Town Talk: Christ Church Cathedral bells commemorate Jack Poole

CHIME TIME: Christ Church Cathedral dean Peter Elliott took bronze recently. Almost five tonnes of it, in fact, in the form of four bells from the family-owned Paccard Bell Foundry in Annecy, France. There was an Olympics connection, too. The bells commemorate Jack Poole, who headed Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics bid committee but succumbed to pancreatic cancer shortly before events began. His widow Darlene attended a blessing ceremony for the bells, the largest of which is dedicated to Poole and will sound the concert note of C.

The Jack and Darlene Poole Foundation donated $2.5 million toward the cathedral’s $9-million capital campaign. Its bell component began in the early 1980s as a sideline to developer Poole negotiating an air-rights mortgage with then-dean Herbert O’Driscoll and Cathedral trustees. Sparing the 1889-built church from demolition, the deal transferred floor-space zoning to the adjacent Park Place development. Poole also grandfathered land for the bell tower now nearing completion. “It is the last chapter of Jack’s story,” Darlene said at the blessing ceremony, “and would make him very happy.”

BELL BOY: Another suite of four Paccard bells has pealed in the Okanagan since 2002. Occupying the 26-metre-high tower of Anthony von Mandl’s Mission Hill Family Estate winery, they’re easily heard across Okanagan Lake where, in 1859, BC’s first vines produced the Oblate mission’s sacramental wines. In other vinous history, von Mandl was Vancouver magazine’s wine-and-spirits columnist in 1974. His words about the Napa Valley then could be of the Okanagan today: “You are in the midst of the bursting purple, yellow, turquoise colours of the grapes, interspersed by the pastel shades of the dying leaves … improving with each passing year, the wines have reached an international standard, and at a reasonable price.”

GREY MATTERS: Poking somewhat friendly fun at the $45 Diner en Blanc picnic, artists Graeme Berglund and George Vergette devised a free one for 1,500 folk wearing only black. Their Ce Soir Noir will run again at Crab Park Aug. 30. If this becomes a trend, someone may launch Souper en Vert for ecology enthusiasts dressed entirely in their favourite green. Manger en Orange might attract B.C. Lions fans. And Graze en Gris would have participants shed its mandated 50-shades-of-grey garments to frolic underneath their picnic blankets.

IN THE STRETCH: Voice-and-opera professor Nancy Hermiston had front office backing when the UBC Opera Ensemble performed at a dinner-concert developer Peter Wall hosted recently. That’s because newly installed varsity president Santa Ono attended the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre event. The Vancouver-born former Peabody Conservatory of Music student could have sung along or played cello with the event’s Gala Orchestra. However, a McGill PhD in experimental medicine and post-doctoral Harvard fellowship signalled a different career path.

The ensemble’s performance of Va, Pensiero from Verdi’s Nabucco seemed to welcome longtime expat Ono: “Settle upon the slopes and the hills where, soft and mild, the sweet airs of our native land smell fragrant.”

There was no political scent at the event where Wall welcomed Ono and U.S. Consul-General Lynne Platt rather than earlier campaign beneficiaries Christy Clark and Gregor Robertson. However, he warbled as enthusiastically for soprano Angela Meade as for Jessye Norman at a similar 1992 concert. “It’s like rooting in a race horse,” gambler Wall said then. “And I’ve got a winner.”

WITH THE BAND: Vancouver Opera Orchestra concertmaster and all-around man about music Mark Ferris assembled the Wall concert’s Gala Orchestra. It was conducted by David Agler whose unwillingly relinquished the VOO baton in 1999. That created an unsurvivable melodrama for opera-company brass when big-time donors buttoned their billfolds. Agler, who still lives here, has since conducted orchestras worldwide and is the 11-year artistic director of Ireland’s feted Wexford Festival Opera.

AT LIFE’S DOOR: Thirteen years ago today, B.C. Cancer Agency radiation and chemotherapy teams began what oncologist David Hay cheerfully called “killing this cancer just before we kill you.” They had two months to obliterate the aggressive esophageal tumour that surgeon John Yee would remove. Had they failed, that deadline might have been literal. But those tender and ever-considerate folk got it done, albeit at the cost of considerable if temporary weight and strength losses. For those starting down or already on that road today, email the address at the end of this column for reminiscences that may hearten you and especially those you love.

STRIKE THREE: Having written about the Penthouse nightclub and Commodore Ballroom, Aaron Chapman will turn away from entertainment history in his imminent and optimistically titled third book: The Last Gang In Town. That would be the 1960 Clark Park Gang that spurred some police officers to trade their nightsticks for baseball bats.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Professional photographers may rejoice that our selfie-loving prime minister has at least one cabinet minister willing to blow $6,600 on a few snaps.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456