Animal hospital’s new digs are the cat’s meow
PET PROJECT: The Year of the Dog started off encouragingly for Richmond cats. Dogs, too. What began in the 1990s as the Richmond Homeless Cats organization and grew into the Richmond Animal Protection Society or RAPS, recently opened RAPS Animal Hospital in a place known for horsepower. That’s the Richmond Auto Mall where Applewood Auto Group CEO Darren Graham donated a van and then six years of rent-free occupancy for the 6,000-squarefoot hospital on its property. Mayor Malcolm Brodie and other politicos joined RAPS executives Fearn Edmonds and Eyal Lichtmann to open the facility. RAPS also operates the City of Richmond’s no-kill City Animal Shelter, with a further $8-million shelter pending.
LOVE THOSE LABS: With 1,500 younger men and women patronizing Science of Cocktails’ 34 help-yourself liquor bars, the science entailed might have been biology. Instead, founderchair Tristan Sawtell’s thirdannual event benefited children from underserved school who participate in Science World’s class field-trip bursary program. The scheme “ignites wonder and inspires dreams,” Science World president and CEO Scott Sampson said. Turns out wealth adviser Sawtell misread the science of economics. Expecting to raise $200,000, he brought in $276,695. Meanwhile, by downing drinks, sampling nine food stations’ offerings and trying out Science World’s many interactive displays, attendees had a million dollars worth of fun.
AND THEY CAME: Niels and Nancy Bendtsen’s two-floor Inform store was the launch venue for a 346-page book about the man who designed many of our tallest buildings. Written by Trevor Boddy, City-Builder: The Architecture of James K.M. Cheng deserves its title. Detailing as it does Cheng ’s landmark Shangri-La and other Georgia Street towers, the $80 book features many on False Creek and Coal Harbour, including the Fairmont Pacific Rim and Shaw Tower. Others in Burnaby, Richmond, Toronto, China and elsewhere are detailed, too, often photographed by Cheng and featuring his trademark podiumand-tower motif. In youth, Cheng was urged to be a doctor or lawyer. “My Dad kept writing, ‘How are your business courses?’ ” he recalled. “Chinese fathers are very dignified. They never say they are wrong. Finally, he sent me a book on (famed American architect) Frank Lloyd Wright. That was his way.” Thus, as the book says, are cities built.
SIZE FLATTERS: Should Inform customers seek truly big books, Nancy Bendtsen offers two, each with its own reading desk. Twenty-by-27-inch formats mean that both open to 70 by 100 centimetres. Annie Leibovitz’s SUMO features the American photographer’s works in 476 pages for $3,450. David Hockney, A Bigger Book, gives the British painter 22 more pages for $75 less. Bendtsen has sold seven of each so far. Earlier clients bought 30 of German-Australian photographer Helmut Newton’s like-sized 1999 SUMO book for $2,500. Bendtsen likely wishes she’d kept the erotically flavoured volumes, as copies reportedly fetch $25,000 today.
NO KIDDING: Now an L.A.-based photography agent, Annie Leibovitz’s three-year studio manager was Vancouver expat Carol Leflufy, whose late brother Bob restored and auctioned classic cars under the slogan Fairly Honest Bob.
COLOUR CONTINUES: In Government House in Victoria, next month, city immigration and refugee lawyer Zool Suleman will receive the honorary title of Queen’s counsel. At the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s Keefer Street office recently, he celebrated another milestone: the relaunch of a publication he co-founded the same year (1992) as his law practice. Rungh — meaning “colour” in several languages — was a printed quarterly of South Asian culture and criticism until 1999, then continued as partial archives. Past editions are now searchable on SFU’s special collections site, a new online edition exists, and print projects are “possible.” For Suleman, that’s another QC: quite comforting.
HOW SWEET IT WASN’T: Two tonnes of sugar would make plenty of the Japanese confectionery called wagashi. But arranged on the floor of Burnaby’s Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre recently, it took viewers back to a bitter time 75 years ago. That was when some 16,000 naturalized or Canada-born Japanese Canadians lost their homes and businesses and were relocated at least 100 miles from the B.C. coast. Among them, some farming families grew and harvested sugar beets under harsh conditions in Alberta and Manitoba. Kelty Myoshi McKinnon, who is a partner with the city-based PFS Studio landscaping firm, recounts that era with her installation Beta Vulgaris: The Sugar Beet Project. Her grandparents and greatgrandparents were banished to such a farm. In line with the saying, Doku kurawaba sara made (if you’re going to eat poison, you may as well eat the plate as well), they eventually bought it, and a descendant still farms there today. Complementing McKinnon’s opening, cousin Keri Latimer, formerly with the Juno-winning band Nathan, played a sevenstring variant of the koto. She and husband Dev later founded Leaf Rapids and have recorded with musician-producer Steve Dawson who, though not banished from Vancouver, is doing gangbusters business in Nashville, Tenn.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Let’s hope that those who “sleep like a baby” don’t pee the bed and wake up screaming. malcolmparry@shaw.ca 604-929-8456