OVARIAN CANCER RESEARCH GETS BOOST FROM GALA
ON THE BALLS: It took fortitude for Barbara Fleming to press on knowing she had the most fatal women’s cancer and that it wouldn’t let go. Half of those diagnosed with ovarian cancer die within five years. Even so, research to identify and treat it receives only $16.9 million in Canadian Institute of Health Research funding annually compared to breast cancer’s $81.3 million. But press on six-year survivor Fleming did, raising tens of thousands in her Barb Fights Back campaign. Husband John jumped in by joining the Ovarian Cancer Canada board and raising more cash. The two received the Virginia Green memorial award when Ernst & Young partner Paul Palmer and Nemetz (S/A) & Associates chief administrative officer Franci Stratton chaired the recent Love Her gala. Proclaiming OCC’s Ladyballs slogan, it reportedly raised $210,000.
THEY DID: Rosemary Siemens and Eli Bennett could have added the words “in costume and in tune” to the wedding vows they uttered in Plum Coulee, Man., last year. Violinist Siemens had performed in Carnegie Hall and the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel before she met Bennett, who plays the tenor sax as though he invented it. The sparkly attired pair literally make beautiful music together now, most recently at Ovarian Cancer Canada and the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation’s back-to-back galas.
TO THE METAL: Some $50 million worth of luxury and supercars scooted to and from Whistler during last weekend’s charity fundraiser, the Hublot Diamond Rally. Before the start, the AD ESA Richmond firm auctioned off 24 Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches and other top cars. Last to go, a compact Bentley convertible, fetched $2,100. OK, it was 1.3 metres long and propelled by pedals. With team sponsorships and other donations, it raised $30,000 for the Children’ Wish Foundation of Canada and had provincial director Jennifer Petersen riding on air.
HORSEPOWER HOUSE: To house the exotic cars proliferating here, the Hungerford Properties firm will complete the two-floor Trove “condominium” project and clubhouse in summer of 2019. Occupying industrialzoned land beside the Richmond Auto Mall, its 45 units will each hold up to 12 vehicles, boats, etc., said partner and 2006 Ford GT owner-driver Michael Hungerford. A larger “inner city” version will follow.
DUKE GREETS EARLS: After a decade of developing Earls restaurants on the U.S. Atlantic coast from Boston to Miami, Stan Fuller has opened one in Ambleside. His father, firm founder Leroy Earl (Bus) Fuller, 90, attended. So did son Marshall, 23, who is day manager at the Beach House, Dundarave. They toted such Earls-made-and-bottled cocktails as gin-and-curaçao-based Corpse Reviver. The restaurant’s landlord is a family business, too. Two steps higher than an earl on Britain’s peerage scale, the Grosvenor Group is owned by the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor, 27. With a net worth of US$13 billion, he’ll likely get a right royal welcome in June when visiting the Vancouver area where his father was the Royal Westminster Regiment’s colonel-in-chief. Stan Fuller’s new 180-seat restaurant (and 70-seat patio) isn’t his first joint project with Grosvenor Americas chief executive Andrew Bibby. The former played prop and the latter outside half on the UBC Old Boys rugby squad. Bibby also played for Team Canada. Meanwhile, Fuller is back in the local business scrum with another same-sized Earls planned for Metrotown’s Station Square.
HELPING HEARTS: Heart & Stroke B.C. & Yukon Foundation’s Heart of Gold gala skipped 2017 in benefiting the more than a million Canadians with heart disease and the 50,000 new cases diagnosed annually. It will return with a June 1 event already sold out. That’s according to first-time chair Jen Rainnie, the former Canadian windsurfing champion who founded the Malvados — Spanish for “wicked” — footwear firm in 2015. She was roped in after pitching her products to Flip Flop Shops’ cofounder, open-heart surgery survivor and HSF board chair Brian Curin. Rainnie, foundation CEO Adrienne Bakker and donors readied for the gala at a reception in Eagle Harbour residents Kyle and Janelle Washington’s pieda-ciel West End penthouse. The former bachelor pad of Seaspanowning billionaire clan scion Kyle, it retains a multi-head shower room possibly provided for use by visiting sports teams.
GONE TO POTTERS: The Northwest Ceramics Foundation’s recent Oven and Kiln fundraiser made $2,500 awards to Judy Chartrand and Jackie Frioud. Fifty-five artists — from Eliza Au to Julie York — contributed works for auction at a Royal Vancouver Yacht Club banquet staged by Museum of Anthropology senior curator Carol Mayer. In 1993, Mayer founded the organization that “has no members, collects no dues and supports programs open to anyone in the province.” Event over, she left for 400-population Erub Island north of Australia “to record the making of a sculpture of a giant turtle of ghost nets,” meaning the discarded fishing gear that imperils marine life worldwide.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Hospital emergency rooms are readying to treat certain civic-party officials who, at election times, tend to shoot themselves in the foot.