Lieutenant-governor feted aboard Japanese navy ship
B.C. Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon celebrated her 70th aboard ship. Not a cruise vessel at sea, though. Moored at North Vancouver’s Burrard Dry Dock Pier, it was the Japanese training ship JS Kashima where Rear Admiral Koji Manabe, Ambassador to Canada Kenjiro Monji and Consul General Asako Okai congratulated Her Honour. She then joined them and dignitaries in the Kagami Biraki ceremony of hammering open a sake barrel — no rum in this navy — and serving it in wooden masu cups. With 190 junior officers aboard, the ship had sailed 10 days from Mexico as part of a 163-day, round-the-Pacific cruise “to promote mutual understanding and goodwill,” Manabe said. Likely alluding to North Korean nuclear provocations, Monji said: “It is important that Canada and Japan co-operate in matters of security.”
TOILET TIP: According to JS Kashima’s heads, Toto porcelain fixtures meet Japanese military specifications.
ON THE GREEN: Century Plaza Hotel and Spa CEO Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia recently oversaw the 28th running of the Women’s Media Golf Classic that she founded. It has reportedly raised some $3.5 million for children’s charities, most recently the Pacific Autism Family Network Foundation that she also founded. A 1,000-person luncheon in Parq Vancouver’s JW Marriott hotel on Dec. 1 will boost the foundation’s earlier $32-million fundraising, Lisogar-Cocchia said. The complex of two hotels and a casino will open Sept. 29.
NEXT STEP: B.C. Children’s Hospital emergency pediatrician David Haughton, 61, will hang up his scrubs and take up brushes permanently on Oct. 29. The longtime artist’s 1994 exhibition included etchings that reflected “what I feel when I see children die.” In his final exhibition as a part-timer, Haughton’s 40 Views of Mount Baker exhibition at the Dunbaroff-17th Visual Space Gallery is a tribute to Katsushika Hokusai’s 19th-century series, 36 Views of Mount Fuji. “I want 10 years of painting,” said the ever-flexible Haughton, whose Bad Guys II series portrayed “murderers, gangsters and child molesters.”
YES I CAN: Many arts — music, ballet, culinary — entail lengthy training. Then there’s Natalie Rehm who, recalling childhood interests, impulsively quit a marketer-sommelier career, became a full-time painter and developed an international clientele. She exhibited a dozen works recently in the Autoform Performance showroom alongside less ephemeral artworks from Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche and suchlike.
JONIE EXPRESS: Womenswear designer Ron Leal sounded gungho in 1997 when Jonie Zimmerman’s then-10-year-old Ashia Mode store left Fourth Avenue for South Granville. “If there were more women like Jonie,” he said of the native Filipino who had sold 80 of his pieces to a single customer, “there wouldn’t be any doom and gloom in the retail in Canada.” That still pertains for Zimmerman, who recently had affluent west-siders celebrate her now-5,600-square-foot facility with Champagne while adding pieces to their wardrobes, albeit not 80 at a time.
ALL ABOARD: Two other South Granville womenswear retailers, Bacci’s and Boboli, helped raise a reported $600,000 for ovarian cancer research this week. That was when the B.C. Cancer Foundation’s Hope Couture luncheon-fashion show at the Rocky Mountaineer station aided the Ovcare project’s efforts to prevent one in two ovarian cancers. “Every patient diagnosed … represents a prevention failure,” team director Dr. David Huntsman reminded attendees, who saw guest of honour Rob Collins donate $200,000 to commemorate wife Janet Cotrelle.
GIN WIN: Few private art galleries would open an exhibition without serving wine. When the Winsor Gallery upped the ante with Bombay Sapphire gin cocktails, a lineup ran down the block. Those who got in saw works by 17 shortlisted local artists in the booze company’s Artisan Series. Winner Vanessa Lam will compete in the Miami final at year’s end. Others included Malawiborn Emily Carr U grad Tajah (it means crown) Olson who usually paints on her own body — aswesiarts.com — but showed her Mask of Fertility self-sculpture complete with coffee-can crown.
MONKEY SEE: No wine was needed to draw folk to Attila Richard Lukacs’ exhibition at Sarah Macaulay’s Second-off-Scotia gallery. The three-decade painter’s 17 works were derived from Polaroid images of stuffed monkey Hobbs — some salty enough to hang in the gallery’s backroom — in 1990-London locales. Lukacs’ Gegen Nazis (Against Nazis) T-shirt evoked and countered the huge paintings of skinheads in his 1996 E-werk exhibition at UBC’s Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery. Always inventive, he produces works (this exhibition took 10 months) that surprise and even amuse onlookers while challenging other artists to equal his skill and intelligence.
PARRYDIDDLES: The Grizzly Bear Foundation reportedly raised $400,000 at its recent Night of the Grizzlies gala. … The Mennonite Central Committee second annual Abbotsford festival generated another $1 million and some for global relief, development and peace efforts. … Playing a brain-damaged boxer in the short film Ganjy has earned Ben Ratner a well-deserved UBCP/ ACTRA award nomination. … A $30-a-ticket remembrance of impresario Hugh Pickett will go Sept. 24 at Vancouver City Archives where his voluminous records are preserved.