HEREDITARY CANCER RESEARCH GETS $2.61M BOOST
Money raised at Inspiration gala will help researchers find and address genetic risks
INSPIRED NIGHT: B.C. Cancer Foundation president-CEO Sarah Roth left the Hotel Vancouver recently with $2.61 million in hand. Raised at the Inspiration gala, it will help hereditary cancer program co-leader Intan Schrader and researchers find and address genetic risks that may influence up to 10 per cent of advanced cancers. Gala familiars Tamara Taggart chaired and Jane Hungerford and Deborah Roitberg co-chaired the event that received $600,000 from the Chan Family Foundation. Laurie Rix added $500,000 in memory of husband and former radio sportscaster Neil Macrae who died of cancer in March.
BULL MARKET: The Contemporary Art Gallery’s 29th annual auction went off cheerfully. Artconfident attendees enjoyed auctioneer (and respected artist) Hank Bull’s patter about the 21 works offered, paid above estimate for seven of them, welcomed CAG curator Kimberly Phillips, and applauded executive director Nigel Prince. He’s a former putative Paul McCartney who quit playing bass with the Liverpool-based Mel-o-Tones (later Walkingseeds) band to study art and, with a little luck, found his way here.
ONE MORE TIME: Beverly Delich got it right in 1993 when she began managing 18-year-old vocal phenom Michael Buble. Heavyweight Bruce Allen took over 10 years later, but Delich kept looking. Now she’s keen on New Brunswick Grade 10 student Alexandre Richard, who was singing in the Celine Dion-Edith Piaf style when dad Stefan asked Delich for advice. She linked Richard to Bryant Olender, who was Buble’s Smoking Section bandleader in the raucous days. Now operating a penthouse recording studio here, Olender recently waxed two Christmas songs by Richard, a cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Xmas, and his and Olender’s I Am A King. Google Alexandre Richard to see him perform Piaf’s Non, Je ne regrette rien on Quebec’s La Voix TV program.
HEY, BABALULU: For its Dec. 5 Christmas luncheon tribute to Michael Buble, Tourism Vancouver could have the Hotel Vancouver’s Pacific Ballroom resemble the long-defunct BaBalu Lounge with full-bore music, dancing, bartending and cigarette smoking.
REMEMBERING: One long-ago Remembrance Day morning, fellow boy-soldiers and I stood at silent attention before our English hometown’s cenotaph. We saw the mayor and other dignitaries lay wreaths there to commemorate warriors who had died in the First and Second World Wars. Marching to the event, we passed a monument to local lad John Carless, an ordinary seaman who was awarded the Victoria Cross for manning one of his cruiser’s guns until he perished from his wounds at age 21 in 1917. Beyond the white marble cenotaph, we saw a plaque commemorating 1916 mayor Samuel Slater’s wife Mary, who was mortally injured when a bomb from Capt. Max Dietrich’s Zeppelin L21 exploded beside the streetcar in which she was sitting. Ironically, crowds hurried past that same spot 14 years later, not to escape airborne peril but to see Dietrich’s niece Marlene star in Blue Angel at a nearby cinema. When my hometown’s Remembrance Day parade took place more than two decades later, many stillyouthful veterans of the 1939-45 conflict were present along with older ones from 1914-18. The latter included my uncles George, Jack and Norman who had all fought in France. In Vancouver’s Victory Square this morning, the dead from those and subsequent wars will be commemorated, as they should. Still, my thoughts go to Mary Slater, to the civilian deaths that have increased enormously since she sat innocently in her tram, and to hubristic national leaders who taunt each other with the prospect of millions more dying. How much better that young folk may continue to march or meander into still-standing town centres, there to silently thank those who died violently so that they might do so naturally.
HARVEST TIME: Healthy young folk filled West Pender Street’s The Permanent recently to help contemporaries experiencing the world’s lowest estimated life expectancy. The event was a sixth $140,000-range fundraiser for Youth Education Farms. Developer-brothers Riley and Brandon Mari founded that charity to fund social-enterprise projects in the AIDS/HIV-plagued African absolute monarchy of Swaziland, where Riley once worked as a volunteer teacher. “We wanted to do something to help kids get to school,” Riley said as attendees donated to support students. One recently became the first YEF-aided woman to graduate from university, Riley said. All income reaches Swaziland, he added, with local directors and sponsors like Strand Properties/ Strand Developments covering expenses.
GO SEE: In November 1997, Paul Armstrong and Ken Hegan greeted Celluloid Social Club with a screening of indie moviemakers’ works in the Eighthat-Ontario Anza Club’s upstairs room. They’ll front a 20th-anniversary event Nov. 16 and show, among other flicks, Hegan’s 1996 William Shatner Lent me His Hairpiece: An Untrue Story and 1997 Aardvark!
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Paying $43 rather than retail $54 for 1.75L of premium vodka would let bars and restaurants save 37 cents on a $1.80 two-ounce shot and theoretically offer $12 cocktails for $11.63.