When long-term becomes long distance
Toronto is officially down one power couple.
Just weeks before one of the town’s most dependable, not to mention photographable, duos scurried out of town — one to Geneva, the other to Los Angeles — I grabbed some savoury-sweet time with them at the wonderful Kiin on Adelaide St. Pass the chor ladda ( jasmine rice flour dumplings), we said to Kirstine Stewart, whose profile in the city has long been fortified by a series of high-profile gigs, including top positions at CBC Television and Twitter Canada.
Soon it was time for the mieng pia (a salt-crusted whole sea bream with Thai herbs), which got the thumbs up from her husband Zaib Shaikh, an actor best known for his turn in Little Mosque on the Prairie, but who has spent the last few years holding down the post of Toronto Film Commissioner.
Both ambitious, both attractive — Stewart retains a kind of Michelle Pfeiffer effervescence, Shaikh is perennially boyish — they have played a key role in the social architecture of the city since coupling up in 2011, all the while fulfilling a fresh paradigm of power coupledom: cross-cultural, for one, but also a partnership in which Stewart is older and by no means anyone’s “trophy wife.”
In October, they find themselves taking on two new jobs, the only hitch being, well, their new gigs are nine hours and two continents apart.
He just got appointed as Canada’s consul-general to Los Angeles — one of the plummest gigs in diplomat-land — while she now works in a senior capacity at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
The distance could be worse, I point out: at least one of you is not moving to Sydney!
“We’re really lucky to be doing this in a time of tech that can make everyone in the family feel closer. With two kids and parents in Toronto, we’ve already used the new group FaceTime with the girls,” says Stewart, who has two grownup daughters from a previous marriage.
Furthermore: “We can always slide into each other’s DMs …”
Amazingly, both job opportunities presented themselves within a span of 24 hours.
“Everything kind of came at once,” Shaikh says. “I was in discussions on my gig for a while, as these things take time. But then we got confirmation of both jobs the same day actually. First, Kirstine heard she got the WEF role and it
was, ‘Guess we’re moving to Geneva.’ Then I had a missed call from a Washington number, which I called back to find they were offering me the CG position. Looking back on it, it’s definitely a case of, ‘Wow, that’s a day we won’t be forgetting soon!’ ”
Both gigs come with exciting challenges.
For Shaikh, working as the senior Canadian rep in the City of Angels, he is most “looking forward to expanding my horizons and working with businesses in all sectors to leverage the already great relationship that Canada and Los Angeles and Southern California have together.” The role in L.A., he notes, also oversees Canada’s relationship with Arizona and Nevada.
When following up with him this week, I asked how it’s been jumping into “diplomat school,” as Shaikh calls it. He confirms, “it’s been an intense few weeks already, with briefings in Ottawa and meetings coming up in Washington, D.C., before I officially start in L.A.” Not to mention “all the acronyms I’m starting to get used to and starting to use whether by email, phone or in person.”
Stewart has her own alphabet soup to swim through in her new Swiss environs. Her position specifically involves engaging with “media, entertainment and information businesses worldwide.”
Besides the big tent-pole that is the Davos conference — the annual power-broker event put on by the Forum — her job “is active year-round with a lot of travel as I’ll be looking to expand partnerships and memberships, particularly in China and West Coast U.S.”
Asked if she sees a continuum between her past high-profile gigs and this new role, Stewart chews on that a bit: “I’m lucky to have the experience of heading up Twitter Media out of New York City and the digital transformation work started at the CBC and time with startups like TribalScale — it all ends up literally converging in this role, which takes me back to media in an ironic way, because it’s a media that’s changed by these forces, and the search for how to make sense of it in the world we are in now.” Back to Shaikh. Since being based in L.A. invariably comes with an immersion in all things pop culture — and with awards season just around the corner — I ask if there are Canadians he’s rooting for when it comes to the Golden Globes, Oscars and Grammys.
Not surprisingly, he had more than a few thoughts: “I’ll definitely be looking out for Stephan James, the Toronto actor, in If Beale Street Could Talk, which got big buzz during film fest time; Sandra Oh breaking moulds with Killing Eve … and you can never count out the Ryans, this year being Gosling and First Man’s time, which also has Canadians behind the scenes … And when it comes to music, nobody had a bigger album than Drake with Scorpion.”
Asked, finally, what they will miss most about Toronto when off chasing dreams elsewhere, it’s family and friends.
“For me,” Stewart says, “I’ll miss the little routine things like my Saturday mornings at Barry’s Boot Camp.”
“For me,” her husband inserts, “being a downtown kid since birth, it’ll be hard to leave being able to walk to great restaurants, shops, and we’ll both for sure miss seeing the Raptors at home.”
Meanwhile, the plan for the newly long-distance couple remains to FaceTime as much as possible and visit each other whenever they can. Paging Aeroplan!