FOURTH OF JULY EVENT SQUEAKED IN AHEAD OF FRANCE’S BASTILLE DAY
B.C. notables gather to bid fond farewell to departing U.S. consul Lynne Platt
SO LONG: Had the U.S. Consulate’s usual Fourth of July reception occurred one day later, it would have shared France’s July 14 Bastille Day. “Make America late again,” one attendee joked. With the consular residence in Shaughnessy under renovation and an expected U.S. warship deployed elsewhere, the event took place at the Vancouver Aquarium. In what was her swan song, consul general Lynne Platt congratulated then-incoming B.C. Premier John Horgan and aquarium president John Nightingale. She credited the latter for “leadership in ocean science worldwide (and) keeping our oceans healthy and sustainable for generations to come.” As for sustainable U.S.-Canada relations: “We have much to learn from each other. I remain deeply optimistic about our bilateral relationships.” That optimism envisages “tech corridors and centres of excellence” she likened to “Florence in the Renaissance era.” Without a presentday Machiavelli, one assumes. Platt’s warmest words to guests: “It has been my great privilege to be shaped for three years by you and this place.”
MORE RIGHT STUFF: Succeeding Platt and predecessor Anne Callaghan, U.S. consul general Katherine Dhanani will arrive Aug. 7. Her two decades of African postings included the declined offer to be ambassador to Somalia following that embassy’s 24-year closure. In September, subject to congressional confirmation, Republican party fundraiser and billionaire coal-clan member Kelly Knight Craft should become the Trump-nominated ambassador to Canada. A HOUSE APART: Politicos celebrating July 4 included NDP solicitor general-to-be Mike Farnworth and former B.C. finance minister Carole Taylor. As premier Christy Clark’s dollara-year special adviser, Taylor earned $95,999 less than Horgan appointee Bob Dewar. “And they never paid me,” she quipped. Learning of that, Horgan hinted that she may be invited to continue in her role. Farnworth recently inherited a house in his near-Liverpool birthplace, Wirral West, that has the smallest electorate in Britain’s House of Commons. No word on him retiring there.
CASTLE COUPLE: B.C.-raised Giada Dobrzensky de Dobrzenicz got an easier-to-render name and a title upgrade from countess to princess with her 2015 marriage to Prince Marcantonio del Drago in Prague’s St. Thomas church. This week, parents Enrico and Aline Dobrzensky staged a reception for the couple, daughter Aurelia and 150 guests. They occupied the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club’s main dining room, not the less formal Star & Dragon restaurant that Britain’s Prince Andrew opened in 2003 while delivering a Thames Yacht Club burgee. The del Dragos live alternately in France, Switzerland and Brighton, England, a town made fashionable in 1815 when yet another prince, later King George IV, moved there. Meanwhile, they are renovating and plan to live in a 1,000-year-old castle the del Dragos have owned since the 1500s in the near-Rome village of Riofreddo. It means Cold Water which, as pelting Vancouver rain, was the motif for director Giada’s 2001 short film Mon Amour Mon Parapluie that producer Paul Armstrong revived for this week’s Celluloid Social Club screenings. In other water matters, the del Dragos should awake refreshed in all their homes. That’s because investment specialist and computer whiz Marcantonio designed a mattress with mutually compensating hydraulic chambers that, according to its U.S. patent, “form a structure enabling a body to rest.”
AIX AND SPAIN: They’re part of an 11-day itinerary for Vancouver’s Elektra Women’s Choir members who flew to Marseilles on Thursday. After singing in Aix-en-Provence and Sète, they’ll leave France for the World Symposium of Choral Music at Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana. Their previous such participation was at Sydney, Australia, in 1996, when present-day conductor Morna Edmundson was an ingenue singer. This time they’ll perform Songbird and the three-movement Primary Colours by B.C. composers Sarah Quartel and Kathleen Allen. They sang the first enchanting work during a 31st-season launch at the Kerrisdale home of chorister Elisabeth Finch and spouse David’s.
GASOLINE ALLEY: A roaring exhaust was music sublime for men visiting a Kerrisdale back-lane garage recently. You’d expect its owners, Homeworx house-building-and-renovating firm principal Oliver Young and wife Lisa, to house modern Euro sedans or a flossy pickup truck there. But the noisemaker was Young’s ultrarare 1929 British Invicta S sports car that Sun auto scribe Alyn Edwards reported on recently. When fully renovated — and it’s close — it should be worth well into seven figures. A 1937 Alvis Speed 25 roadster beside it undertakes long road trips and “is still good for 100 m.p.h.,” meaning 161 km/h, Young said. Also there, his 1928 Triumph TT 500 motorcycle could once “do the ton,” Britspeak for 100 m.p.h., although Young rides it more sedately.
ASTORIANS: Reports of the Sahota family’s problematic hotels brought to mind the Astoria Boxing Club that once occupied their so-named East Hastings Street hotel. The club’s annual fight nights featured male and female bouts. Attendees uniquely included judges, senior lawyers, a soon-to-be mayor and senator, corporate and entertainmentbiz biggies, and colours-wearing Hells Angels Motorcycle Club members. Unlike fellow-female boxers, round announcers had no tops to their minimal costumes. When Astoria hotel owners Paul and Gudy Singh Sahota offered to sponsor one such fundraiser, late provincial court judge and boxing club principal, George Angelomatis, called their rentfree arrangement contribution enough.