semiha Abdullah Inan didn’t sew her dress for her 2008 wedding to Turkish consul general Anil Bora Inan. She could now, though. Having graduated from our town’s Blanche Macdonald Centre, she created a blue satin confection with sheer-silk sleeves for Turkey’s recent Republic Day reception at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club. Her Refugees of Love couture collection “is a tribute to all the people of Syria,” where she was raised. Reception guests enjoyed roast beef and smoked salmon. No turkey, though. Despite that bird’s American origins, Inan said Turks “call it hindi, which is short for Hindistan, meaning India.” Even the French called turkeys coqs d’Inde, and now simply dindons. Thanksgiving and Christmas being non-events in Turkey, “We eat hindi at New Year’s Eve,” Inan said, smiling.

SWEETER STILL: With Miss Universe contender Samantha James’s gown styled to simulate her native Malaysia’s nasi lemak breakfast dish, Canada’s Lauren Howe could parade attired as flapjacks with maple syrup.

Named CHILD Foundation honorary doorman, Nancy Stibbard owns Capilano Suspension Bridge where some look up to trees rather than down.

IN YA GO: The Dominik Heins band played When The Saints Go Marching In as uniformed men paraded to the Pan Pacific hotel ballroom’s stage recently. Open The Door, Richard would have been fitting, too, as the chaps being saluted were local and international hotel doormen. The event has always raised funds for the CHILD Foundation that Grace McCarthy co-founded in 1995 to benefit children with intestinal and liver disorders. This year’s honorary doorman, and fourth so-cited woman, was Nancy Stibbard, whose Capilano Group’s local and Rocky Mountain’s tourism facilities include North Vancouver’s Capilano Suspension Bridge. Even saints march with some trepidation there.

Julia Hibbard and Carol Robinson co-chaired the Luminary Award Soirée that reportedly raised $500,000 for Big Sisters of B.C. Lower Mainland.

Century Plaza hoteliers Sergio Cocchia and Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia were honored with Big Sisters of Lower Mainland’s Luminary Award.

ONE MORE TIME: Former honorary hotel doorman (and real-life hotel owners) Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia and husband Sergio Cocchia were honoured again recently. That was at the Big Sisters of B.C. Lower Mainland’s annual Luminary Award Soirée where the two were cited for “moving the needle with regard to children, mentorship and philanthropy.” Soirée chairs Julia Hibbard and Carol Robinson moved the needle with regard to fundraising as the event reported a record total of $500,000 and change.

Bob Rai succeeded founder and eight-year chair Rob Dhir when the Night of Miracles benefitted the B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation.

KEEP GIVING: Held on the same night as the 100 Year Journey celebration, the Night of Miracles gala reportedly raised $479,765 for an ultrasound program at B.C. Children’s Hospital’s new Teck Acute Care Centre. Lawyer Robin Dhir founded the South Asian community event and saw $4.2 million reportedly raised during his eight years as chair. He was succeeded this year by Vanc Pharmaceuticals’ CEO Bob Rai. Relieved of duties, Dhir made the gala a family occasion. His and wife Rena’s children, Chaytin, Miya and Naiha accompanied grandparents Prem and Narinder Dhir who once donated a two-metre strip of their property so the Vishva Hindu Parishad temple could build next door.

Naiha, Chaytin and Miya Dhir accompanied their parents and grandparents to the South Asian community’s Night of Miracles gala.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: With electric cars, trucks and buses expected to proliferate, Victoria could address Site C’s social, technical, administrative and economic challenges by putting ICBC in charge.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

INSPIRED NIGHT: B.C. Cancer Foundation president-CEO Sarah Roth left the Hotel Vancouver recently with $2.61 million in hand. Raised at the Inspiration gala, it will help hereditary cancer program co-leader Intan Schrader and researchers find and address genetic risks that may influence up to 10 per cent of advanced cancers. Gala familiars Tamara Taggart chaired and Jane Hungerford and Deborah Roitberg co-chaired the event that received $600,000 from the Chan Family Foundation. Laurie Rix added $500,000 in memory of husband and former radio sportscaster Neil Macrae who died of cancer  in March.

Tamara Taggart chaired and Jane Hungerford, with Deborah Roitberg, co-chaired a gala that reportedly raised $2.61 million to combat hereditary cancers.

Laurie Rix remembered husband Neil Macrae at the Inspiration gala with a $500,000 donation to the B.C. Cancer Foundation’s hereditary cancer program.

Contemporary Art Gallery executive director Nigel Prince and curator Kimberly Phillips saw Corin Sworn’s App for Calm work fetch $5,200 at auction.

BULL MARKET: The Contemporary Art Gallery’s 29th annual auction went of cheerfully. Art-confident attendees enjoyed auctioneer (and respected artist) Hank Bull’s patter about the 21 works offered, paid above estimate for seven of them, welcomed CAG curator Kimberly Phillips, and applauded executive director Nigel Prince. He’s a former putative Paul McCartney who quit playing bass with the Liverpool-based Mel-o-Tones (later Walkingseeds) band to study art and, with a little luck, found his way here.

Former Michael Bublé bandleader Bryant Olender records New Brunswick teen singer Alexandre Richard in hopes he’ll be pop’s next big hit.

ONE MORE TIME: Beverly Delich got it right in 1993 when she began managing 18-year-old vocal phenom Michael Bublé. Heavyweight Bruce Allen took over 10 years later, but Delich kept looking. Now she’s keen on New Brunswick Grade 10 student Alexandre Richard, who was singing in the Céline Dion-Edith Piaf style when dad Stefan asked Delich for advice. She linked Richard to Bryant Olender, who was Bublé’s Smoking Section bandleader in the raucous days. Now operating a penthouse recording studio here, Olender recently waxed two Christmas songs by Richard, a cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Xmas, and his and Olender’s I Am A King. Google Alexandre Richard to see him perform Piaf’s Non, Je ne regrette rien on Quebec’s La Voix TV program.

Beverly Delich, who managed 18-year-old Michael Bublé in 1993, likely hopes showbiz lightning will strike again with current singer Alexandre Richard.

HEY, BABALULU: For its Dec. 5 Christmas luncheon tribute to Michael Bublé, Tourism Vancouver could have the Hotel Vancouver’s Pacific Ballroom resemble the long-defunct BaBalu Lounge with full-bore music, dancing, bartending and cigarette smoking.

Columnist Parry prepared to march along with other schoolboy-soldiers to a long-ago Remembrance Day ceremony that still resonates with him.

REMEMBERING: One long-ago Remembrance Day morning, fellow boy-soldiers and I stood at silent attention before our English hometown’s cenotaph. We saw the mayor and other dignitaries lay wreaths there to commemorate warriors who had died in the First and Second World Wars. Marching to the event, we passed a monument to local lad John Carless, an ordinary seaman who was awarded the Victoria Cross for manning one of his cruiser’s guns until he perished from his wounds at age 21 in 1917. Beyond the white marble cenotaph, we saw a plaque commemorating 1916 mayor Samuel Slater’s wife Mary who was mortally injured when a bomb from Capt. Max Dietrich’s Zeppelin L21 exploded beside the streetcar in which she was sitting. Ironically, crowds hurried past that same spot 14 years later, not to escape airborne peril but to see Dietrich’s niece Marlene star in Blue Angel at a nearby cinema. When my hometown’s Remembrance Day parade took place more than two decades later, many still-youthful veterans of the 1939-1945 conflict were present along with older ones from 1914-1918. The latter included my uncles George, Jack and Norman who had all fought in France. In Vancouver’s Victory Square this morning, the dead from those and subsequent wars will be commemorated, as they should. Still, my thoughts go to Mary Slater, to the civilian deaths that have increased enormously since she sat innocently in her tram, and to hubristic national leaders who taunt each other with the prospect of millions more dying. How much better that young folk may continue to march or meander into still-standing town centres, there to silently thank those who died violently so that they might do so naturally.

Brothers Riley and Brandon Mari staged a $140,000 fundraiser for their Youth Education Farms charity that supports social enterprise in Swaziland.

HARVEST TIME: Healthy young folk filled West Pender Street’s The Permanent recently to help contemporaries experiencing the world’s lowest estimated life-expectancy. The event was a sixth $140,000-range fundraiser for Youth Education Farms. Developer-brothers Riley and Brandon Mari founded that charity to fund social-enterprise projects in the AIDS/HIV-plagued African absolute monarchy of Swaziland where Riley once worked as a volunteer teacher. “We wanted to do something to help kids get to school,” Riley said as attendees donated to support students. One recently became the first YEF-aided woman to graduate from university, Riley said. All income reaches Swaziland, he added, with local directors and sponsors like Strand Properties/Strand Developments covering expenses.

Projection technology will be updated when Paul Armstrong and Ken Hegan’s 20th-anniversary Celluloid Social Club draws indie moviemakers Nov. 15.

GO SEE: In November, 1997, Paul Armstrong and Ken Hegan greeted Celluloid Social Club with a screening of indie moviemakers’ works in the Eighth-at-Ontario Anza Club’s upstairs room. They’ll front a 20th-anniversary event Nov. 16 and show, among other flicks, Hegan’s 1996 William Shatner Lent me His Hairpiece: An Untrue Story and 1997 Aardvark!

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Paying $43 rather than retail $54 for 1.75L of premium vodka would let bars and restaurants save 37 cents on a $1.80 two-ounce shot and theoretically offer $12 cocktails for $11.63.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

PENDER MENDING: Rolly Ford’s photo of 1959 Pender Street dominated the Hotel Vancouver’s B.C. Ballroom when the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation’s second annual Autumn Gala reportedly raised $1 million. Foundation chair Carol Lee thanked foundation directors Peter Eng, Tony Letvinchuk, Peter Yeh and Ben Yeung, who were present along with gala chairs Leslie Diamond and Carole Taylor.  She also related progress on the “mission to build a more resilient community … (and) invest in projects that focus on lasting positive change.”  Recent steps involved: purchasing the May Wah hotel for low-income residential redevelopment, continuing with Vancouver Coastal Health to develop an integrated health facility with 231 social-housing units, opening the volunteer-driven Chinatown Vintage store, and founding the history-relating Chinatown Story Centre.

Rolly Ford’s 1959 photo of rain-swept, neon-bright East Pender Street was a backdrop at the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation gala.

Seen with late grandfather Ron Bick Lee, Chinatown Foundation chair Carol Lee has offices in a building he bought almost a century ago.

“Not for the faint of heart,” Lee added, was launching her own Chinatown BBQ restaurant and restoring the Ho Ho. That historic dining place and long-gone others glisten with neon in Ford’s photo. It also shows the Foo Hung building that Lee’s grandfather, Ron Bick Lee, bought a decade after arriving from Guangdong in 1911. Lee’s Linacare Cosmotherapy firm has offices there today. Business partner Dr. Henry Fung and Lee’s philanthropist-father Robert H. Lee missed the gala, “Last week, they were both in the same ward at VGH,” she said.

Carole Taylor co-chaired and Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon was a head-table guest at the Vancouver Chinatown’s Foundation’s gala.

MAYOR GO ROUND: Vancouver mayors past and present also missed the gala. But Christy Clark attended. She lost the NPA’s 2005 nomination to subsequent mayor Sam Sullivan who now seeks her former gig as B.C. Liberal party leader.

PINS DROPPED: Charity-event organizers could invest in good manners by inviting Haywood Securities adviser Chris Owen, son of 1993-2002 mayor Philip Owen. When some Chinatown Foundation guests began conversing loudly during Carol Lee’s speech, Owen reared up to boom: “Be quiet! Our hostess is speaking.” Silence promptly ensued.

TRANSFUSED: Glitter is part of music-biz mega-agent Sam Feldman’s lifeblood. But it was blood-red rubies that blazed when daughter and gemstone dealer-consultant Aiya accompanied him at the Chinatown Foundation gala. Her diamond-drenched bling-a-thon from Hong Kong’s Dehres firm consisted of $220,000 earrings with five-carat pigeon-blood rubies, an $80,000 necklace, $60,000 ring and $20,000 bracelet.

B.C. painter Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s Time Immemorial exhibition will open at Canada House in London on Nov. 30.

IN YER EYE: Ever ready to deride colonialism, B.C. painter Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun will be at Canada House in London on Nov. 30 for his exhibition titled: Time Immemorial (You’re Just Mad Because We Got Here First).

South Main Gallery owner Don MacMillan played pipes at Tracy McMenemy’s Songs of the Smoke exhibition of Seaforth Highlanders history.

SEAFORTHS SEEN: Bagpipes skirled in 1917 when Seaforth Highlanders of Canada troops fought and died in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. They sounded again recently when piper and South Main Gallery owner Don MacMillan opened Tracy McMenemy’s Songs of The Smoke exhibition. Its works couple past battlegrounds with details of the regiment’s Burrard Street armoury. The latter were derived from technical blueprints, as were those in McMenemy’s 2016 Maritime Museum exhibition, Ghost Passages of the McKenzie Shipyard. Some from that series enhance lobbies at Cates Landing, a condo development that art collector-gallerist-philanthropist Michael Audain’s Polygon firm built on the 85-year-old North Vancouver industrial facility’s waterfront site.

HARARE HOW: Canadian Army historian Maj. D.J. Goodspeed’s The Conspirators: Study of the Coup brilliantly documents how four coups d’etat succeeded and four failed.

Seen with wife Sophia, Strand properties-firm scion Michael MacKay said he’s readying to develop 1,300 much-needed rental units.

SCRUM LUCK: Its marriage-like dynamics aside, a rugby scrum is no place to find a wife. But it happened there for Chinatown Foundation gala attendee Michael Mackay after B.C. rugby family scion Callaghan O’Connor introduced him to sister Sophia. Now a Strand properties firm executive, Mackay has forsaken the scrum to push for “what more and more young people want,” namely the 900 Vancouver and 400 Coquitlam rental units he says he’ll develop by 2019.

Barb Wilkins and Cherry Velvet principal Diane Kennedy’s dresses were featured at a benefit for the Mom2Mom Child Poverty Initiative Society.

BIG HEARTS: Women seeking dresses and matching shoes got lucky in the Granville Street Fluevog store recently. That was when three-decade designer Diane Kennedy racked garments from her Vancouver-made Cherry Velvet line. The one-night event entailed 50 per cent of all dress and shoe sales going to the five-year-old Mom2Mom Child Poverty Initiative Society (m2mcharity.ca) inspired by Vancouver developmental pediatrician Barbara Fitzgerald. Although sized from S to 3X, the $150 to $209 dresses favour “curvy” wearers like Kennedy who, she said,  “want to feel cute, sexy and comfortable.” Comfort and safety are top aims for Mom2Mom executive director Jessica Chant and volunteers who presently nurtures 70 families and plan to add at least 20 more. 

Mom2Mom’s Stephanie Connolly and executive director Jessica Chant attended a dress-sale benefit at the Granville Street Fluevog Shoes store.

Matt Gibbons, here with father Dick, saw the MRG Group he heads open the Dublin Calling pub to join its other Granville Street properties.

MOVING ON: Cairo-born Emad Yacoub’s Glowbal Group has relocated its Italian Kitchen restaurant to the former Francesco’s Ristorante Italia premises where since-deceased native-Sicilian tenor Francesco Alongi often sang operatic arias. Earlier, when expatriate Tehran banker Fereydoun Manavi operated the joint as Uforia, it attracted late-nighters more akin to TV’s The Sopranos. Some of them may have appeared before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Janice Dillon, whose nephew Matt Gibbons’s ever-growing MRG Group serves such ecumenical fare as Irish nachos at its new Dublin Calling pub.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Given the Site C decision’s political, social and economic implications, perhaps we should call it Cexit.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

STARS SHONE: Heading into the Vancouver Convention Centre West’s window-walled ballroom, Night of a Thousand Stars gala chair Nancey Nanji said she expected to raise “maybe $3.4 million” for the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. Husband Noordin Nanji, QC, chairs the foundation’s board. The 22nd annual event’s take was already earmarked for advanced cancer care and to help replace an aging surgical robot. By night’s end, a record $5.95 million was reportedly in the bag with $1.97 million of it coming from Darlene Poole to commemorate husband Jack, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2009. Her donation will pay for a robot that, like him, will be named Jack.

Darlene Poole commemorated husband Jack (seen here together in 2004) by donating $1.97 million for a surgical robot at the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation gala.

Noordin Nanji saw wife Nancey chair Night of a Thousand Stars to reportedly raise almost $6 million for the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation.

With purple spotlights spilling on them, RCMP Staff-Sgt. Paul Hayes guarded jewellery model Suzette Hernandez at the Thousand Stars gala.

Three of the Thousand Stars gala’s six twelve-metre screen backed Telus VP Juggy Sihota-Chahil, whose employer sponsored the 22nd running.

TRUE BRIT: Three months into her job as British High Commissioner to Canada, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque visited Vancouver recently. Fellow diplomats and others greeted her at a reception that British Consul General Nicole Davison hosted in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia’s ballroom with its unique-for-Vancouver minstrel-style gallery.

Consul General Nicole Davison greeted newly installed British High Commissioner Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque at a Hotel Georgia reception.

Guests included newly installed U.S. consul general Katherine S. Dhanani. Further representing diplomacy’s welcome feminization, le Jeune d’Allegeershecque is the first woman among 25 successors to 1928-1934 high commissioner Sir William Clark. Along with a lord and a viscount, 12 men designated “sir” have followed him, including 1946-1952’s Sir Alexander Clutterbuck. Perhaps to remind Brexit-era guests of the United Kingdom’s contiguous regions, they were served Welsh lamb, Scottish haggis and English mashed potatoes and “swades.” The latter was possibly a typo for “swedes,” meaning the rutabagas that Scots call “neeps” and consume with haggis. Not offered were England’s ever-risible spotted dick and bubble and squeak that, her Belgian married name aside, le Jeune d’Allegeershecque may have savoured as a child in Ipswich.

HOLD THE SQUEAK: Perhaps retiring Vancouver Symphony Orchestra musical director Bramwell Tovey will relish such oh-so-English dishes as toad in the hole (sausages and Yorkshire-pudding batter) when he takes up the BBC Concert Orchestra’s baton in January.

LONG PAST BRATZ: Julia Molnar celebrated her Isola Bella’s boutique’s 35th anniversary this week. Not at the high-end children’s-wear outfit’s Kerrisdale Village locale, though. Instead, Molnar, friends and clients partied at ceramicist Janaki Larsen and fashion designer Hajnalka Mandula’s Mount Pleasant shop-studio, Atelier St. George. Nor was it strictly a 35th as Molnar operated her business as Bratz for the first 54 months. That name also symbolized her personal output of five sons before actor-husband David Cubitt contributed a feminine flourish with daughter Arabella in 2003. Casa Arabella is also the name of the couple’s getaway home in San Miguel d’Allende, Mexico.

STILL WAGGING: Also marking its 35th is the city-founded electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy. It emerged from the Images in Vogue ensemble when leader Kevin Crompton, having resolved to perceive “life as seen through a dog’s eyes, ” recorded the song K-9. Several albums were produced by former Skinny Puppy member Dave “The Rave” Ogilvie who surfaced recently at the opening of Presentation House’s photo-based Polygon Gallery on North Vancouver’s waterfront. He popped frosties there with Bomber Brewing partner Cam Andrews, husband of respected photo-artist Jessica Bushey.

Former Skinny Puppy band member-producer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie joined Bomber Brewing partner Cam Andrews at the Polygon Gallery opening.

Echoing an Upper Levels Highway bridge’s substructure, Cameron Kerr’s cedar-and-plywood sculpture was seen at the Polygon Gallery opening.

GOOD SHOW: Oohs and aahs sounded at the Polygon Gallery opening. Many were for the Patkau Architects firm’s work inside and out. The debut exhibition of local artworks was dominated by Rodney Graham’s 5.5-by-3.04-metre Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour transparency that portrayed the kayak-seated artist in three backlit light boxes. Respecting the 1981-founded gallery’s mandate, most works were photo-based. Cameron Kerr stretched that by showing a photo of an Upper Levels Highway bridge’s concrete substructure, then recreating it in a 275-kg sculpture of plywood and solid yellow cedar that might attract scent-tagging skinny puppies if installed outside.

Athena Bax simulated ‘pray’ in the painting of 234 four-letter words she exhibited with others at a salon that filler her Eastside studio-home.

BAX BACKED: It’s four years since artist Athena Bax (short for Baxevanakis) exhibited paintings in her east side studio-residence. Affluent collectors filled the joint again recently, and red “sold” dots soon appeared beside virtually every piece. “I don’t care for my work to be in museums,” Bax said, “but that my clients put them in their bedrooms and bathrooms.” Paolo and Clara Aquilini of the Canucks-owning clan have reportedly hung five paintings that way. A recent two-metre-tall one incorporates 234 of Bax’s favoured four-letter words, none of them salacious. With “puck” and “goal” added, it might be just right for the Aquilini loo.

Sydney Greenstreet was projected behind Global TV’s Sophie Liu and Hotel Georgia managing director Philip Meyer in the Reflections lounge.

AIR APPARENT: The Bayshore hotel’s ritzy new HJU:Z lounge commemorates past guest-billionaire Howard Hughes’s aviation exploits. Air, the open kind, also characterizes the Reflections lounge in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia’s seasonally revamped central quadrangle. With Christmastime nigh, the alfresco joint serves such cocktails as Scrooged Up — not with tiny Timbits on the side, though. Global TV’s Sophie Liu toasted there recently following a five-day flight to and through Spain, Switzerland and France with Georgia managing director Philip Meyer.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Passengers for Washington State governor Jay Inslee’s proposed 400 km/h train to Seattle might make trundle-speed connections via Surrey’s planned street-level trams.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

KIDS WIN: Jennifer Johnston, an interior designer and mother of three, chaired the 31st-annual Crystal Ball that reportedly raised $2,815,129 for the B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation. That sum will help fund mental-health treatment at the hospital and aid physicians practicing elsewhere in B.C. The event’s west-coast-forest theme was fitting for Johnston who figuratively emerged from the bush to participate in and to chair her first gala. Raising a truckload of dough was also appropriate for Johnston, who rides with husband Scott Warren in a full-load Ford F150 pickup. He is president of Crossborder Vehicle Sales that exports hundreds of low-mileage Canadian vehicles, 90 per cent of them light trucks, to bargain-eager Americans.

Scott Warren’s wife, Jennifer Johnston, chaired the Crystal Ball to benefit B.C. Children’s Hospital’s province-wide mental health programs.

Here with wife Cindy, Ryan Beedie heads the Beedie Group that presented the Crystal Ball to benefit the B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation.

The Death By Water painting from Jay Senetchko’s The Course of a Distant Empire exhibition backed him at his Winsor Gallery opening.

YEA FOR JAY: The 1984 Chevrolet Scottsdale pickup owned by artist Jay Senetchko still exists and it’s still in Canada. But you wouldn’t know it from his The Course of a Distant Empire exhibition at Jennifer Winsor’s Gallery. Representing the passage of seasons, Senetchko’s five huge gilt-framed paintings show dozens of rather strange folk doing and undoing the same tasks around and on the disintegrating vehicle. The locale of each work is a mirror-imaged version of Alberta’s Tonquin Valley, near where Senetchko said his real Chevy “died.” The vehicle is being restored, perhaps with a happier outcome than the artist envisages in his works’ “eternal recurrence … (where) all tenses collide and mobility collapses into oscillation between decadence and destruction.” Go see.

Ceramicist Janaki Larsen and fashion designer Hajnalka Mandula hosted a first-anniversary celebration at their 7 E 7 Atelier St. George.

With L’Espace Dubreuil razed, Regis Painchaud and Lorraine Fortin once planned similar “magic” for what is now 7 E 7 Atelier St. George.

MORE GEORGE: Ceramicist Janaki Larsen and fashion designer Hajnalka Mandula recently celebrated a year at their collaborative 7 E 7 Atelier St. George. With its racks and shelves of designer clothing and housewares, the Seventh-at-Ontario facility echoes the name of Le Marché St. George. That’s a 1904-built east side corner store to which Larsen and Pascal Roy added art and artisan components that, according to one customer, “created a neighbourhood.” The 7 E 7 facility (atelierstgeorge.com) also houses The Wild Bunch floral studio. Its style somewhat echoes that of a neglected building beneath Granville Street Bridge that Alain Dubreuil converted into a public-access facility that some called “magical.” After city hall forced L’Espace Dubreuil’s demolition, cultural animators Regis Painchaud and Lorraine Fortin looked at the 7 E 7 site for a continuation that, in their way, Larsen and Mandula have achieved.

Aiya Feldman wore $4.3-million-worth of jewellery from Dehres principal Ronen Zion who donated a $39,000 pendant to the Crystal Ball.

ROCKS POPULAR: Yes, Aiya Feldman appeared here two weeks ago with bijoux from Hong Kong’s Dehres firm she wore at the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation gala. Dehres managing director Ronen Zion dramatically upped the ante at the Crystal Ball. That was by adorning Feldman with a necklace of oval diamonds, earrings of smaller stones, a 2.43 carat pink-diamond ring, and bracelet of 28 two-carat diamonds. Asked for retail value, Zion made a quip about never paying retail, then figured that $4.3 million would do it. Too much for a gala donation perhaps, but Zion did hand over a $39,000 royal-blue sapphire pendant frothed with brilliant-cut diamonds.

Foster child turned successful businessman Tom Watson’s wife Kathy joined him when he was honoured by SOS Children’s Village B.C.

EXTRA CARE: While today’s Toronto Argonauts readied to win the Grey Cup in Ottawa, retired five-time winner Michael “Pinball” Clemmons flew to Vancouver. The 11-season running back came to help frustrated youngsters break out of real life’s scrimmages and advance downfield. That was through Surrey-based SOS Children’s Village B.C., which is part of a 68-year-old global organization aiding orphaned and abandoned children. It supports 40 foster children locally, some of them in five homes it has built. Donations would see five more added on an available adjacent site. SOS youngsters receive some financial and residential support beyond age 18. At its recent event, the organization honoured Tom Watson, a former foster child whose success in business may, like Clemmons, inspire those under care today.

Restaurateur-pubster Josh Pape told hop farmer and Backcountry Brewing partner Ben Reeder: “Your beer outperforms all the others.”

HOP TO IT: What’s next when your co-owned farm grows nine varieties of hops? For Ben Reeder, it entailed joining four other fellows to found Squamish-based Backcountry Brewing and promptly win the B.C. Beer Awards’ Rookie of The Year trophy and other medals. Regarding the over-hopping of craft brews, especially IPAs, Reeder said: “When there’s no guidelines, people like extremes, and they want to find the edge.” Backcountry has avoided falling over that edge. The payoff? Josh Pape, the Wildebeest-Bufala-The Diamond-Bells and Whistles partner-bartender, said: “Your beer outperforms all the others.”

BIRDMAN OF LIONS GATE: Activities entrepreneur Kevin Thompson wants the Ministry of Transportation to OK his clients paying $250 to $300 to ascend one of the Lions Gate Bridge’s 115-metre towers (Sun, Nov. 28). The same climb once cost me nothing. Meanwhile, Thompson’s potential SkyHuggers should know that more than a panoramic view awaits. Firstly, there’s the near-vertical ladder within a steel-box structure that, on sunny days (when you’d want to go up), gets mighty hot. Secondly, birds abound in there, all producing guano that, in an oven-like enclosure … well, you get the idea.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: The certainty of a Crowbar Hotel stay might pry reparations from scofflaw convicted fraudsters.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-845

ODD EVENING: Twenty years ago, Vancouver police constables Toby Hinton and Al Arsenault founded what would become Odd Squad Productions to help youngsters evade or overcome the lure of drugs. It wasn’t always an easy sell, even among police. But Chief Constable Adam Palmer was unequivocal at OSP’s 2016 gala: “To make it clear, the Vancouver Police Department, from me on down, respects the Odd Squad 100 per cent.” At this year’s running, more important respect came from the event’s Back on Track awardee, Roberta Watt, 29. She was 17 “with a room full of needles and an armful of holes” when Odd Squad members began her rescue. Watt told gala-goers that anyone can get addicted to heroin: “The next best thing to living in a cloud I’d never want to come down from.” But addiction to that drug also swept away “intimacy, platonic friendship, age-appropriate relations, hobbies, bands I’d like to see, and how to move my body to music.” Her road to recovery was sign-posted by Odd Squad members “who walk around in uniforms building trust, not making arrests. Their tactics are not of intimidation but of invitation. They candidly engage with users and receive respect, honesty and a desire to share whatever may be useful to … youth.” Now a wild-hide tanner and student silversmith addicted only to her 1985 Chevrolet Chevette and 1979 Mercury Bobcat, Watt looked across the ballroom to now-sergeant Hinton and basically reversed what he once said to her: “Yes, Toby. Anything you ask of me, I am there.”

Odd Squad founders Al Arsenault and Toby Hinton were young city constables in 1997 when they began helping addicts resurrect themselves.

ORDER PLEASE: Jim Byrnes, who sang at the Odd Squad gala, and former B.C. Supreme Court Judge Wally Oppal, who attended, will be inducted into the Order of British Columbia on Dec. 14.

At the Odd Squad gala, singer Jim Byrnes and former B.C. Supreme Court judge Wally Oppal were freshly named to the Order of British Columbia.

Marie Roberts managed husband and Courage to Come Back awardee Joe’s cross-Canada walk to raise $500,000 for the homeless.

PUSHING ON: Deborah Carter also overcame heroin addiction to work at the YWCA’s Crabtree Corner  Family Resource Centre and win a 2017 Courage to Come Back Award.  She attended the 2018 ceremony’s kickoff event recently with 2003 awardee and former multi-drug addict Joe Roberts. Remembering the homelessness he had endured, Roberts founded The Push For Change campaign, had wife Marie manage it, then pushed a shopping cart 9,100 km from Newfoundland to B.C. By September, he’d raised a reported  $500,000 to aid those still without homes.

Robert Dubois’ Nicolas Marion put $650,000 and $241,000 watches on Carey Melnichuk at Montecristo’s Scotches & Watches event.

TIME TRYOUT: You’d pay $500,000 for a Lamborghini Aventador supercar made in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy. Same-name models at 530-km-distant Geneva, Switzerland 530 cost half that much. Okay, the latter are wristwatches from manufacturer Roger Dubuis’ series of 88. That firm’s Nicolas Marion showed one during the annual Scotches & Watches event at Vancouver’s Montecristo store recently. Placing it on Secret Location retailer Carey Melnichuk, he added an Excalibur Quatuor timepiece priced at $650,000. That would buy an Aventador car plus an entry-level Lamborghini Huracan for running errands.

Young Patrons of the Vancouver Biennale principals Kirsten Larsen and Kenneth Cappie flanked biennale founder Barrie Mowatt at a kick-off event.

ALL AROUND US: Vancouver Biennale festival founder Barrie Mowatt may have brought more pleasure to more residents and visitors than any number of entertainers, chefs and politicians. Not that many local folk actually see or know him. Nor has public money been diverted to his 12 years-worth of often big and always inventive public art installations. Big, that is, like the Giants project that had Brazilian twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo paint bright murals on Ocean Concrete’s Granville Island silos. And inventive like Yue Minjun’s A-Maze-Ing Laughter bronze sculptures that set endless English Bay passersby laughing, too. These and scores of other works by global artists have “raised the consciousness of viewers about the transformative nature of the arts and the importance of maintaining open borders and honouring diversity,” Mowatt said. To aid future efforts, Kenneth Cappie and Kirsten Larsen held a kickoff event for the Young Patrons Group of the Vancouver Biennale they founded. As for more large works, Mowatt should know by Feb. 11 where he’ll put five or six 18-metre sculptures from Saudi Arabia.

Given six months to live in 1985, artist Joe Average attended The Loving Spoonful’s World AIDS Day lunch with founder Easter Armas.

EVER ONWARD: Diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1985, artist Joe Average was given six to months to live. Four years later, determined that “no one living with AIDS should live with hunger,” Easter Armas founded a tiny society named Loving Spoonful. Today, its 5,000-square-foot office-kitchen feeds close to 400 clients on a $1.2-million annual budget. Bucking life’s odds, Average prospered, too. Now 60, he sat beside Armas when BMO presented A loving Spoonful’s annual World AIDS Day luncheon in the Terminal City Club.

Karla (Sax) Sleightholme performed and former Shopping Bags host Kristina Matisic greeted guests at the Vetrina boutique’s fashion show.

THIS YEAR’S MODELS: Many will recall Kristina Matisic from The Shopping Bags TV series directing viewers to retail opportunities. She snagged a $515 Sfizio lace dress herself recently while promoting a fashion show at Rachel Kapsalis’s Vetrina boutique. Karla Sleightholme played airs from her Christmas in Yorkshire album on a Yamaha saxophone that, in the modern vogue, looked to have spent a winter on the Yorkshire moors.

A sign on Seymour Street does not disclose whether there is a different phone number for potential weeky and yeary parking patrons.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Perhaps an appreciative Israel should relocate its U.S. embassy to Mar-a-Lago.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

84 CANDLES: Japanese Canadians and others filled the Bayshore hotel’s ballroom recently at a birthday party for Emperor Akihito, who will be 84 on Dec. 23. It was a bittersweet celebration because of the previous day’s official acceptance of his request to abdicate on April 30 in favour of Crown Prince Naruhito. So said Consul General Asako Okai, while acknowledging Akihito’s “unchanging devotion” to duty. Noting the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation, Okai reminded guests that 2018 will mark 150 years since the revolutionary Meiji Restoration sparked Japan’s “cultural transformation and rapid emergence on the global stage.” As well as “increasing bilateral engagement” with B.C. and the “historic advance” of the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership’s core elements, Canadian visitors to Japan increased by 18 per cent between 2015 and 2016, Oka said.

Photographs of Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko flanked Consul General Asako Okai when she greeted guests at a celebration of the former’s 84th birthday.

RICE AND EASY: Raising a sake glass at the Bayshore event, Masa Shiroki remembered a 2009 event when visiting Emperor Akihito did the same with his made-in-Vancouver sake. Shiroki’s Artisan Sakemaker at Granville Island firm uses ginpu sake rice he grows on leased Abbotsford and Surrey farmland. He raises nanatsuboshi table rice, too, and urges others to do so. “If you have partial farmland that has drainage issue, that is exactly what rice needs, “ he said. Let’s drink to that.

Youthful Moses Znaimer accurately forecast his future in television and, at retirement age, saw his contemporaries as a largely untapped market.

WHOLLY MOSES: In his mid-twenties and with more hair than a barbershop floor, CBC wunderkind Moses Znaimer regaled a beatnik hangout’s listeners on his formula to brighten television’s radiant future. Yeah-yeah, one thought. Still, Tajikistan-born Znaimer did accomplish most of those youthful predictions. Prophetic again in 2005, he recognized that his silver-haired contemporaries constituted an untapped marketing gold mine. Znaimer promptly nicknamed them Zoomers, founded The Canadian Association for Retired Persons, now CARP, and added magazine and TV media to profitably address them.

Carmen Ruiz y Laza will produce and host the CARPe Diem television series aimed at affluent mature viewers that Moses Znaimer identified.

Motivated by the Latin aphorism carpe diem, meaning “seize the day,” he modified it to CARPe Diem as the title of a 39-episode, half-hour TV show he’ll launch in early 2018. It will be produced and hosted by Vancouver-based associate Carmen Ruiz y Laza, who is familiar to Znaimer’s Joytv viewers and those attending related events.

Sports Page original co-hosts Richard Saxton and Rob Glazier helped open a B.C. Sports Hall of Fame exhibition for the 1997-2005 TV show.

PAGE TURNED: Earlier-era television flickered back to life when the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame opened its exhibition on CKVU-TV and later CHEK-TV’s career-building 1997-to-2005 Sport Page show. Founding anchors Richard Saxton and Rob Glazier — but not John Good — traded memories with former colleagues and other jocks. Saxton left in 1982 for sports, business and automotive TV roles in California, and Glazier for play-by-play duties with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Cata Simian and Elza Sasaki are husband-and-wife fashion models who look forward to three-year-old daughter Anina joining them on the runway.

FOR REAL: Actors and advertisement models often play husband and wife, but fashion models Cata Simian and Elza Sasaki are the real thing. Looking as snappy as when they first met on a Paris street, he modelled a Tagliatore velour jacket, $995, and she an Aviu sequinned cashmere sweater, $735, at the Vetrina and Quorum boutiques’ annual show. As for three-year-old daughter Anina having a fashion-catwalk future, “I hope so,” papa said.

Here at Liquor, Lust, And The Law’s debut, Penthouse owner Danny Filippone and author Aaron Chapman have launched a revised edition.

PENT UP: If at first you do succeed, try, try again. That’s the mantra for Liquor, Lust, And The Law author Aaron Chapman and publisher Arsenal Pulp Press. Subtitled “The story of Vancouver’s legendary Penthouse nightclub,” the 2012 book became a Canadian best-seller, thus ensuring a revised edition containing more photos of the Seymour Street joint’s celebrity and guys-and-dolls clientele. There are even recipes from club co-founder and principal Joe Philliponi’s mother Maria, including Fratello fritters, Ciambella alle Acciughe (anchovy buns) and her ever-bracing Pasta with Vodka and Spicy Tomato Cream Sauce. Invitations for the revised work’s recent launch party were discreetly headed: Books! Booze! Burlesque. With the neighbouring Seymour Billiards hall and Iaci’s restaurant long gone, the Penthouse’s days must be as numbered as were those of Philliponi. He was murdered in an adjacent frame house-office in 1979 with mother Maria hearing the gunshots.

Now married, Jesse Zubot and Allison Connolly met on a long flight when his elbow repeatedly lowered her entertainment system’s volume.

BUTTONED UP: Women seeking husbands — even someone else’s — once booked Sunday-evening first-class flights to major business centres. Marriage wasn’t on psychologist Allison Connolly’s mind during a 2013 London-Vancouver journey when Jesse Zubot occupied the adjacent economy-class seat. He’s a virtuosic violinist who accompanies and produces albums for Nunavut throat singer Tanya Tagaq. “I had no intention of talking to him,” Connolly recalled. “But he kept putting his elbow on my volume button.” Four years later, she figuratively left her seat to walk the aisle with him.

Terry Salman has paid US$15,000 to renew a parachute that would safeguard him, his aircraft and three passengers in the event of an aerial mishap.

GOLDEN PARACHUTE: Investment firm founder and 100-hours-a-year private pilot Terry Salman has paid US$15,000 for a parachute. Uniquely, it will float not only him but his entire four-seat Cirrus SR20G3 aircraft to terra firma in the event of peril aloft. Although unused, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration requires such lifesavers to be replaced by new ones every 10 years.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: If Peace River’s hydro-naming tradition continues, Site C may become the J.J. Horgan Dam and retain Lake Clark, or vice-versa.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

OUCH: Surgeon James Hector was participating in an 1858 Rocky Mountain survey expedition when his mount gave him a whack that inspired the locations’ permanent name: Kicking Horse Pass. That incident reverberated early this month when spine surgeon Marcel Dvorak cheerfully advised that the operation he would soon undertake on me would entail a fortnight of feeling “as though you’d been kicked by a horse.” That despite Dvorak’s speedy, light, precise surgical technique that an operating-room colleague likened to that of “a dancer.” Still, a convalescent week in Vancouver General Hospital’s Leon Judah Blackmore Pavilion enabled me to compare a similar stay in the neighbouring Jim Pattison Pavilion after Dr. John Yee operated for esophageal cancer in 2003. It was rewarding to experience the same level of care. Every female and male nurse, night and day, was efficient, quick to respond and, most importantly, provided the tenderness that James Hector must have longed for while agonizing 159 years ago. Along with Dvorak’s horse-kick prediction, those nurses’ professionalism and kindness will be long remembered.

Seen here with wife Sue, spine surgeon Marcel Dvorak promised Malcolm Parry the post-operative sensation of being kicked by a horse

Dr. John Yee and his surgical team conducted a record 50 double-lung transplants this year aided by BC Transplant’s organ-donor program.

BREATHE AGAIN: During my Vancouver General Hospital stay, thoracic-surgery head and B.C. Lung Transplant Program director John Yee arrived with literally breathtaking news. It was that he and a surgical team had completed 2017’s 50th double-lung transplantation. Remarkably, that number has risen from the low single digits in a decade. Proud of his close-knit squad, Yee credits the B.C. Transplant agency for developing and streamlining a donor system. This was essential as transplanting lungs must begin within six hours. Yee looks forward to VGH receiving a Swedish-made XVIVO Perfusion System device that will add valuable hours to today’s six. Yee himself mightn’t solicit a donor for the still-not-funded equipment. But anyone writing a $250,000-range cheque would have the satisfaction of directly helping folk now struggling for breath to stay alive for future Christmases.

Screen Sirens production-firm principals Christine Haebler and Trish Dolman entertained many indie-movie folk at their annual wall-to-wall party.

Miss Cherry on Top deejayed and Yaletown pioneer Fred Aknin hosted Screen Sirens principals Trish Dolman and Christine Haebler’s party for indie-movie folk in his Bigtime garment-wholesaling premises.

STEADY FRED: Happy with reception for their recent feature film, Indian Horse, Screen Sirens Pictures principals Trish Dolman and Christine Haebler corralled much of indie-moviedom at their seasonal wingding in Fred Aknin’s Bigtime wholesale-clothing showroom. A 30-year Yaletown fixture who partnered in such enterprises as District Coffees and billiards hall-club Automotive, Aknin always locates his schmatta enterprise in party-adaptable premises with rollaway deejay booth. Joining Miss Cherry on Top in it at the Screen Sirens bash, Aknin sported a pork pie hat from his recently contracted Bailey of Hollywood line.

Seen at Crabtree Corner for marginalized women and families, Diane Forsythe Abbott has slid approaching $2 million that way via benefit lunches.

LUCKY LOCKOUT: Diane Forsythe Abbott accidentally locked the keys in her car in 1995 when parking beside the YWCA’s downtown-east side Crabtree Corner. Entering the facility in hopes of using the phone, she saw what was being done for marginalized women and families there and resolved to help. Thus began pre-Christmas benefit lunches, mostly in Hy’s Encore’s upstairs room, that saw Forsythe Abbott and friends raise $1 million by 2010 and much more since. Her energy for this unique benefit is undiminished as, of course, are Crabtree Corner’s fiscal needs

Wife Erika’s Pillow Fight Factory products should aid Tony Pantages’s repose after quitting moviemaking to deconstruct 1950-era houses.

STRIKE THE SET: After years of making music videos and such productions as the feature film 3 Days In Havana (with friend Gil Bellows), Tony Pantages has given Hollywood North the slip. Now deconstructing and “renofacturing” 1950s and earlier homes, he’s “making money, which is a novelty for someone so long in the indie-movie biz.” Meanwhile, wife Erika’s three-years-old Pillow Fight Factory firm looks to going gangbusters by producing 97 pillow styles in five collections.

No painter could “win” an against-the-clock tourney at a Federation of Canadian Artists fundraiser, but Janice Robertson’s work got top bid: $730.

RUSHING BRUSHES: Paint flew faster than in a body-shop spray booth when five artists worked against time in the Federation Gallery to create works based on a reference image of Yoho National Park’s Lake O’Hara. Benefiting the Federation of Canadian Artists, the event with paying guests bidding for each work. It was not a competition, organizer stressed, so let’s just say that Janice Robertson’s painting received the top bid: $730.

Peter Trower died in November leaving peerless stories of up-coast-logging and mean-streets Vancouver and lesser-known works in different fields

G’BYE PETE: An authentic voice on B.C. logging was stilled when Peter Trower died aged 87 on Nov. 10. He is best remembered — and should be — for peerless stories and poems about working on up-coast logging spreads and living in mid-century Vancouver, usually on the meaner streets. Some works evoke a unique and ecological relationship between “bush ape” and the forests he denudes. Trower could bring those sentiments out of the trees, and did so in December, 1977 with a poem about the long-abandoned houses that still dotted the B.C. Interior, His partially redacted work follows:

Among these melancholy hills the dead farm lives; ragged curtains loll like grey tongues from silent windows.

Stubborn they must have been those vanished pioneers, settling to a scrub-ledge in a hardscrabble land. The sadness of their thwarted venture is told in weather-scuffed wood: sagging monuments of their labour incline to the soil, antique automobiles rust beyond the dry well, the half-burred ploughshare lies where they left it.

They are forty years gone from their failure in these bleak upland meadows; now we must follow their memories west, brushing the ghosts from our shoulders.

SETTING IT STRAIGHT: The Canadian Association of Retired Persons was founded by Lillian and Murray Morgenthau, not Moses Znaimer as reported here.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: With global threats and tensions as dire as they are, the invocation to “deliver us from evil” has extra resonance as we make this Christmas a merry one.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca

604-929-8456

Future historians may wonder how we stayed calm in the face of 2017’s global economic and nuclear threats let local drug overdosing, homelessness and, for many, unreachable real-estate prices. They may also conclude that 2018’s perils vastly exceeded those before. For now, though, here are some folk from this column who helped give 2017 its agreeable flavour.

Premier John Horgan was still splashing through the run-up to his installation as premier when U.S. consul general Lynne Platt greeted him at Vancouver Aquarium during her First of July reception there.

Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlan had still to announce her retirement intentions when she and B.C. lieutenant governor Judith Guichon attended a Canada Club luncheon.

Col David Fairweather, 97, was greeted by the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada regiment’s current commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Paul Ursich, at a Vimy memorial and reunion dinner in the Burrard Street armory.

While opening the Polygon Gallery on the North Vancouver waterfront, director Red Shier was pleased to welcome Vancouver Art Gallery director Kathleen Bartels who hopes for a new facility of her own.

Jane Young and Stella Chan co-chaired the Chinese community’s 22nd-annual For Children We Care gala that raised $2,535,274 to acquire heart-lung machines and ventilators for B.C. Children’s Hospital.

Sofia Sayani and Karim Kassam co-chaired a B.C. Women’s Hospital gala where pregnant-with-twin-girls obstetrician Chelsea Elwood demonstrated a new-technology ultrasound machine.

Egypt-born international-development professional Nihal Elwan recruited Rawa Mahouk and other Syrian-immigrant women to cook for the Tayybeh organization that rapidly generated business opportunities.

Anna Wallner helped stir when global mining biggie Frank Giustra made meatball for a Wedgewood hotel banquet that benefitted the B.C. Cancer Foundation’s Eleni Skalbania Fund for Brain Cancer.

Jagmeet Singh had recently won a first-ballot vote to lead the federal NDP party when he flew west to attend the annual running of the 100 Year Journey gala based on publisher Rana Vig’s book of that name.

Looking for the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asia Art, to acquire larger premises, executive director Tyler Russell and Christina Panis attended a fundraiser in the Gastown Fluevog shoe store.

Knowing that it’s hard to beat a sunny-days drive in a truly sporty sports car, Peter Wall put on a skimmer and scarf and set out for the quieter roads in his quintessentially British Morgan Plus 8 roadster.

Emily Carr grad Tajah Olson didn’t become a finalist in Bombay Sapphire Gin’s Artisan Series but the coffee can topping her self-sculpture reflected her native-Malawi first name which means crown.

As well as raising $500,000 to benefit youngsters served by Variety — The Children’s Charity, the Gold Heart gala made its award for philanthropy to Goldcorp chair Ian Telfer and wife Nancy.

With Briana Underhill, Paula Cranmer-Underhill came from her 135-year-old, 15-hectare Spapium Farm near Lytton to show craftworks at an Aboriginal Tourism Association show in the Bill Red Gallery.

Actors Adele Noronha and Alexandra Lainfiesta were thrilled to bits to receive lead-female citations for their roles in Angels in America and Brothel #9 at the annual Jessie Richardson Awards celebration.

At Odd Squad Productions’ annual gala, Vancouver Chief Constable Adam Palmer presented the Back on Track award to Roberta Watt for overcoming heroin addiction aided by Odd Squad police officers.

With Martin Creed’s neon sculpture on the Wing Sang’s Building’s Rennie Museum behind him, artist Ian Wallace took a glass of champagne when four decades’ worth of his works were exhibited there.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca,

604-929-8456

Many are photographed, not all are chosen to appear in this column. Those seen here all hit 2017’s cutting-room floor but have been retrieved to get 2018 started.

AFTER JACK: A usual, many journalism students attended the Jack Webster Foundation’s awards banquet in October. Some may have echoed past student-attendee Marina Percy’s opinion of big-time journalists at the microphone who “stood up and told us how good their careers were.” More likely hoped that today’s fewer salaried reporters will take buyouts, get sacked or die and open up jobs for them. Impressively, though, the mostly young folk present had dedicated years of their time and bundles of their or their parents’ money to prepare for a career that the event’s top awardee, Sun/Province reporter Kim Bolan, called “honourable.” Good for them and for the larger community that let’s hope they will serve. 

Fiancée Megan Close accompanied Sun/Province reporter Dan Fumano when he received one Webster award and shared another with colleague Matt Robinson.

FRONT-ROW DAN: Sun reporter Dan Fumano won the Webster award for science, technology, health and environment, and split the Excellence in Legal Journalism award with colleague Matt Robinson. The late Jack Webster would likely have approved Fumano’s press-ahead style that continues off the job. A hooker with the Meralomas rugby team, he has seven brawny guys shove him forward and the same number force him backward in scrums. Dad Gus, who played the same position, had fellow Meralomas announce his 50-year tribute dinner in characteristic rugby style: “This is our chance to really give it to the old bastard!” In July, Dan will marry Megan Close, marketing director at The Cross Décor & Design store where an extensive china shop awaits her fiancé’s charging-bull ways.

RIP NEXT WEEK: Rugby teams handle even wakes inventively. When Bruce Claridge’s Kats teammates staged one for him in 1998, they scheduled it a week before he died. “Of course he’s here,” one said. “Why would he want to miss all the great lies and b.s. about him?”

Daughter Jaden and son Jordan joined former B.C. Lions slotback Geroy Simon when he was inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.

GEROY CORNERED: Another football game was involved when much-loved former B.C. Lions slotback Geroy Simon had daughter Jaden and son Jordan see him inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame at April’s Banquet of Champions in the Vancouver Convention Centre West.

At Italy’s national day, former chief constable Jim Chu accompanied Luigi Aquilini with whose Aquilini Investment Group he was now a vice president.

OFF THE BEAT: National Day celebrants at the Italian Cultural Centre in June included Luigi Aquilini who, with 24 other industrialists, had recently been declared Cavalieri dei Lavoro (Workers’ Knight) by Italian president Sergio Mattarella. He was accompanied by Jim Chu who retired as Vancouver chief constable in May, 2015 to became a vice-president in the Aquilini Investments Group that Luigi heads.

Paolo and Clara Aquilini backed children Christian, Alessia, Sienna and Matteo at a Canucks Autism Network benefit gala that Clara co-chaired.

ICE TIME: Luigi Aquilini’s son Paolo and his wife Clara were at Rogers Arena in May, not to see the family’s Vancouver Canucks play but for the Reveal gala to raise $1,025,000 for the Canucks Autism Network the couple founded in 2006. Clara co-chaired the event with Christi Yassin, and the Canadian Tenors sang Happy Birthday for Luigi’s 77th.

Vancouver International Wine Festival Bacchanalia gala chair Jana Maclagan and husband Bill previewed glasses that would hold nine wines for each.

HERE’S CHEERS: Some might be daunted when facing glasses that would soon hold nine different wines. But Vancouver International Wine Festival Bacchanalia gala chair, Jana Maclagan, husband Bill and some 400 guests met February’s bibulous challenge while raising $280,000 for the Bard on The Beach theatre company.

City-based furniture designer-manufacturer Kate Duncan staged the Address show that drew 39 artisan-exhibitors from around the Pacific Northwest.

WIDE-MOUTH WINGDING: Draft beer in Mason jars was the beverage of choice in June when furniture designer-maker Kate Duncan organized the second annual Address show that drew 39 same-vein exhibitors from around the Pacific Northwest to Main Street’s artisan-hub Ellis Building.

A photo of Diane Stafrace beside Shannon Falls received much post-production from shooter-boyfriend Jason Duffault and his pal Raphael Mazzucco.

BRRRR: Global fashion photographer Raphael Mazzucco joined fashion-designer-turned-artist Jason Dussault in November for the latter’s mixed-media exhibition titled No Home. Works included Dussault’s a photograph of fiancée, model and international arts promoter-manager Diane Stafrace taken at Shannon Falls. Dussault and Mazzucco added paint and other material to the large image. Its watery wintry locale was familiar territory for Mazzucco whose early career included photographing in-the-buff singer Sarah McLachlan immersed off Point Atkinson.

Miles End Motors dealer David Bentil had colour-matching models show his cars while he served Champagne at Hastings Racecourse’s Deighton Cup party.

BRIGHT YOU ARE: After a drizzly start, the sun shone on the Deighton Cup’s ninth annual June running at Hastings Racecourse. Ever-flamboyantly clad David Bentil helped guests get their own glow on with Piper Heidsieck Brut Champagne while matching-attired models steered them to a lineup of high-end vehicles from his Miles End Motors dealership.

Celia-Louise Myers Martin and Jill Killeen reflected male participants’ attire when the Pants Off gala raised a reported $125,000 for Prostate Cancer Canada.

DOWN TROU: One of the year’s livelier charitable events saw men check their trousers at the Vancouver Rowing Club door. September’s Pants Off gala, which reportedly raised $125,000 for Prostate Cancer Canada, also inspired some women present to emulate the chaps, much to their approval.

Lions Gate Hospital gala chair Catherine Konantz and cardiology head Dr. John Vyselaar spent a moment on the Capilano Golf and Country Club patio.

ALL HEART: Addressing Lions Gate Hospital’s facilities and equipment needs, especially those of cardiology head Dr. John Vyselaar, Catherine Konantz wore a 1968 Emilio Pucci ensemble to chair a May gala at the Capilano Golf & Country Club that reportedly netted $1,132,668.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: UBC researchers promise a happier new year to those who sniff a partner’s shirt — with the partner not in it, that is.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

LITTLE CUP, BIG SETTING: That setting is an eight-hectare Delta property near Boundary Bay for which Jay Garnett, Paul Sullivan, and Tony and Claudia Tornquist paid $2 million in 2016. Last year, they spent another $100,000 levelling, draining, planting and spreading 90 tones of cow manure on 4.8 hectares to accommodate a regulation-size 10-acre polo field and surrounds. Following a mowing, the Vancouver Polo Club they founded will host its first game there in May, likely with a half-dozen club horses available for those who’d rather not pay $15,000 to $25,000 for their own. By summertime, the B.C. Polo Challenge Cup will be awarded for the first time since 1921. Larry Emrick found the dented, tarnished trophy at Southlands Riding Club, inscribed with the names of original winners A. Taylor (presumably industrialist-horseman Austin Taylor), A. Houstoun, J.G. Fordham and J.P. Fell, who bested a Kamloops team. As for today’s show-ring competitors, “We’ll offer a whole new accessibility,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to turn hunter-jumpers into polo players.”

Now ready for Vancouver Polo Club’s full-sized field, principals Tony and Claudia Tornquist were seen after a game at the practice facility. 

Vancouver Polo Club principals Paul Sullivan and Jay Garnet greeted Larry Emrick who found a B.C. Polo Challenge Cup dated 1921.

WAKEY-WAKEY: After nine years anchoring CBC Radio One’s On The Coast afternoon show, Stephen Quinn says he’s collared a “dream job.” His nighttime reveries now cease abruptly at 3:20 a.m. when he rises for a 5 o’clock start purveying what Britons call the bright-and-witty for his new gig hosting the Early Edition show. That’s back to the future for Quinn who slogged through an all-night stint at CKNW before joining the Mother Corp. in 2000.

Spade café owner Sammy Piccolo and chef Kathleen Pearce showed the tasty Meat Breakfast Sammy sandwich that goes for $8.50.

DIG IT: The Early Edition spurred a three-hours-earlier start for Commercial Drive’s month-old Spade Café when it went on location there recently. Still, the  joint’s counter-top $9,000 Curtis coffee maker could wake up anybody any time. A café by day and restaurant by night, Spade is the latest enterprise for Prado-chain owner Sammy Piccolo of the 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters clan. Can’t say for evening dishes such as octopus conserva, $14, but manager-head chef Kathleen Pearce’s $8.50 Meat Breakfast Sammy — jamon, cheddar, basil mayo, onion jam, greens, near-runny egg on a brioche — is worth getting up for.

Having designed some of the world’s largest sailing yachts, Ron Holland has written a ‘personal memoir’ in his Granville Island studio.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought the 185-foot ketch Rosehearty after Ron Holland designed it for Italy’s Perini Navi shipyard.

HOT YACHTS: Given that his single-masted creation M5 is too tall to pass beneath the Lions Gate Bridge, it’s no wonder that superyacht designer Ron Holland had trouble holding a “personal memoir” to 400 pages and 200 photographs. Still, 3,000 copies of his $45 All The Oceans: Designing by the Seat of My Pants should leave a China printing plant soon and be launched here on March 22. The book follows the native New Zealander’s 1989 volume, Splendour Under Sail: The New Generation of Superyachts. Such vessels keep getting bigger, Holland said, with some now stretching to 122 metres overall compared to M5’s 88.4. Somewhat smaller is a 185-footer (56.4 metre) Holland designed for Italy’s Perini Navi shipyard, which Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought and named Rosehearty for his parents’ Aberdeenshire birthplace. Murdoch wrote a foreword for All The Oceans. But when Holland asked for tips on promoting the book, which he hopes “will get beyond the boat guys,” Murdoch reportedly replied: “I haven’t got a clue.” Holland still sails his own Coronado 25 Kia Aura locally, and was second in class when he competed with the King of Spain and others in last summer’s International Six Metre Class Word Championships here.  Next book? “I’m thinking of something for kids.”

Seen here with wife Mary Lynn Young in 2017, Kirk Lapointe might be a natural second-time NPA contender in Vancouver’s 2018 mayoral election.

LAPOINTE TO RUN AGAIN? With city mayor Gregor Robertson’s retirement announcement still fresh, smart money may yet to be laid on whomever the Non-Partisan Association will nominate as its candidate for the Oct. 20 municipal election. That said, the early money likely is on Kirk LaPointe who, in his first electoral bid in 2014, received a surprising 73,443 votes (40 per cent of the total cast) to trail Robertson by some 10,000. An adjunct professor at UBC’s graduate school of journalism, Lapointe is married to the school’s former director, Mary Lynn Young, both being editorial alumni of this here newspaper.

Consul general Massimiliano Iacchini and Italian Cultural Centre executive director Mauro Vescera got the Italian Film Festival under way.

FLIX ROMANA: The fifth annual Italian Film Festival kicked off recently with the Italian-Canadian-Dutch feature flick Tulipani, Love, Honour & a Bicycle on screen and more scrumptious food than anyone could eat on Vancity Theatre tables. Fortunately for chow disposal, an intermission preceded Federico Fellini’s 1954 La Strada. Consul general Massimiliano Iacchini, Italian Cultural Centre executive director Mauro Vescera and festival programmer Giulio Recchioni welcomed opening-gala guests. A jazz saxophonist himself, Recchioni has developed Cory Weeds’s programs at the ICC and Frankie’s nightclub, and will co-produce two albums. Weeds, whose Let’s Groove: Music of Earth, Wind and Fire album is imminent, played at the gala on what looked like a brand-new tenor sax. Turns out it was an impeccably renovated 1945 Conn model that replaced his even-more-classic Selmer Mark VI.

Jazzer Cory Weeds played a looks-like-new 1945 Conn tenor saxophone to kick off the fifth-annual Vancouver Italian Film Festival.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Maybe pal Justin Trudeau will arrange for post-mayoral Gregor Robertson to enjoy a free ride on one of the Aga Khan’s private bicycles or, more likely, tandems.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

AFTER KABUL: Ajmal Zemmer was six years old when he, his father Assadulah and his mother Shakilla left a Kabul café one evening. Minutes later, a rocket killed several patrons. Days later, Ajmal was urging university pharmacy teacher Shakilla that negotiations with a neighbour would make him late for kindergarten, when another rocket demolished a nearby gas station. Then Assadulah ran in, “paler than I had ever seen him,” to say that a third rocket had killed four children and wounded others at the kindergarten. “We have to leave,” Assadulah said.

That was from a city where there were bars,  cinemas and women dressed “just like here,” Jamal remembers. “Here” is the Vancouver General Hospital’s Blusson Spinal Cord Centre where Ajmal will be a surgery resident until January, 2019, and hopes to be retained.

Back in 1989, with Assadulah detained for two years in Afghanistan, Ajmal and Shakilla found their way to Bremen, Germany, applied for asylum and “lived in a bad neighbourhood where quite a few guys I went to school with ended up dealing drugs or being criminals,” Ajmal said. “But Germany gave me a lot.”

Benefiting from Europe’s free higher education for those with good grades, he graduated from medical school — “a game-changer. I am thankful for that.”

Assadulah and Shakilla Zemmer cuddled baby Ajmal six years before a rocket hit his kindergarten and ended their pleasant life in Kabul.

Envisioning a future in surgery and research, he then took an MD-PhD degree. He also “worked my butt off” for three months at New York University after a lucky encounter with eminent neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas “opened a lot of doors for me.”

One he opened led to 42 months of residency at University Hospital, Zurich, a city with nine neurosurgery centres (Vancouver  has two). Speedy medical attention, too. Patients reporting back pain are seen that day, have an MRI in perhaps two days and surgery within a week, Ajmal said.

Such assets aside, VGH neurosurgery and spinal staff  “have given me fantastic training … that, in my experience, is better than in Europe. And working conditions are great here.” Buttressing his Vancouver career hopes, Ajmal’s wife Erin has an online travel agency and two daughters here.” Ideally, he would practice with the opportunity to contribute to still-troubled Afghanistan that almost killed him, and made him a refugee, at age six.

As his grandfather, Abdul Rahim, said: The word impossible only occurs in the dictionary of fools.”

Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs, Mevüt Çavusoglu, joined Consul General Anil Bora Inan to officially open his mission in Vancouver.

TALKING TURKEY: Anil Bora Inan has been Turkey’s consul general here since 2015. His nation’s minister of foreign affairs, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, officially established the mission recently when he and Turkey’s ambassador to Canada, Selçuk Ünal, cut a ribbon at its Georgia-at-Thurlow office. Staff there “do business in six languages 24/7,” Çavusoglu told guests. As for Canada and Turkey’s business relationship, “bilateral trade should rise to possibly $3 billion this year,”Çavusoglu said and, glancing meaningfully at entrepreneurs present, “We believe we can do much better.”

Before ultra-low-cost-carriers competed, subsequently troubled David Ho, seen here en route to Hawaii, founded short-lived Harmony Airways.

HIGH FLYER: The market manoeuvring of ultra-low-cost-carriers Flair and Swoop (no Pounce yet) and others mightn’t have concerned city businessman David Ho. In 2002, the billionaire Hong Kong Tobacco Co. scion founded four-aircraft Harmony Airways. But flying is a cruel business, as the rabbit said to the hawk. Ho pulled Harmony’s plug in 2007, and crash-landed personally in 2012. But that’s another story.

LA BREITHE SHONA DUIT: The Irish may wish their homeland happy birthday that way on its 99th national day Jan. 21.

Jean-Sebastien Dupuis produced ‘molecular caviar pearls’ at an event preceding the Feb. 8 Science of Cocktails benefit for Science World.

EASY OVER: Promoting the third annual Science of Cocktails benefit for Science World Feb. 8, Tristan Sawtell staged a pre-taste at Showcase Restaurant and Bar. Among other gee-whizzery, Wentworth Hospitality Group beverage director Jean-Sebastian Dupuis made molecular caviar pearls by “spherification.” The science entailed dripping a yuzu juice-sodium alginate mixture into calcium chloride solution to resemble fish eggs. The cocktail component came from vodka, sake, simple syrup, citric acid and a whole lotta shakin’.

Executive director Mauro Vescera leaves the Italian Cultural Centre to succeed six-month-incumbent Mark Richards as Museum of Vancouver CEO.

Nancy Noble was CEO of Museum of Vancouver for 11 years before leaving its crab fountain in 2016 to head the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

MOVE TO MOV: No sooner was Italian Cultural Centre’s executive director Mauro Vescera’s smiling mug in this column Jan. 13 than he quit to become CEO of Museum of Vancouver. After 11-year incumbent Nancy Noble left that gig in 2016, the MOV board’s “rigorous and disciplined search” produced Museum of London director Mark Richards. He barely had time for a paddle in MOV’s crab-fountain pool before leaving in July, 2017. Recasting the net snagged Vescera at Grandview and Slocan Street.

A south-of-Spain sabbatical has turned jazz singer Jaclyn Gouillou into Delta Jackson with a style more akin to the Deep South of the U.S.A.

AFTER JAZZ: Delta-raised jazz singer Jaclyn Guillou recorded her Live At The Firehall Centre For The Arts and To The City here. Her Dinah Washington tribute, This Bitter Earth, scored a 2016 Juno vocal jazz album of the year nomination. Last year, she vanished into the south of Spain — the Deep South according to the twang of her London-recorded new single, It Comes Down. With a more easily rendered name, Delta Jackson, she’ll tour North America and play here again on April 28.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Perhaps the struggling Yellow Pages firm’s proposed sale of acquisitions will entail Western Living and Vancouver magazines it bought in 2015 “to encompass livability information pertinent to homebuyers,” VP Caroline Andrews said then. 

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

LIB AND LET LIB: B.C. Liberal Party leadership candidates jousted in the Bayshore hotel ballroom this week. As well as striking a second-ballot deal, veteran cabinet ministers Mike de Jong and Andrew Wilkinson pitched for steady hands on the derailed wheel. Former Surrey mayor Dianne Watts, who has yet to stand for election provincially, urged party members to pry such hands off the wheel. MLAs Michael Lee, Todd Stone and Sam Sullivan looked for advantage in their variously intermediate situations.

Chantelle Stone accompanied husband and Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd participating in a B.C. Liberal Party leadership debate.

Absent from the shenanigans was former premier Christy Clark. But 16-year-old son Hamish Marissen-Clark accompanied father Mark Marissen, who has been chin deep in municipal, provincial and federal political campaigning since he was a special assistant to Liberal MP (and one-time B.C. Liberal leader) David Anderson in the 1990s. Stone remembers Marissen from his Young Liberal days, when his trenchant campaigning style sometimes had pantomime aspects. This time around, Marissen backs Michael Lee. He’s been right — and wrong — before.

Founders Vivian Thom and Nina Cassils saw the ninth Taste The World gala benefit children’s medical facilities in Laos and Myanmar. 

BEST OF TASTE: Founders Nina Cassils and Vivian Thom fronted the 9th annual Taste The World wine tasting gala in the Four Seasons Hotel recently. TTW’s volunteer board staged the event. Attendees paid $75 each. Coleen Christie emceed, auctioneer Howard Blank raised $113,800, and a total of $211,800 will make its way (there are no deductions) to Medical Action Myanmar and the Lao Friends Hospital for Children. That money will treat 40,000 children, test 8,000 children and adults for TB, buy 8,000 blankets, 3,000 mosquito nets, 800 rapid-test kits, eight motorbikes for care providers, and facilitate health care in remote villages. Not bad for a rainy night and a glass or two of wine.

Founder and artistic director Christopher Gaze likely never expected Bard on the Beach to be the Vancouver International wine festival beneficiary. 

TWO GENTLEMAN OF VIOGNIER: Bard on the Beach artistic director Christopher Gaze staged William Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona in 2017. What will repeat this year is the theatre company benefiting from the ever-growing Vancouver International Wine Festival, which will run at the Vancouver Convention Centre Feb. 24 to March 4. Gaze and festival executive director Harry Hertscheg staged a pre-taste at Blue Water Café recently, with plenty of vintages from theme nations Portugal and Spain. Shakespeare featured Spain in only one play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and never featured Portugal. Maybe the Armada and other Spanish belligerence dissuaded him, although the British already fancied such Spanish wines as the 2,900 barrels of sherry Francis Drake stole from Cadiz in 1587. Then again, Shakespeare’s audiences were less refined than today’s. A contemporary complaint referred to them as “vagrant persons and maisterless men that hang about the Citie, theeves, horsestealers, whoremongers, cozeners, connycatching persones, practizers of treason, and other such lyke.” No gentlemen among them seemingly.

Vancouver International Wine Festival grew vastly after then-new head Harry Hertscheg appeared with Le Crocodile’s Michael Jacob in 2005.

Featured in a new biography, city-based advertising biggie Frank Palmer would disconcert clients with a discreetly placed whoopee cushion.

WHO DID THAT? Robin Brunet’s biographical Let’s Get Frank recounts city-based Frank Palmer’s rise to the advertising industry pantheon. A negotiating strategy he may have employed was hinted at when reviewer Stuart Derdeyn mentioned “practical jokes” (Vancouver Sun, Jan. 20). Palmer’s pranks included a remote controlled whoopee cushion on which he could program anything from repetitive windy-pops to full bore raspers, much to the consternation of those perched beside it.

Seen with late bandleader Dal Richards, singer Juliette ‘Our Pet’ Cavazzi was the subject of a recent wake at Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.

RIP II: Friends and showbiz colleagues memorialized two female performers recently. Royal Vancouver Yacht Club hosted a wake for singer Juliette “Our Pet” Cavazzi, who had a decade-long Canadian TV show from 1956. Indy-movie types and others met in the less salubrious ANZA Club to remember Elena Esovolova who died in an auto accident Dec. 17 while visiting her Kootenays home. The “kick-ass actress” warranted that self-description in 2010 when, with a Monte Carlo hotel reservation fizzling, she strolled uninvited aboard a regal yacht and partied until train time next morning.

Actress Elena Esovolova, seen here with friend Maggie Coulombe, died in a Kootenays highway accident while visiting home for the holidays. 

GREAT CHIEFTAIN: Should the clatter of hoof beats disturb your pre-dawn repose Monday, blame the previous evening’s revels. Sunday is when Scots and others will celebrate at Burns suppers. It is a tribute to Scotland that its principal folk hero, Robert Burns, is a poet who died at age 37 in 1796. In his memory Scots dine on haggis, a concoction of oatmeal and sheep’s offal traditionally (though now seldom) boiled in the donor animal’s stomach lining. Burns called haggis “great chieftain o’ the pudding race,” and supper officials slice it open with a dirk, thus “trenching your gushing entrails bright like onie ditch” Served with boiled turnips, haggis is washed down, sometime copiously, with whisky. This is where hoof beats come in. As a young Glasgow Herald reporter, former Vancouver Sun managing editor Michael McRanor returned from a Burns supper slung face down on a horse, whereupon his father asked: “Is he dead?” Sunday’s homeward bound might better choose taxi or transit, and face up.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Political office seekers vying for ascendancy echo a newspaper photo of a London street merchant whose pushcart bore the sign: “Don’t vote. It only encourages them.”

malcolmparry@shaw.ca, 604-929-8456

LIGHT SHINING: Nighttime can be the right time for fundraising events. But those expecting much female attendance do well at lunchtime. B.C. Women’s Hospital Foundation proved that in the Four Seasons hotel ballroom recently by reportedly raising $284,000. That was a $50,000 increase over 2017s total, MC Tamara Taggart told 400 attendees following a speech and performance by Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk. Funds raised will aid programs to counter pelvic pain and endometriosis,  a presently incurable uterine ailment that reportedly affects one in 10 women.

Pipe major Alan Bevan, wife Debbie and sons Callum and Alistair attended a benefit for the SFU Pipe Band’s Robert Malcolm Memorial Band.

Robert Malcolm Memorial Band drummer Julia Snow carried a hefty haggis to be incanted over at the SFU Pipe Band’s Burns dinner.

PIPE UP THERE: That certainly applied to Abbotsford’s Bevan family at the SFU Pipe Band’s recent Robbie Burns fundraising dinner. Alan Bevan is pipe major of the six-time world-champion band. Wife Bonnie played in it for eight years before he did. Sons Alistair, 15, and Callum, 13, have piped since age seven. The event benefited the ensemble’s Robert Malcolm Memorial band that has provided staged development for mostly young musicians since 1994. Drummer Julia Snow carried in a haggis heavier than her instrument for MC Jim Gallacher to address — “Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race” — and to be savoured by such Scots-for-the night as SFU president Andrew Petter and chancellor Anne Giardini.

Griffin Arts Projects’ Henning and Brigitte Freybe greeted Iranian Parviz Tanavoli to his and others’ exhibition at their non-commercial gallery.

Feted Mohammad Ehsai showed a calligraphically inspired work at Griffin Arts Project’s Modernism in Iran: 1958-1978 exhibition.

WURST TO BEST: Germany’s 1871-1890 chancellor Otto von Bismark is inaccurately reported to have said: “No one should see how law or sausages are made.” In Stettin, now Szczecin, 265 km from Bismark’s birthplace, butcher Johann Karl Freybe began stuffing sausages in 1844. Great-grandson Ulrich moved the family business to Vancouver in 1955. His son Henning sold the 400-employee Freybe Gourmet Foods to Premium Brands Holding Corp. in 2013. Two years later, Henning and Brigitte — they married at West Van’s St. Francis-in-the-Wood in 1967 — founded Griffin Arts Projects. It’s a gallery with nothing to sell as the Freybes mount three exhibitions yearly of fellow collectors’ artworks. Curated by Pantea Haghighi and opened to a gallery filled with Iranian expatriates, Modernism in Iran: 1958-1978 will run to March  31. Its 11 artists include feted Mohammad Ehsaei, Parviz Tanavoli and “Persian Picasso” Bahman Mohassess, who destroyed many works before dying in 2010. The 1978 cut-off date is significant as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran Feb. 1, 1979 to make not sausages but Shariah law, and plenty of it.

Ten-year operator Corinne Lea hosted a Crazy8s screening in the West Broadway Rio theatre that she hopes to buy and maintain in business.

Crazy8s tournament directors Melanie Jones, Mily Mumford, Anaisa Visser and Christopher Graham raised funds at the Rio Theatre.

MORE CRAZIES: For its 19th running, the Crazy8s moviemaking tournament had 201 teams bid to do something nuts — to shoot, edit and deliver a film in eight days using $1,000 in cash and assistance in kind. Moviebiz-pro judges green-lit six productions. Director-writers Maxime Beauchamp, Christopher Graham, Melanie Jones, Mily Mumford, Kailey and Sam Spear, and Anaïsa Visser will begin shooting their epics on Feb. 9 for screening at The Centre Feb. 24. They and indie-movie types filled the Broadway-off-Commercial Rio theatre recently to raise funds and see previous Crazy8s entries. They included Crazy Late, a 2005 flick about a late-awakening bridegroom. Shot in one continuous take, it helped vault filmmaker Zach Lipovsky to Disney director-producer gigs. The Vancouver Sun reported on Jan. 29 that the 1938 Rio is for sale. Given 10-year operator Corinne Lea’s successful efforts to develop a multi-purpose venue, losing it now would be truly crazy.

Tevie Smith’s classic-car collections includes a 1964 Thunderbird that Sandy Flett’s sign says need no restoration although its owner may.

BABY BLUE: TV viewers whistled when Barrett-Jackson auctioneers recently got $770,000 for a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and $605,000 for a 1966 Shelby GT350 Prototype Mustang. Other hyper-restored 1960s domestic cars fetched well into six figures. No such cosmetics have been done on the 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible, Baby Blue, that Tevie Smith keeps in a Kitsilano basement. Except for colour, minor model-year changes and no blemishes inside or out, it could be the 1966 version that Thelma & Louise stars Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon dived into the Grand Canyon. A car-show placard Sandy Flett made says Smith’s Baby Blue is “exactly as she was delivered from Detroit.” Puckishly, Flett added: “Blue’s owner needs full restoration.” He is, after all, a 1934 model like the immaculate Packard sedan alongside. Last to go in his mint collection may be a beyond-scruffy wood-sided 1947 Chrysler, a.k.a. “the termite taxi,” in which he and a dozen rescue dogs have toured North America. Lifelong athlete Smith played on a 1955 Northern California rugby team that beat an all-star Oxford-Cambridge squad then introduced PNE patrons to pizzas they rhymed with “whizzers.” Most popular topping: smoked salmon. That would match the colour and be no less tasty than the flawless 1965 Chevrolet Corvair convertible that Smith still owns.

Southlands Nursery owner Thomas Hobbs’s recent fondness for European garden devices includes an iron urn with writhing-snake handles. Photo for the Mac Parry Town Talk column of Feb. 3, 2018. Malcolm Parry/PNG [PNG Merlin Archive]

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

FORTUNE SMILED: While gamblers’ dreams fizzled in the Parq casino recently, the St. Paul’s Foundation raked in a $900,115 jackpot several floors above. That was at the JW Marriott hotel, where the 11th annual Scotiabank Feast of Fortune gala helped fund mammography equipment for Vancouver’s 97-year-old Mount St. Joseph Hospital. Greeting 650 guests with wife Patricia Yeo, the gala’s founding chair, Royal Pacific Realty senior vice-president Sing Lim Yeo recalled the debut event raising $200,000. Margaret Chiu and Hao Min co-chaired the current running. Global New Hour co-anchor Sophie Lui and Omni B.C. News’s Bowen Zhang emceed. Guests were entertained by Hong Kong-based pop singer Pancy Lau Fung Ping who had received cancer treatment at MSJ Hospital’s Providence Breast Centre. Following a set with Max Zipursky’s jazz combo, Marie Hui diverted from her style at Vancouver Canucks games to sing O Canada in Mandarin.

Patricia Yeo accompanied husband and Feast of Fortune founding chair Sing Lim Yeo when the gala benefitted Mount St. Joseph Hospital.

St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation president Dick Vollet and Feast of Fortune MC Sophie Lui welcomed guests to the 11th annual running.

Managing Director Philip Meyer happily saw U.S. News & World Report name the Rosewood Georgia Vancouver, B.C. and Canada’s best.

MORE FORTUNE: Accompanying steady friend Sophie Lui at the Feast of Fortune gala, Rosewood Hotel Georgia managing director Philip Meyer saw how the newish JW Marriott handles fair-sized events. Meanwhile, he alone knew that U.S. News & World Report would soon rate the 156-room Georgia Vancouver as B.C. and Canada’s best hotel, thus nudging aside The Ritz-Carlton Montreal.

Vancouver Heritage Foundation executive director Judith Mosley sampled a gin-sour-variant Hotel Georgia signature cocktail during a sold-out historical-education evening in the hotel’s Prohibition lounge.

TIME WAS: In the Hotel Georgia’s Prohibition lounge that evening, Vancouver Heritage Foundation executive director Judith Mosley and board members staged a soirée that sold out, as the annual Heritage House Tour (June 3) does. The $50-ticket event had author-historian Daniel Francis recount B.C.’s 1917-1921 legally booze-free period. Architect-heritage consultant Robert Lemon related the hotel’s history, and Prohibition head bartender Robyn Gray demonstrated his skill. No word on a followup, but the Coquitlam Heritage Society will have Lace Embrace corsetière Melanie Talkington demonstrate 1920s lingerie Feb. 13. Serving cocktails might enliven that event no end.

Babyface band’s Skye Lambourne, Mike WT Allen, Kenan Sunger and Ashton Sweet played vigorously at the Instruments of Change concert.

FURTHER CHANGE: Instruments of Change executive director Laura Barron fronted the organization’s annual concert in the Main-off-Hastings Imperial recently. As usual, it benefited the organization’s efforts to enhance societal well-being through arts education. Also as usual, it featured Barron’s former Forbidden Flutes partner, Liesa Norman, whose hip hop band, XL, will release its Trial by Liar album in March. Also on the bill, four members of the 12-strong Babyface band reflected the instruments-of-change motif with a peculiar instrumental combination — drums, trombone, soprano and baritone saxophones — that was entertainingly vigorous even without the ensemble’s tap-dance squad.

Instruments of Change concert performer Liesa Norman and attendee Kylie Slahvahshkah feted Dr. Dan Kalla on writing his 10th novel.

HE KNOWS BUBOES: To ease medical-duty pressures in 2005, St. Paul’s Hospital emergency-physician Dan Kalla wrote Pandemic about a China-spawned virus putting the world in peril. Eight similarly grim but popular novels followed that instant best-seller. Now he’s returned to the well by completing a shocker titled We All Fall Down! about the grand-daddy of all pandemics. That’s the 14th century’s Black Death that killed possibly 200 million people, recurred often until modern times, and still has toeholds today. In the first of a two-book, global-sales deal with new-for-him publisher Simon & Schuster, Kalla resurrects the plague via the observations of a modern-day physician and a barber-surgeon in 1348 Genoa. That’s where, after depopulating Asian and Middle Eastern nations, the Yersinia pestis bacillus came ashore to do the same in Europe. That cosy opus put to bed, Kalla is writing his 11th: a contemporary murder-mystery.

The Justice Institute of B.C. conferred a Doctor of Laws degree on Lorne Segal for long supporting youth advocacy and mental-health efforts.

SEGAL HONOURED: At a convocation ceremony on Thursday, Justice Institute of B.C. president-CEO Michel Tarko conferred a doctor of laws degree on Lorne Segal. The Kingswood Properties president was recognized for youth advocacy and such mental-health programs as the Courage to Come Back Awards he founded in 1998.

HOT STUFF: Surrounded by senior firefighters at a 1998 Justice Institute event, wisecracking late clothier Murray Goldman said: ‘We’re just talking about my next fire.” Less humorously, Goldman had lost considerable stock and many business records when his second-floor premises were gutted by an arson-sparked blaze below. “We didn’t own the building,” Goldman said, milking the situation, “but it happened anyway.”

Australian consul Kevin Lamb and New Zealand consul general Nick Fleming hosted a celebration of their nations’ respective national days.

UP OVER: Icy rain lashed the Law Courts Inn’s windows as expatriate Australian and New Zealanders celebrated their respective National Days there recently. Along with diplomats Kevin Lamb and Nick Fleming, they likely reflected on fellow nationals basking in summer weather back home. Not all, though, as record numbers of Australians continue to visit B.C. Only Americans and Chinese eclipsed them in 2017, Lamb said, That despite Australia’s tiny 24 million population beside the US’s 322 million and China’s 1.4 billion. As for reversed seasonal celebrations, a colleague once photographed a turkey-and-plum-pudding Christmas dinner in humid, furnace-hot Papua New Guinea. In it, Aussies wearing only khaki shorts toasted a stuffed-suited Santa with “tinnies” of beer as he dispensed presents from a battered pickup truck.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: As Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket conveys his Tesla sports car to their neck of the Solar System, Martians may plan to trade-in the Oldsmobile Rockets, Ford Galaxies and Meteor, Mercury and Saturn sedans that earlier flying-saucer crews teleported home.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca

604-929-8456

PET PROJECT: The Year of the Dog started off encouragingly for Richmond cats. Dogs, too. What began in the 1990s as the Richmond Homeless Cats organization and grew into the Richmond Animal Protection Society or RAPS, recently opened RAPS Animal Hospital in a place known for horsepower. That’s the Richmond Auto Mall where Applewood Auto Group CEO Darren Graham donated a van and then six years of rent-free occupancy for the 6,000-square-foot hospital on its property. Mayor Malcolm Brodie and other politicos joined RAPS executives Fearn Edmonds and Eyal Lichtmann to open the facility. RAPS also operates the City of Richmond’s no-kill City Animal Shelter, with a further $8-million shelter pending.

Adopted six-year-old pug Hymie accompanied RAPS Animal Hospital president Fearn Edmonds at the Richmond facility’s opening.

Science World’s display of body shapes backed Tristan Sawtell as the third Science of Cocktails event he co-founded drew 1,500 attendees.

LOVE THOSE LABS: With 1,500 younger men and women patronizing Science of Cocktails’ 34 help-yourself liquor bars, the science entailed might have been biology. Instead, founder-chair Tristan Sawtell’s third-annual event benefited children from underserved school who participate in Science World’s class field-trip bursary program. The scheme “ignites wonder and inspires dreams,” Science World president and CEO Scott Sampson said. Turns out wealth adviser Sawtell misread the science of economics. Expecting to raise $200,000, he brought in $276,695. Meanwhile, by downing drinks, sampling nine food stations’ offerings and  trying out Science World’s many interactive displays, attendees had a million dollars worth of fun.

James Cheng and writer Trevor Boddy presented City-Builder: The Architecture of James K.M. Cheng at a ceremony in the Inform store.

From City-Builder: The Architecture of James K.M. Cheng, his own photo shows Cheng’s Fairmont Pacific Rim and peekaboo Shaw Tower.

AND THEY CAME: Niels and Nancy Bendtsen’s two-floor Inform store was the launch venue for a 346-page book about the man who designed many of our tallest buildings. Written by Trevor Boddy, City-Builder: The Architecture of James KM Cheng deserves its title. Detailing as it does Cheng’s landmark Shangri-La and other Georgia Street towers, the $80 book features many on False Creek and Coal Harbour, including the Fairmont Pacific Rim and Shaw Tower. Others in Burnaby, Richmond, Toronto, China and elsewhere are detailed, too, often photographed by Cheng and featuring his trademark podium-and-tower motif. In youth, Cheng was urged to be a doctor or lawyer. “My Dad kept writing, ‘How are your business courses?’” he recalled. “Chinese fathers are very dignified. They never say they are wrong. Finally, he sent me a book on (famed American architect) Frank Lloyd Wright. That was his way.” Thus, as the book says, are cities built.

Science World’s display of body shapes backed Tristan Sawtell as the third Science of Cocktails event he co-founded drew 1,500 attendees.

SIZE FLATTERS: Should Inform customers seek truly big books, Nancy Bendtsen offers two, each with its own reading desk. Twenty-by-27-inch formats mean that both open to 70 by 100 centimetres. Annie Leibovitz’s SUMO features the American photographer’s works in 476 pages for $3,450. David Hockney, A Bigger Book, gives the British painter 22 more pages for $75 less. Bendtsen has sold seven of each so far. Earlier clients bought 30 of German-Australian photographer Helmut Newton’s like-sized 1999 SUMO book for $2,500. Bendtsen likely wishes she’d kept the erotically flavoured volumes, as copies reportedly fetch $25,000 today.

NO KIDDING: Now an L.A.-based photography agent, Annie Leibovitz’s three-year studio manager was Vancouver expat Carol Leflufy whose late brother Bob restored and auctioned classic cars under the slogan Fairly Honest Bob.

Immigration-refugee lawyer Zool Suleman launched an online edition of the printed culture-and-criticism quarterly Rhung he co-founded.

COLOUR CONTINUES: In Government House, Victoria, next month, city immigration and refugee lawyer Zool Suleman will receive the honorary title of Queen’s counsel. At the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s Keefer Street office recently, he celebrated another milestone: the relaunch of a publication he co-founded the same year (1992) as his law practice. Rungh — meaning “colour” in several languages — was a printed quarterly of South Asian culture and criticism until 1999, then continued as partial archives. Past editions are now searchable on SFU’s special collections site, a new online edition exists, and print projects are “possible.” For Suleman, that’s another QC: quite comforting.

Kelty Myoshi McKinnon’s cousin Keri Latimer played as her two-tonne sugar sculpture recounted Japanese Canadians’ forced 1942 dispersal.

HOW SWEET IT WASN’T: Two tonnes of sugar would make plenty of the Japanese confectionery called wagashi. But arranged on the floor of Burnaby’s Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre recently, it took viewers back to a bitter time 75 years ago. That was when some 16,000 naturalized or Canada-born Japanese Canadians lost their homes and businesses and were relocated at least 100 miles from the B.C. coast. Among them, some farming families grew and harvested sugar beets under harsh conditions in Alberta and Manitoba. Kelty Myoshi McKinnon, who is a partner with the city-based PFS Studio landscaping firm, recounts that era with her installation Beta Vulgaris: The Sugar Beet Project. Her grandparents and great-grandparents were banished to such a farm. In line with the saying, Doku kurawaba sara made (if you’re going to eat poison, you may as well eat the plate as well), they eventually bought it, and a descendant still farms there today. Complementing McKinnon’s opening, cousin Keri Latimer, formerly with the Juno-winning band Nathan, played a seven-string variant of the koto. She and husband Devin later founded Leaf Rapids and have recorded with musician-producer Steve Dawson who, though not banished from Vancouver, is doing gangbusters business in Nashville, Tennessee.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Let’s hope that those who “sleep like a baby” don’t pee the bed and wake up screaming.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

EXTRA CARE: Stella Chan and Jane Young’s Chinese New Year resolution duplicated 2017’s: Make a ton of money for the B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation. They nailed it. The For Children We Care gala they co-chaired and that Young’s brother Ben Yeung’s Peterson Group sponsored reportedly raised $$3,371,688 — up $836,404 from 2017. The money will aid the $12 million required to fund the hospital’s Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children Enhancement Initiative. That facility “will help revolutionize care for children with developmental and significant rehabilitation needs,” said foundation president-CEO Teri Nicholas. She also thanked “the Chinese community for leadership, and longtime commitment to excellence in pediatric health care.”

Jane Young and Stella Chan co-chaired the For Children We Care gala to reportedly raise $3,3171,688 for B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation.

B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation benefactor Stephanie Carlson joined executive director Teri Nicholas at the For Children We Care gala.

TRY AGAIN: Longtime B.C. Children’s Hospital benefactor Stephanie Carlson might not have been at the For Children We Care gala — or anywhere, in fact — had her parents not overcome their first meeting’s chill. It was 1939 in Qualicum when newspapering family scion Gordon Southam approached forestry mogul H.R. MacMillan’s daughter Jean. “Were you at the party at the weekend?” he asked. “I gave it,” she replied frostily. Married in 1941, he cared for devotedly until his death at age 87.

SCADS FOR PADS: The lunar Year of the Dog began with the Love of Dog gala filling the Hard Rock Casino’s Molson Canadian Theatre floor. Lady Luck smiled on smartly jacketed Labrador dogs and puppies who already enjoy or will train for interesting work with the Pacific Assistance Dogs Society. Lucky, too, are those humans to whom fully trained and certified service or hearing dogs are assigned. Folk with physical difficulties other than blindness usually gain life-changing independence from having such constant canine companions. Children also develop confidence from dogs who support them unwaveringly. The second-annual event supported Burnaby-based PADs (pads.ca), where training sponsorships range from $4,000 to $20,000 and executive director Laura Watamanuk shares an office with retired breeding dog Pepper.

Dr. Strangelove band’s Peter Barone, Jon Roper, Andre Kunkel and Rich Sera backed singers Kelly Brock and Sarah Johns at the PADS gala.

TAKING STEPS: Love of Dog banqueters also danced to the Dr. Strangelove band that was founded 175 dog years ago in 1993. Sidestepping songs like That Doggy In The Window, Hound Dog and Who Let The Dogs Out, the band belted out repertoire that echoed its 16-year stint at Granville Street’s The Roxy dance-can. They’ll lace up their rugby boots at B.C. Place March 10-11 for gigs at the HSBC Canada Sevens World Rugby tourney. Perhaps they’ll rehearse Tom Jones’s ever-popular rugby-fan song, Delilah. Then again, Sir Tom may sing it himself at Jacqui Cohen’s Face The World gala here June 4.

Winner Nicole Smith (left), Julia Dexter and Valerie Song competed for the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs’ $25,000 investment.

Forum for Women Entrepreneurs founder Christina Anthony saw her own investment mentor, Wayne Deans, at the Pitch for The Purse event.

PERFECT PITCH: Redolent of the Dragons Den TV series, Forum for Women Entrepreneurs members Julia Dexter, Nicole Smith and Valerie Song competed for a $25,000 prize at the Odlum Brown FWE gala’s recent Pitch for the Purse tourney. Judges and gala attendees awarded the investment cash to Smith, who founded the professional-vacation-photographing firm Flytographer (so much for phone-camera selfies). FWE itself was founded by Odlum Brown VP Christina Anthony whose career was partly sparkplugged by Deans Knight Capital Management principal Wayne Deans. He mentored her in UBC’s Portfolio Management Program that, following his $2.2-million donation, is now the Sauder School of Business’s Wayne Deans Investment Analysis Centre. His best advice, Anthony recalled: “Be patient and look for value.”

Kim Panganiban, Annabelle Esmeria and Joanna Magano danced between Titanium Studios models at the Show It Off hair-styling concert.

Rheannon Montgomery and Allison Hamilton modelled bridal styles by Whistler’s JoNo studio at the Vogue theatre’s Show It Off event.

TEASE TO PLEASE: B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation benefited when the Beauty Council Western of Canada organization staged Show It Off in the Vogue theatre. Fronted onstage by Avant Garde hair-studio owner Jon Paul Holt, the concert-like event had stylists and salons present sometimes-towering coifs on models wearing dramatic and even burlesque costumes. Featuring both, Joan Novak’s Whistler-based JoNo salon sent out bride-look-alikes attired from the post-apocalyptic to the classical mode, albeit much abbreviated. Titanium Studios’ Anthony Caspillo added showbiz pizzazz with long-braided, young dancers weaving between his much taller models. Audience members applauded, as the hospital’s benefiting, but necessarily absent, patients might have done, too.

Microsoft executive turned Room to Read literacy organization founder John Wood presented his book on how causes can benefit business.

WOOD STILL FIRING: At the Terminal City Club in 2016, former Microsoft executive John Wood reportedly raised $1 million to support Room To Read. He’d co-founded that international organization to support children’s literacy and access to books. Wood soon provided 20,000 libraries with 16 million books and published 1,000 titles, including his own Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Maintaining that theme, he returned to launch his and Amalia McGibbon’s Purpose, Incorporated: Turning Cause Into Your Competitive Advantage. It supports Wood’s disbelief “that purpose and profits are somehow antithetical” with a late chapter that warns:  Mean it! The Dangers of Paying Lip Service. Similar ethics pertained in the post-Reformation 16th century when responsible lay persons adopted hitherto ecclesiastic duties. They continued with the boom in 19th century philanthropy that led to the likes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Wood himself is motivated by former Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer’s motto: “GSD: Get Shit done.”

SETTING IT STRAIGHT: Lorne Segal’s subsequent services aside, the Courage to Come Back Awards’ founding 1998 chair was Shirley Broadfoot.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

FINE FINALE: When the 28th annual Vancouver Symphony Ball filled the Vancouver Convention Centre West’s waterfront ballroom recently, VSO board chair Fred Withers honoured now-retired 18-year music director Bramwell Tovey. “He has been a passionate advocate for providing musical experiences to students and people of all backgrounds,” Withers said. Maintaining the ball’s tradition, a young violinist performed alongside orchestra members who had donated their services. Jessica Tovey played the symphonic intermezzo Méditation from Massenet’s opera, Thaïs. That’s the musician who, at age one, tooted on a plastic harmonica at a welcome-to-Vancouver garden party for parents Tovey and Lana Penner-Tovey. Papa was too much the pro to grandstand while conducting the orchestra as his daughter played, but his delight was evident. Those minutes perfectly capped his services to B.C., along with an orchestra that endured fiscal hardships before philanthropist Art Wilms eased them.

Violinist Jessica Tovey was a one-year-old harmonica player when she and parents Bramwell and Lana attended a welcome-to-Vancouver party.

Karin Smith, Lauren Armstrong and Alexandra Mauler-Steinmann co-chaired the 28th-annual Symphony Ball that reportedly raised $790,000.

KEY THREE: The Symphony Ball reportedly raised $790,000 to support community and music-education program. Repeating co-chair Karin Smith and newcomers Lauren Armstrong and Alexandra Mauler-Steinmann invited guests to share the unique experience of waltzing while a symphony orchestra played airs by Strauss and Lehar. It also belted out the Ricky Martin hit Livin’ La Vida Loca to help dancers settle their prawn-duck-sablefish-tart repast.

Grunt gallery founder Glenn Alteen’s 34 years of service have been recognized with a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

GRUNT WORKED: Another cultural-community chap honoured, although not retiring, is grunt gallery founder-curator-program director Glenn Alteen. His 34 years with that ever-diverse artist-run centre will earn him a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts bronze medallion and $25,000 cash in Ottawa March 28. That’s a further journey than the grunt’s 1995 move from Sixth-off-Main to spacious Second-off-Brunswick quarters. The Whip Restaurant and Gallery promptly occupied that hole in the wall and, much expanded, flourishes there today.

WAITING GAMELY: B.C. Ismailis anticipate an as yet-unscheduled visit by their spiritual leader and honorary Canadian citizen, the Aga Khan.

The Time to Shine gala chair Judy Leung enlivened the event by presenting a $1.5 million donation from employer Westbank Projects.

Executive director Claire Sakaki and artistic director Christopher Gaze saw the Bacchanalia gala benefit Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival.

SHINE ON: The VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation’s 450-guest Time To Shine gala sure shone. Sponsored by Viva Pharmaceutical Inc. founders Jason and Emily Ko and chaired by Westbank Projects’ chief operating officer Judy Leung, it reportedly generated $4,343,552. That will bolster a near-completed $60-million Future of Surgery campaign to support extra-complex trauma, transplant and cancer surgeries. While routinely raising $60 million annually, the foundation will launch two more such capital campaigns, president-CEO Barbara Grantham said. Leung added savour to a lobster-caviar-scallop-Wagyu-beef banquet by presenting her employer’s donation of $1.5 million.

Westbank Projects founder-chief survived a bullet in the head to buy eight Fazioli pianos including this Bing Thom-designed $780,000 model.

BANG ON: The Time To Shine gala’s $1.5-million shot in the arm came from a chap who survived a shot in the head. Westbank Projects principal Ian Gillespie was 10 when a .22-calibre bullet struck his right temple. Although ending his piano studies, it didn’t impede Gillespie’s property-development and piano-acquiring future. He’s since bought eight Fazioli grand pianos, most recently a $780,000 Butterfly model designed by Bing Thom to complement that late architect’s same-name Westbank tower at Burrard and Nelson Street. Just the instrument, perhaps, for playing the Smashing Pumpkins’ Bullet With Butterfly Wings.

VGHG & UBC Hospital Foundation president-CEO Barbara Grantham appreciated the Time To Shine gala’s table and floral décor.

OH HAPPY DAY: Barbara Grantham celebrated the Time To Shine jackpot by singing This Little Light of Mine. That took place the following day at Dunbar Ryerson United Church where Grantham and other workshop participants augmented a performance by artistic director Gail Suderman and the Good Noise Vancouver Gospel Choir.  Asked what the ensemble might sing for her husband, newly minted B.C. Liberal party Leader Andrew Wilkinson, secular soprano Grantham suggested: “We Shall Overcome.” Wilkinson himself might prefer the gospel medley: I’m Getting Ready, I’m Going To Make It, and Victory Is Mine.

COOL IT: This May’s weeklong Hot Tub Cinema Club will have fans watch movies and tipple “beverages” while frolicking in 20 five-person tubs. Any who overheat could be chilled by screening the hot-tub murder-drowning scenes in Valentine and Ninja III: The Domination.

From a Motorino scooter, Vancouver International Wine Festival Bacchanalia chair Stephanie Hungerford showed a husky for-auction vintage.

BOTTOMS UP: The Vancouver International Wine Festival’s Bacchanalia gala usually has a single chair. This year it was Stephanie Hungerford. Three-time predecessor Jana Maclagan stayed on duty, though, as auctioneer for an event that will benefit Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival productions, subsidize youth tickets and fund education programs. With a silent auction and raffle added, $225,000 was reportedly raised. Hungerford herself previously co-chaired (with husband Andrew) three Salvation Army galas that likely didn’t serve the 10 wines from Argentina, California, France, Oregon, Portugal, Spain and Turkey that Bacchanalia guests quaffed. The accompanying banquet began with seven kinds of fish and shellfish, then a “forage” of ham, truffle, egg, mushrooms and suchlike. No rubber chicken, either. Instead, Hotel Vancouver executive chef Cameron Ballendine sent out red-wine-roasted partridge with shishito chilies and smoked game sausage. The chow-fest ended with a “bonfire of wood and ice” dessert that included churro “firewood.” Not that those on their tenth wine, Graham’s 20-year-old Tawny Port, needed much warming.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: And the Academy Award for costume design in a foreign comedy goes to … Justin Trudeau.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

SHOWTIME: Acknowledging International Women’s Day, the 13th annual six-day Vancouver International Women in Film Festival screened 56 productions in  the VIFF Vancity Theatre. Executive director Carolyn Combs welcomed seven indigenous films and staged two related seminar-workshops. The movies included River of Silence — a First Nations woman and husband deal with their daughter’s murder — that premiered at the recent L.A. Skins Fest in Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Perhaps next year’s VIWF festival will screen Combs’s now-readying Bella Ciao! about a woman’s refusal to accept her mother’s impending death to cancer.

River of Silence writer-producer Petie Chalifoux had Women In Film Festival head Carolyn Combs greet her at the 13th annual opening night.

LIONS GATEKEEPING: Amid Lunar New Year-related events, Lions Gate Hospital’s third annual Community Cares gala ran in the Four Seasons hotel. Founder Andy Kai chaired a banquet that reflected its Asian theme with an appetizer including jelly fish and sesame oil followed by the likes of sautéed chicken and squid, dried scallop with bamboo pith, sautéed abalone mushroom and sweet red-bean soup. Foundation and Imperial Metals chair Pierre Lebel saw the event exceed its predecessors by reportedly netting $202,624.25 toward a new medical and surgical centre.

Founder Andy Kai chaired the third-annual Community Cares gala that benefitted the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation chaired by Pierre Lebel.

Pioneering Botox-treatment physicians Alastair and Jean Carruthers joined family, friends and clients at the latter’s birthday party.

NAME YOUR POISON: Botulinum toxin is “100 billion times more deadly than cyanide,” according to Dr. Jean Carruthers. Still, she and husband Dr. Alastair Carruthers have injected patients with perhaps 500,000 doses of its derivative, Botox. “It makes you look relaxed,” Alastair said. Jean’s 2016 bout with breast cancer notwithstanding, she certainly looked relaxed and wrinkle-free at her recent 70th birthday celebrations. While there, father-of-three Alastair said Botox patients often ask how long to delay pregnancy following treatment. His answer: “It’s best to wait until you get home.”

BEER TODAY: “Building the bridges between art, music and beer are important to us,” said Collective Arts Brewing CEO Matt Johnston. Visiting Vancouver recently, the Hamilton, Ont.-based firm’s brewmaster, Ryan Morrow, exhibited beverages in artist-designed cans, recruited more artists and threw a party at Beaumont Studios. The latter had attendees create a large canvas that inadvertently but engagingly echoed label elements of Old Style Pilsner that was launched 92 years ago in Lethbridge, Alta.

Edmonton-expat Californian artist James Verbicky painted over an entire Karma Revero hybrid luxury coupe for its debut at Masik Studio.

BORN AGAIN: Edmonton-born painter James Verbicky had more than a beer can on which to show his prowess recently. It was a hybrid Karma Revero car made in Moreno Valley, California, 70 km from Verbicky’s present San Clemente home. The now-China-owned luxury coupe is a US$130,000 revamp of the Finland-built Fisker Karma that ceased production in 2013 when its battery supplier went volts up. The car was shown in artist Pamela Masik’s 8,500-square-foot studio where her huge paintings and theatrical nature make visitors feel extra-welcome.

Pictured at one of her earlier exhibitions, painter Pamela Masik welcomed guests to a Karma Verona hybrid car launch in her huge studio.

After 46 years, retiring Arts Club Theatre managing artistic director Bill Millerd was feted at a Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage concert.

BYE-BYE, BILL: After seeing actors in 600 productions take a bow, Arts Club Theatre managing artistic director Bill Millerd has followed suit. That was when the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage’s To Bill, With Love concert honoured Millerd’s 46-year career and symbolized the transition to successor Ashlie Corcoran. He and many others underwent the perilous and sometimes seemingly hopeless process that saw South Granville’s Stanley movie theatre become the Arts Club’s jewel-in-the-crown mainstage. Now, with his own unrivalled record established, Millerd will continue to develop young theatre artists via a million-dollar fund in his name that the tribute concert helped endow.

Staffers ringed Twelve West’s Peter Girges at a three-year event in the club he said “serves more Champagne than any joint west of Toronto.”

VERSE OFF: A “For Poets” brass plate identified a corner table in the pre-stripper, pre-entertainment-district Austin hotel pub. By 2001, that Granville-at-Davie hotel had become the Ramada and its pub became the Ginger 62 nightclub. Revamped as Twelve West by West Oak restaurant and Pierre’s Champagne Lounge co-principal Peter Girges, it held a predictably wall-to-wall third anniversary party recently. Meanwhile, having never designated a poets’ corner or moved upmarket, Granville Street’s ever-packed Roxy club will celebrate its 30th on March 22.

Glenn Lewis amused visitors to his Franc Gallery exhibition with ceramic works that changed colour courtesy of their neodymium glaze.

ARTIST PRESENT: Glenn Lewis encouraged fellow artists and the public to participate in Vancouver’s 1960s-1970s avant-garde movement. Some balked. They included Canada’s Osaka World Expo pavilion commissioner general, Patrick Reid, who banned a Lewis-commissioned 176-tile mural he mistakenly deemed to contain penises. Lewis’s ceramic works can still bamboozle. His exhibition at the Franklin-off-Commercial Franc gallery includes ones that change colour from purple to near neutral.  That because their glazes incorporate the common but supposedly “rare earth” element neodymium that varies its hue under different lights. That could be handy in cosmetics, hair rinses or getaway-car paint jobs.

Werner Schonberger feted sous chef Sarah Morten who won his and Etienne Hugel’s scholarship for culinary and wine education in Alsace.

SOME DESSERT: Four Seasons Hotel sous chef Sarah left Le Crocodile restaurant well-satisfied recently. It wasn’t the multi-meat Choucroute Garnie au Reisling that Strasbourg-native proprietor Michel Jacob prepared nor the Alsatian wines that Jean-Frédéric Hugel and Select Wines agent Chris Hoffmeister provided. Instead, the Etienne Hugel and Werner Schonberger scholarship will fly Morten to Alsace for culinary and wine education and enrolment in the Society of Wine Educators. Very tasty.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Didn’t the White House warrior now marching so bravely into a “good” trade war once have “bad feet” spare him from serving his country, possibly in real battles where steel bullets, bombs and missiles are traded freely?

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456

SWEET SMELL OF: S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Foundation’s recent 40th annual Bridge to S.U.C.C.E.S.S. gala reportedly raised $650,000 to benefit programs and social services unaided by government funding. Walter Soo, Jeffrey Chan and Timothy Hsia chaired the Air Canada-sponsored event with 800 enjoying a banquet-concert at the Westin Bayshore Hotel. Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon attended, as did the traditional crop of politicians. Foundation chair Brandon Hui and CEO Queenie Choo welcomed Premier John Horgan despite some gala-goers likely not favouring his government’s real-estate taxing strategies. Horgan’s plain business suit and blazing NDP orange tie contrasted the Trudeau-on-tour embroidered Chinese-silk jackets predecessor-but-one Gordon Campbell usually wore. Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie and Vancouver South MP-Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan were there, of course. So was Vancouver park board commissioner John Coupar, who recently opposed a paved bike lane through Kitsilano Park and is mooted to be the Non-Partisan Association’s 2018 mayoral candidate. Meanwhile, the gala has raised more than $11 million since its inception.

S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Foundation CEO Queenie Choo welcomed Premier John Horgan to the 40th Bridge to S.U.C.C.E.S.S. gala at the Bayshore hotel.

Jeffrey Cha, Walter Soo and Timothy Hsia co-chaired a gala that reportedly raised $650,000 to support S.U.C.C.E.S.S. agency programs.

Vancouver firefighter Justin Mulcahy and FreshPoint VP Colleen Goto saw 700 grocery bags packed for at-risk students for during spring break.

GOOD FOR THEM: Recruits practised life-saving ladder techniques at Vancouver Fire Rescue’s Chess Street training facility recently. Steps away, 25 off-duty officers and eight PricewaterhouseCoopers volunteers packed eight tonnes of foodstuffs to help hungry, at-risk students survive spring break. Their efforts supplemented Vancouver Firefighters Charities’ Snacks For Kids program, also coordinated by leather-lungs Justin Mulcahy. He is assisted by Dotty Kanke who has long sparkplugged and supported firefighters’ charitable works. From the training operation’s produce-wholesaling neighbour, FreshPoint, VP Colleen Goto delivered a tonne of apples and oranges to help fill 700 foodstuffs bags.

Beside a Learjet 75 aircraft, Tiffany Soper and Kevin Mazzone co-chaired a Children’s Wish Foundation gala at London Aviation Centre.

WISH LISTING: Avenue PR principal Tiffany Soper and Lazy Gourmet general manager Kevin Mazzone chaired the Children’s Wish Foundation’s fifth annual Night of Wonders gala. With a Bombardier Learjet 75 aircraft as backdrop, it was staged at the airport’s London Aviation Centre made more intimate by Countdown Events owner-designer Soha Lavin. The event reportedly raised $550,000, some $346,500 of which will send life-threatened youngsters and their families on global journeys the former wish for.

Carl Chaplin painted himself and a Moscow blast in a series not represented in Vancouver Art Gallery’s nuclear-themed Bombhead show.

ARTIST MISSING: The Vancouver Art Gallery’s BOMBHEAD exhibition entails 30 artists addressing nuclear-age “subject matter, strongly associated with obliteration and destruction.” Oddly, curators overlooked B.C.-based Carl Chaplin, a.k.a. Dr. Nuko, who painted nuclear detonations occurring over several global cities, including Vancouver. Among the works released as postcards, one — actually mailed from the then-Soviet Russian capital of Moscow in 1980 — shows the artist himself running from a blast behind the Kremlin’s Red Square neighbour, St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Arash and Yeganeh Asli and Pourang and Maryam Taheri sponsored the Neekoo soirée via the Arete Venture Capital and Yocale firms.

HAPPY NOWRUZ: Some Iranian expats will leap through bonfire flames March 20 to greet the following day’s Persian New Year, Nowruz. Others anticipated it less dramatically at the Neekoo Philanthropic Society’s recent soirée in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia. The seventh annual event should provide $3,000-to-$5,000 scholarships for 40 young students.  Celebrants admired a traditional Haft Sin new-year table set with, but not restricted to, seven symbolic items — coins, vinegar, bean sprouts, etc. — starting with the letter S in Farsi. A banquet of Persian dishes followed in the Spanish Ballroom.

SINGERS’ SUPPER: Fourth Avenue restaurateur John Bishop recently hosted another fundraising dinner for Vancouver Chamber Choir and soon-to-retire conductor Jon Washburn. Welsh-born Bishop has long nurtured singers. In 1993, he built a “pagoda” of french fries that operatic soprano Cecilia Bartoli consumed as quickly as British troops shamefully demolished the real one in 1860 at Beijing’s Summer Palace.

Grade 10 students and budding filmmakers Rajinder Kalsi and Bamandip Randhawa backed Shakti Film Festival founder Sonia Andhi.

Eighteen-year-old writer-director-producer Qasim Bajwa’s 40-minute The Light Between Us film drama needs $6,000 to be completed.

MORE MOVIES: Fifteen years have passed since family councillor Sonia Andhi founded the Shakti Society and an annual awards gala recognizing women’s achievements in academics, the arts, athletics, business, public service and human resilience. Now she’s launched the Shakti Film Festival that should screen 10 to 15 productions on Oct. 14. “They’ll not necessarily be South Asian,” Andhi said, “and we welcome men who show women as real characters and avoid the stereotypes.” Attending the launch, L.A. Matheson Secondary female Grade 10 students are already making films focused on societal violence. Meanwhile, male Qasim Bajwa, 18, has shot much of The Light Between Us, a 40-minute drama addressing mental illness. Now seeking $6,000 to complete it, “I will do anything it takes to make it happen.”

Impresario Kamal Sharma greeted Bollywood movie singing star Shivangi Bhayana whom he first staged at age seven in her native Burnaby.

ALL GROWN UP: Famous in India and presently visiting family here, Shivangi Bhayana has sung in 10 Bollywood films, including the theme song in the current blockbuster Padmaavat about 14th-century Rajput Queen Padmavati. At the Shakti event, the graduate of Burnaby’s Cariboo Hill Secondary (Michael Bublé’s alma mater) linked up with impresario Kamal Sharma who staged her debut at age seven in a Michael J. Fox theatre concert.

PARIS EN BLANC: Adults wishing to join 20,000 others at Paris’s Diner en Blanc event June 3 (call 778-558-8796) may share Mile’s End Motors principal David Bentil’s table for 50. They’d fly to spend a week at the Marriott Opera Ambassador hotel, where some might sign up for one of Bentil’s luxury and/or exotic cars.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Let’s bet Mar-a-Lago no longer serves lamb skewers.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456