ZAJAC RANCH ADDS ABORIGINAL ARTS, EDUCATION CENTRE
Guests at opening greeted with welcome song by Kwantlen First Nation singer
RANCH HANDS: The narrow, nine-kilometre road beside Stave Lake once led to a prison. Today, 600 youngsters with life-threatening or debilitating ailments follow it yearly to what is now the Zajac Ranch for Children. This week, former senator Gerry St. Germain, Mission Mayor Randy Hawes and 120 others attended the official opening of the everexpanding facility’s aboriginal arts and education centre. They were greeted by the Kwantlen First Nation’s Michael Kelly Gabriel, 19, who performed a welcome song and led Mel and Wendy Zajac into the building. More structures may follow, said Don Rutledge, who raised $1 million for the ranch by completing the 2008 New York marathon. He and Zajac foresee a $2.5-million lodge-conference centre aiding the ranch’s $2.2-million budget. Victoria contributes $650,000, and attending White Spot president Warren Erhart’s Pirate Pack promotion adds $100,000. An annuity should launch at $6 million and grow to provide all funding, Rutledge said.
Ceremonies over, Don James, who sold his Deeley motorcycle dealership to Harley Davidson, left not on two wheels but in his Eurocopter EC130 helicopter, and was home before some reached the Lougheed Highway. NO LOOKING BACK: Among her creations, city fashion designermanufacturer Chloe Angus chose daringly backless ones for herself and close clients. It was cruelly ironic on June 29, 2015, when an otherwise-benign cavernoma tumour trickled blood into her spinal cord and paralyzed her. With 3,000-square-foot premises recently occupied and six months of treatment and therapy ahead, Angus figured “I would tone down and stop working eight days a week.” Some hopes. A commission to design for a royal visit arrived. Plans for menswear and home-decor lines matured, and Angus’ business doubled. Today, with “just enough feeling returning to keep me working hard, I can walk while swimming, just not on land.” Meanwhile, aware that she carries the gene for Huntington’s disease, Angus is encouraged by UBC researcher Dr. Blair Leavitt completing the human clinical trial of a promising drug treatment. Typically, she has honoured her mother and Huntington patient Dana by launching a wrap, sales of which will benefit the Huntington Society. Designed by Clarence Mills, its Dragonfly motif symbolizes transformation. As for her own ever-transforming business activity, “I should try to tone it down,” Angus said. Not that that worked before.
PURTY PURR: Jonathan T. (Jonty) Parker has a truffle-hound’s nose for British cars with promise. Spotting a scruffy 1960 AC Ace on Kingsway in 1972, he waved the driver over and paid $1,400 for it. Restored, the roadster won many awards, including first in class at world-top-ranked Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. In 2015, Parker heard of a six-cylinder Jaguar E-type coupe garaged in Calgary since 1974 when an exasperated woman had the “honeymoon” cart stall one hot day. Parker corralled what Enzo Ferrari called “the most beautiful car in the world.” Ian Davey and Mike Taylor’s RX Autoworks did their magic, and the Jag, with 35,000 miles on the clock, took the recent All British Field Meet’s Best Debuting Restoration and E-type class trophies.
IN A NAME: Isn’t what Donald Trump calls a witch hunt really a wizard hunt like that pursued by Dorothy’s pup Toto?
NAZ CLUB: After entertaining previous guests with displays of tango dancing and sword fighting, City Square VP-director Naz Panahi presented South Korean violinist Jenny Bae at the fifth annual running of the ARThritis Soirée that she founded. Held in the Hotel Vancouver’s fabled Roof, and without the benefit of auto-modulating PA, the event raised a reported $390,000 for Arthritis Research Canada.
FRIENDS INDEED: Colleagues rallied around wine agent Michael Willingham in 2007 when an accident-induced stroke needed $50,000 in surgery. The B.C. Hospitality Foundation launched then has since supported 150 others and funded 140 scholarships. Featuring 14 Chilean wineries, 14 city restaurants and six bartenders, the foundation’s recent Dish ‘n’ Dazzle tasting reportedly added $60,000 to the $840,000 raised previously. Notable on the chow line: winepoached crab, mussels, clams, shrimp, coastal fish, roe, kelp and bottarga aioli on “nori sand” by the Hotel Vancouver’s Notch8 chef de cuisine Will Lew.
CEL MATES: Classical cel-animation moviemaking is akin to monks hand-illuminating books in the pre-printing era. About as anonymous, too. Still, the man who called himself Marv Newland has, since 1947, made several pictures — frame by painstakingly hand-coloured frame — at his city-based Rocketship International studio. At the Cinematheque recently, film historian Michael van den Bos introduced former boss Newland and screened 12 globally respected productions, including his student opus, Bambi Meets Godzilla. What a cultural monument he’s been — since 1947. DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Cued by self-serving politicians, multiplex theatre chains may introduce the single transferable movie ballot. Patrons would enter their first, second and subsequent choices of films offered, whereupon a computer would eliminate the least popular, reassign nominators’ alternative choices and repeat the calcula- tion until ticket holders content- edly watched the same flick on every screen.