Town Talk: Fishing hooks $820,000 for autistic kids

NET GAIN: Past and present hockey players and front-office types attended a Fishing for Kids reception on the Hotel Georgia’s Reflections patio recently. Later, 42 partiers, including Canucks Derek Dorsett and Sven Bäertschi, took off for Langara Island’s Westcoast Fishing Club. Their angling prowess there reportedly added $820,000 to the $7 million previously raised to help the Canucks Autism Network support 2,000 autism-touched families. A 41.6-pound chinook won $200,000 for construction executive Glenn Fereday who, according to event tradition, returned his prize. The results delighted Clara and Paolo Aquilini, who founded the organization and, with other family members, own the Vancouver Canucks team and Rogers Arena.

ALL FIRED UP: Hotel Georgia general manager Philip Meyer applauded Glass Tiger singer Alan Frew’s performance at the Fishing For Kids event. It was a natural gig for the Scottish-born stroke survivor who charitably supports many needy children. His repertoire included Fire It Up, which he co-wrote for Joe Cocker. Looking up toward hotel rooms, he sang: “She’s sitting staring out a window, trying to figure out just what to do.”

Until recently, he could have meant month-long Hotel Georgia guest Julia Roberts. Rather than staring from her window, though, she likely reprised the bubble-bath part of that scene in Pretty Woman where, wearing headphones and with Richard Gere watching, she sang along to Prince’s Kiss: “You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on. I just need your body, baby, from dusk to dawn.”

DREAM ON: “The road doesn’t always have to come to a dark end,” said 19-year-old singer-songwriter Ria Jade who endured eating disorders and severe anxiety en route to hosting Shaw’s third-season eveRIAthing TV program. Youngsters who appear on the show competed in the second annual Wall of Stars concert that Jade presented at the Rio theatre recently. Of that generation, “We can change the world one dream at a time,” she said.

The D word is part of the Kids Dream Big Media Foundation that women’s-prison corrections officer Jaimee Greene and psychiatric nurse Donna Kane founded. Girls in its Academy Angels cheerleading program develop etiquette, public-speaking, leadership and community-service skills, Greene said. As for including sis-boom-bah coaching in her day job, Green referred to an institutional currency substitute by saying: “If someone stole someone else’s Mr. Noodles, it might not be the safest pyramid.”

NO SAIL: City hall is mulling a development application to replace Pacific Centre’s Georgia Street rotunda and concourse. Not included in Perkins + Will Architects’ design is the rebirth of a cutesy-bootsy Dutch windmill there that was premier Bill Vander Zalm’s contribution to the Expo 86 world’s fair.

SOPHIE SO GOOD: Men who bike-race with hotelier Philip Meyer are often called MAMILS (middle-aged men in Lycra). Global B.C. anchor Sophie Liu’s 18-month relationship with Meyer would likely make her a YWIL, a word only pronounceable by the Welsh. “I’m feeling my legs right now,” Fishing for Kids co-MC Liu said, having earlier pedalled from Squamish to Whistler and back. She felt worse a month ago when a cycling collision with her former spouse fractured her left elbow. That should be a warning to velocipedic mayor Gregor Robertson if he opts to weave through hated car traffic again with ex-wife Amy.

FAR-SIGHTED: The fourth-annual Vancouver Chinese Film Festival will take a novel turn at 2 p.m. Sept. 9. At Vancity Theatre, it will screen five 10-minute documentaries shot in China by young Canadian directors Laura Arboleda, Michael Fuller, Marc-Olivier Harvey, Austin Kvaale and Evan Luchkow. Local producer Paul Armstrong guided the Beijing Normal University-organized project.

KIT FOR TAT: Location, location, location is garment-retailing’s usual mantra. But when a traditional yogawear firm gets involved, the tactical equivalent of the wind-relieving pawanmuktasana pose may pertain. Take the case of ousted Lululemon Athletica founder Chip Wilson, wife Shannon and son JJ, who located a branch of their Kit and Ace chain one block from Lululemon’s original Kitsilano store. Recently, with the equivalent of a loud brrrrp, Lululemon established a store of its own the same distance away from Kit and Ace’s debut Gastown locale.

HEAR THE BUZZ? National Honey Month began Thursday.

SHUT-EYE ON HIGH: That report about oh-so-moderne airliner beds and pyjamas (Sun, Aug. 27) might bemuse some mid-1930s New York-L.A. passengers. They reclined beneath the sheets aboard DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) aircraft that would achieve lasting fame as DC-3s. Slumbering was less serene for me on an upper-deck, lie-flat Tokyo-Vancouver flight when smallish men in large boxer shorts frequently stumbled back and forth to the washroom. But even napping wasn’t feasible on three-hour-20-minute transatlantic flights by supersonic Concorde that included a lengthy repast and related gargling with Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle champagne.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt might equally have meant today’s putative Republican successor when he said public opinion combined “the unbridled tongue with the unready hand.”

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456