POOL PARTY CELEBRATES WE DAY FOUNDERS
CUM LAUDE: Lorne and Melita Segal hosted their traditional pre-WE dinner this week. As usual, tables for the organization’s founding brothers, Craig and Marc Kielburger, and guests sat on transparent flooring above the Segals’ tented swimming pool. The sight of water bubbling beneath their feet may have reminded the brothers of the many social and charitable bridges they’ve crossed since WE Day’s 2007 debut in Toronto.
Twelve years earlier, Craig Kielburger founded the Free The Children charity that international WE Day rallies support. That organization recently changed its name to the WE Movement, although Lysa Creswell maintained hers when simultaneously marrying Craig.
Meanwhile, Marc and wife Roxanne Joyal have added two daughters for future WE Day audiences now drawn from 12,000 schools.
Meanwhile, UBC president Santa Ono met the Kielburgers at the Segal event and made an offer: “If there’s any way I can help you, we have 61,000 kids out there. The students you have addressed, we can mobilize them.”
HOT AND HAPPY: Children who once dreamed of riding the range as cowboys may now aspire to do so in the kitchen. That’s true for Downtown Eastside youngsters mentored since 2014 by Dirty Apron cooking school chef David Robertson.
According to Admiral Seymour Elementary teacher Grace Crespo: “The hands-on experience … instils confidence, creativity and teamwork with these students.”
Teamed with the Redfish Kids clothing store, the school’s Courage to Cook program ran this year.
Some standout students, a Dirty Apron squad and chefs Thomas Haas, David Hawksworth, Nico Schuermans and Joel Watanabe prepared a $250-a-ticket banquet to help mentor more youngsters.
As Crespo told diners: “I often hear them say, ‘This is the best day of my life.’ ”
ON A ROLL: Chair Tamara Taggart and past chair Jane Hungerford started the 12th annual Inspiration gala by sampling a $522,680 Rolls-Royce Dawn convertible’s massage seats.
When the banquet of beef tenderloin and chocolate-cherry ganache ended, the B.C. Cancer Foundation had cleaned up, too. It reportedly earned $3.05 million, enough to drive five such cars from the Hotel Vancouver’s B.C. Ballroom. That sum, including $1.3 million donated during the event, will help fund a procedure whereby an injected protein identifies cancer-afflicted cells and delivers a radiation dosage directly.
BIG SISTERS’ BROTHER: Big Sisters of B.C. Lower Mainland’s recent Luminary Award Soirée reportedly raised $450,000.
Co-chairs Katie White and Danielle Veldhuis expected that sum would secure mentorfriends for 135 wait-listed girls aged seven to 17.
The soirée also honoured philanthropist and RBC Wealth Management vice-chairman John Montalbano.
BRAND NEW BALLGAME: Luminary Award attendee Marlene Cohen announced granddaughter Kasondra Cohen-Herrendorf’s recent engagement.
The Army and Navy Stores heiress will marry tree-tall lum- ber broker Marcus Rambold on Sept. 4, 2017. He proposed in Chicago before the couple watched that city’s ultimately successful Cubs lose their first at-home World Series game since 1945.
BIG-TICKET TICKS: Spending time in a bar is one thing. Selling time there is another, especially when prices run into six figures.
But Global Watch Co. owner Sassan Pourfar does that after installing interlocked doors to what was the Shangri-La hotel’s Xi Shi Lounge.
Similar doors on luxury strip Alberni Street now open to Pourfar’s 2,000-square-foot Rolex boutique. Its debut drew many — including Shangri-La developers Ian Gillespie and Ben Yeung — who may prefer to have hard assets on the wrist than liquid assets in the hand. JOINING THE CLUB: Penthouse nightclub owner Danny Filippone has accepted an award naming his late father and uncles as pioneer members of the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame.
According to a 1976 Vancouver Sun report, Jimmy, Ross and Mickey Filippone and Joe Philliponi (a citizenship clerk’s error) often accepted something else. That was the $13.95 it cost 80 prostitutes each time they entered the club. Male patrons paid $2.95.
“The joint has been busted, arrested and almost burned down,” Danny said, referring to police raids and subsequent fines and jail sentences that were quashed on appeal. “But here we are. The Filippones are survivors.”
FIGHTING WORDS: Author Aaron Chapman’s Liquor, Lust, and the Law recounted Penthouse’s history before and after the club’s notoriety was diluted by biker-controlled stripper pubs.
He has addressed Vancouver’s turbulent days again in his third Arsenal Pulp Press book, The Last Gang in Town, which released at the Biltmore Cabaret this week.
His fourth may document Vancouver nightclubs like the Cave, Isy’s, etc. that, unlike the Penthouse, didn’t survive.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Guy Fawkes’ foiled plot to blow up British parliamentarians 411 years ago today could be a damp squib beside what U.S. voters may do Tuesday.